Originally aired on September 3, 2020 @ 7:00 PM - 7:30 PM EDT
A send up of Hollywood Squares where Cloudflare experts fill the celebrity squares and answer high and low-level Cloudflare questions to help two guest stars (customers, AEs or new hires) get a a tic-tac-toe, or possibly the Silicon Valley equivalent - a TCP handshake (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK)
Hello, hello. Welcome everyone to yet another episode of Silicon Valley Squares. I'm your host from the West Coast, Dan Hollinger. And with me today, we get to enjoy a rousing game of tic-tac-toe. I have two guests, Christina and Travis. They'll each be trying to get either three across, three diagonal or three down by asking questions of our lovely guests. So with that, Christina, would you mind giving a quick introduction? Thanks, Dan. My name is Christina Wilson. I'm an executive assistant for Michelle Zatlyn, the co-founder and COO of Cloudflare. Go Christina! Awesome. We already got the square bias going. So we're rooting for your success here. And I'm Travis Perkins, a former Cloudflare employee, twice over actually. And so really glad to see some of these faces and looking forward to it. And we just missed you. That's why we invited you to the square. I missed you guys too. Very much so. All right. And squares, welcome to the show. Glad to have you. All right, let's kick things off. So the Christina, as a first contestant, the board is yours. Where would you like to begin? I'm gonna have to go with Michelle, the middle square. All right, Michelle. Well, I know you're already Cloudflare TV famous, as well as Cloudflare famous. But would you mind introducing yourselves to our viewers? Oh, of course. Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for having me. I'm Michelle Zatlyn. I'm one of the co-founders of Cloudflare. And today I'm our COO. And so fun to be here. We were having fun backstage before the show started. And it's amazing that Cloudflare is coming up on our 10th birthday. So we celebrate our 10th birthday in a few weeks. And so September is always a special month. So thanks for having me. All right. I'll have to do a special Silicon Valley squares for the birthday week. You should definitely do that. Definitely. And a special background going. Definitely. All right. Well, welcome to the squares. And your question to start off the game. What was the title of the first Cloudflare business plan? That's not fair. That's so easy. Um, so what does everyone think? So before Cloudflare was named Cloudflare, we named the project, Project WebWall. Project WebWall. Do you agree or disagree? Christina? I'm gonna agree. All right, Michelle's trustworthy square. It was Project WebWall. All right. With that, if anyone wants to provide me sound effects, I'll go ahead and get the first X on the board. Oh, no sound effects. There we go. All right, Travis, the board is yours. Where would you like to play? All right. We're gonna have to go Suzanne up top. All right, Suzanne, welcome to Silicon Valley squares. Would you mind giving a quick intro? I would love to. And nice to see you again, Travis. It's been too long. Great to see you. I know. And way too long. Well, quick intro. My name is Suzanne, and I'm one of our solutions engineering managers. And I get to help with all of our customer problems and see what ways that Cloudflare can help them out. And it's a lot of fun. I get to work with a lot of great people all over the company. All right, Suzanne, your question. Before being known by its current name, this digital payment platform was called Confinity. What is its current name? That's a really good question. Let me, let me think about that. You know, thinking about technology and media companies, I'm pretty sure that this was one of the intermediary names before we came to its present form, which would be Xfinity, previously known as Comcast. So you can see they probably went through a few permutations and, and Confinity was definitely one of them. All right. Oh, dear God. Travis, do you agree or disagree? That sounded incredibly convincing. I have to agree. She is a solutions engineer. Exactly. Final answer, Bob. There's not a phone a friend here. So, so do you agree or disagree? I agree. All right. It was not Xfinity. It was PayPal. Which makes sense. It was a payment service. That was terrible. Yeah, always got to listen to the question. So with with that, since this is not a game winning answer, X actually gets the square. Oh, wow. All right. Well, this could be the fastest It could be game of Hollywood squares. This is terrible. This is Silicon Valley squares. We don't have the rights. I shouldn't have said that. Oh, no, we've been taken off the air. All right, Christina. What was PayPal's original name? Confetti? Confinity. Confinity. C-O -N-F-I-N-I-T-Y. Yeah. Confetti. I think that's great. Confetti would have been good. I would have gone for confetti, but PayPal is much better. As a former PayPal employee, it was actually the merger of confinity and x.com. And so it's not surprising that X and X are on the screen. Oh, there we go. We've got the history lesson. Wow. You know, I always love when people can learn something by watching Silicon Valley squares. We're all smarter having watched this. This is great. All right, Christina, the board is yours. This might be a very quick game one. Where would you like to play? I'm going to have to go with Joe for the win. All right, Joe. Joe, would you mind introducing yourself to the crowd? Hi, everyone. My name is Joe Sullivan. My job here at Cloudflare is chief security officer. And that means I spend my days thinking about how we keep our customers and their data safe. Awesome. Welcome to the squares. Your question. How much did the first five megabyte hard drive weigh? My parents taught me never to ask someone their weight. But let's see. A hard drive is typically full of photos. A typical photo. Well, I guess a photo probably weighs about as much as what's in the picture. It's worth a thousand words. A picture's worth a thousand words. Each photo usually has an elephant and the elephant is several tons. So I'm going to say that the first five megabyte hard drive was a ton. All right. For the win, do you agree or disagree with a ton? I disagree. Disagree. It was basically a ton. Shipped in September 1956. The first five megabyte hard drive hard disk unit weighed just over a ton and was used by the IBM 305 Ray Mac, which was the first commercial computer to have a moving head hard disk. Wow. So you're saying there's a chance, Dan. There's always a chance. All right. That line of reasoning reminded me so much of the Pomadi Python, the Holy Grail line of reasoning, comparing why they should burn the witch to whether she weighs more than a duck. I got better. All right, Travis, board is yours. Where would you like to play? Let's go Jeanette. Jeanette, welcome to the squares. How are you doing today? I'm good. How are you? I'm doing great. And would you mind introducing yourself? And yeah. So I'm an executive assistant in the San Francisco office and I actually support Joe who's down there. In addition to supporting Janet, the head of people and who is the head of global infrastructure. Awesome. Welcome to the squares. You've got a multiple choice question here. So of these domains, which resulted in the largest sale ever for a domain name? Internet.com, carinsurance.com or LasVegas.com. That is a very interesting multiple choice. Why isn't cats.com on there? Good question. This is a dog company. I believe Joe would disagree with that. Dog versus cat war started again on Silicon Valley Square. What was the date of the sale, by the way? I don't have that data. You don't have that data. I'm going to go with Internet.com. All right. Internet.com. Travis, do you agree or disagree? In my head right away, I said carinsurance.com, because if I've learned anything, it's that insurers are willing to spend a lot of money on clicks and online advertising, et cetera. So I'm going to have to disagree. All right. The disagree was correct. The reason was wrong. It was actually LasVegas.com. People were willing to just pay out the wazoo for that. But isn't it run by the local municipality? It's not like Sheldon Adelson's running it and it links to MGM or anything, I don't think. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, Travis. I guess so. All right. There's the state of the board. We've got a competitive game. Christina, where would you like to play? Let's go with Nicole. Nicole, welcome to the squares. Where are you calling in from? Longtime listener, first time caller. I work in, I'm our office manager in our San Francisco office. Awesome. Your question, let me scroll to it or get my, you know, the digital cards. What was the name of the first cross-platform web browser? Oh, wow. I spent a lot of time on like chat rooms and Internet forums as a kid. And always getting yelled at for being on the computer so much. So much so that I would go on at my relative's house and thinking about this. It can't be Internet Explorer, obviously. Opera? All right. Opera. Do you agree or disagree? I'm going to agree. All right. It was not Opera. It was Mosaic. Regarded as being the first widely adopted web browser, Mosaic was developed by a team led by Mark Addressin at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. I think it's Indreessen. Indreessen, yeah. As in Mark Andreessen. Yes, the Andreessen. I've got to fire my producer. I told him to write in the pronunciations. When did Netscape come along? Yeah, Netscape, you're right. Wasn't that the rebrand? Didn't they call it Mosaic and then they formed a corporation? And it was Netscape Navigator and then they dropped the Navigator. But maybe the steering wheel still exists somewhere. Netscape sounds familiar. All right, Travis, the board is yours. Where would you like to play? How many rounds are we playing, by the way? As many as we can fit. Oh, this is great. OK. I'm wondering, should I just go for the win or do I make things equitable? I mean, this is war here, Travis. Susan for the win, Dan. Thank you. All right. Susan, would you mind giving yourself an intro? All right. So I'm Susan. I'm on the security leadership team with Joe. And yes. And I'm clearly a dog person. Welcome to the squares. And I try to remain neutral in the cat v. dog wars that tend to break out here on the squares. That was rough. That was good, Daniella. And who said we didn't have comedians? We've got to practice. Yeah. All right, Susan, your question. Charles Babbage is credited with creating the first version of this type of computer. This types of computer? Mm hmm. Like supercomputer, minicomputer, OK. Isn't Charles Babbage a computer genius? Prior to 1900 as well. Oh, he's he's an early inventor. Yeah, this is I can only give it so many clues like this is. I'm also trying to decide if I'm team Travis or not. So I can see. I can see. I did say Susan for the win. I mean, give me something. In our London office, we used to name all of the early computer scientists after the early inventors. So there was the Babbage room. Same with like Ada Lovelace room. And it was all in London. We've since moved out of that office because we've outgrown it. But that was. I mean, you remember offices? There used to be offices. It's true, actually. What am I saying? I forgot. Yes. When? Yeah, exactly. When there used to be a long, long, long time. I feel like a safe answer can be theoretical because there's no way he built a real computer. But I don't know if that would qualify under whatever source you found it. So. Thank you for being so broad. So it's theoretical, your final answer. But then I think everyone gets to call how strict we are. Right. So I'm just making it really hard for you, Travis. Maybe you had punch cards in some way. I don't know. How long of hanging chads been in the office? Been around. All right. Theoretical. Do you agree or disagree? I mean, it's a great point as to they obviously. I don't know. I don't think Dell's been around that long, but. He's from the 1800s. I know. I will. I will disagree. I will say that there was something more physical. All right. Disagree is correct. It was a mechanical computer. So known as the father of computing, he invented the first mechanical computer, which paved the path for more elaborate electronic design. Very cool. Like a typewriter meets computer. All right. So Travis takes game one. So it's close there for a while. It was. I stumbled out of the gates. I will say that. All right. Game one is brought to us by Cloudflare Secure Access Service Edge. Simplify your network architecture with unified security and access architecture with Cloudflare. You can learn more at Cloudflare.com slash teams dash sassy. Think outside the box and get sassy. All right. Game two. This is amazing. I mostly did that because you pronounce it sassy. Like it was just begging for for something. Secure Access Services Edge. I just say the full thing because it sounds so cool and like 80s retro. All right. Was I not sharing my screen? Did I ruin that? You didn't give us that final little bit. Now, there we go. Got to show the. Yeah. There we go. I got to fire my browser. I swear. Promote. OK. With that, we move on to game two. And Travis, the board is yours. Where would you like to kick us off? I would like to start with Chandra, please. All right, Chandra. Welcome to the squares. Would you mind giving a quick introduction? Yeah, I'm Chandra. I'm the director of data engineering in business team. I've been like one year in Cloudflare, so it's been a great ride. I don't like we work with a lot of business teams to provide insights to help them run their business like more effectively. Awesome. Welcome to the squares. Your question is a pronunciation question that's probably going to annoy a lot of people. So according to the creator, is it pronounced GIF or GIF? Is there cats and dogs? Yep. About the same. Can you repeat that? According to the. According to the creator of the graphical graphics interchange format, is it pronounced GIF or GIF? I think it sounds like more of GIF. All right, GIF. Travis, do you agree or disagree? Disagree on principle. Disagree on. It all depends on your age. Which camp are you in, Joe? I'm definitely in the GIF camp. What camp are you in? I'm in GIF. GIF. OK, is that even? Are we GIFs? Yes. My daughters are GIFs. All right. Your daughters are GIFs. Oh, interesting. All right. Moment of. That's anti-culture, though. That's just the young anti -culture. All right. So your final answer is disagree? Is that where we're landed? Disagree. Yes. All right. Well, according to the creator, he wanted, yeah, it's GIF because he was going off of the peanut butter brand GIF, basically saying choosy developers choose GIF. Hmm. Can I get a source on that, please, Dan? Wherever, whatever website I copied this from, I'm happy to send over the notes. I'll have my people reach out to your people. Please, please do. For Travis, you do better when you come from behind. Thank you. All right. Wow, so it's really GIF? It's according to the creator, it's GIF. According to the whole rest of the world, it is. I'll play along, Dan. I'll play along. But that's just wrong. Choosy developers choose GIF. Okay. You win more points going by your principles. All right. Christina, board is yours and you're already on it. Where would you like to play? Let's go with Daniella. Daniella, welcome to the squares. Would you mind giving a quick introduction? First, I am. I've never been so proud to be a square. So thank you. I'm Daniella. I run the communications team at Cloudflare. And it's a pleasure to be here with this fun crew. All right, Danielle, glad to have you. Your question. On December 1992, the first of this was sent. Well, let's see. Ninety two. I. Well, an American online CD-ROM was probably, you know, right up there with whatever this was. But I would say it is the first. Text message. All right. First text message. Would you agree or disagree? I agree. Agree. It was the first text message. Wow. Fantastic. In 1992. In 1992. All right. We got two X's on the board. I'm learning so much during this 30 minutes. But more importantly, was it a cat joke or a dog joke? I don't have that data. I don't have that information. Did they attach a GIF or a GIF? We only had bitmaps back then. Hard times. All right, Travis, board is yours. Where would you like to play? One, four, three, Dan. One, four, three. Let's go, Suzanne, for the block. All right, Suzanne. Your question. I got to scroll down. You guys are making me scroll. What does the acronym FTP stand for? FTP. I think I've heard it in the context of our freedom of speech is freedom or death. We've got to fight powers that be. Let me hear you say fight the power. That's a good one. But but no, really, it's it's the finger topic protocol. That's it's really obscure. It's from back when when people were using like BBS is and you got to log in to the micro net server and basically you type that command and then you're able to get information more about a particular person that was also a member of that server. I would not want to play against you against any board game. Travis, do you agree or disagree? I disagree. I believe it's a file transfer protocol and you should be doing SFTP. Oh, you heard me on way too many post customer. All right. Travis successfully gets the block. I think that was very convincing, Suzanne. That was super convincing. I mean, finger finger's a real protocol. That was legitimate. Actually, as you started explaining further, I was like, oh, crap. Wait a minute. Is it not? I think I think you lost it at micro net. The micro net was one step too far. All right, Christina, if you bring in a babbage, the board, the board is yours. Christina, where would you like to play? Let's go with Carly Dan. All right, Carly. Welcome to the squares. Nice to actually see you, Christina. We've emailed back and forth so many times. It's great to see your face. I'm Carly. I'm on the finance team project manager and get to work on a lot of fun cross-functional projects with a lot of the folks that are on the screen today. So it's good to see everyone again. Yeah, that's me. Awesome. Glad to have you here. Your question is this machine is considered the best selling PC of all time. Which machine? Well, naturally, my first thought is Nintendo. He's googling this. Yeah, I can't control whether Square is Google. It's not filmed in front of a live stream studio audience or anything. No, I'm just thinking. If not Nintendo. I would say the Apple computer. All right. The Apple, Apple computer. Do you agree or disagree? I disagree. Disagree. It was the Commodore 64. Oh, yeah. It was growing up. Most popular PC. Christina's very decisive. I like it. All right. We got a competitive board. Travis, where would you like to play? I mean, we got to go Jeanette for the block. All right, Jeanette, your question. So we we've already been introduced to the early browser, Mosaic, but it donated some of its source code to this other early web browser. Which one? This is a very good question. Normally, I go to Susan to answer these questions for me. We can't phone a square. I mean, if someone wants to cough or like like I can't control it again, this is this is Wild West out here. I am going to totally guess and say AOL. Well, that is a clear win for Travis, actually. All right. AOL, do you agree or disagree? Disagree. All right. It was Internet Explorer. All right. So Travis successfully gets the block. Again, a competitive competitive game. I got it is that's some strong players. Christina, where would you like to go? Let's go with Michelle in the middle. All right, Michelle, how's your day going? Good. Things are great. I didn't know the answer to that last question either. I don't think anyone's in. I keep thinking Netscape. No, that's why. It's an incredible irony, right? Yeah. Why would they donate to IE? That doesn't make the best of the best artists deal. You know. All right. Before we get too deep, Michelle, your question. In what year did Cloudflare launch its private beta to Project Honeypot members? OK, well, so actually, it's so fun because we are we count this and every year we celebrate it. And I kind of at the beginning of the call, I were beginning of the show. I mentioned that we're about to turn 10 years old in a few weeks. And so we had run a beta for a few months before we actually launched to the public and we launched to the public at TechCrunch Disrupt. We were one of the battlefield contestants. And so my answer is in 2010 was when we first opened our private beta. 2010. Do you agree or disagree? I'm going to agree. All right. It was 2010. I mean, it could have been a trick question. It could have been in like before all that. But Cloudflare history, it's like you live through it. All I'm saying is I know who signs my checks. OK. All right, Travis, with that, you've got a hard you got a got a tough board. Yeah, it is tough. And I'm going to go Joe Sullivan. I believe you're a Palo Alto resident as well. You know, we have to stand together in these difficult times. Sounds good. Let's do it. All right, Joe, your question, another Cloudflare related one. Cloudflare's BGP based DDoS solution is named what? Well, could you get more acronyms than a question? Why so sad? Yes, I can. If that's a challenge. Yes, I can. Why is it so sassy? Say something NSFW. I do. Let's see. I think it's got to be Magic Transit. All right. Magic Transit, do you agree or disagree? I agree. It was Magic Transit. All right. And with that, we actually come to a close of game two. So I want to give a thanks to all of my squares and for my great contestants. Fantastic job, Dan. Another another rousing week of Silicon Valley Squares. I don't want it to end. No. Yeah, the gimmick. The gimmick doesn't really go past 30 minutes. You only have 30 minutes of schtick, huh? Pretty much. All right. And with that, we'll send everyone off. Have a wonderful afternoon, evening or morning. Stay sassy. Good to see everyone. Stay sassy. That's the power.