What if your company’s mission turned out to be bigger than you imagined?

In this episode of The Eric Ries Show, I speak with Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, now a $70 billion company defending 20% of all internet traffic. We trace how Cloudflare’s mission wasn’t declared at the start, but discovered through a series of principled decisions, from protecting journalists and activists to making encryption free for everyone.

We also explore today’s urgent challenges: how AI’s shift from search engines to answer engines threatens the web’s business model, why creators must be compensated, and what a sustainable, human-centered internet could look like.