Silicon Valley Squares
Presented by: Dan Hollinger
Originally aired on April 1, 2021 @ 8:00 AM - 8:30 AM 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)
Original Airdate: June 26, 2020
English
Game Shows
Transcript (Beta)
🎵 Upbeat Music 🎵 🎵 Upbeat Music 🎵 Hello, hello fellow humans.
Welcome to the third episode of Silicon Valley Squares.
This will either be the funnest episode or the least fun because we have Matthew Prince, our CEO, as well as our head of legal Doug Kramer here today as guest squares.
So for those unfamiliar with the game, this is simple tic-tac-toe where our guest Colin and either Eric or our guest guest Lee will be attempting to get three across, three down, or three diagonal.
So simple premise, we'll attempt to have jokes and we'll see how things go.
So to kick us off, Colin, would you give us a quick introduction of yourself?
Yeah, sure. So my name is Colin.
I'm a friend of the company and collector of rare and exotic Cloudflare t-shirts.
Collector of t -shirts. And Lee, as I add you to the board, would you mind introducing yourself to the lovely audience?
Yes, I'm Lee Carlson.
I'm executive assistant to Thomas Seyfried, our CFO, and I think this squares game is super cool and I'm excited to play.
All right. And with that, Colin, being the guest contestant, you get to choose the board.
Start us off. So I choose a name on the board here?
Yep. Okay, I have to start with Matthew. Center of the board.
All right, Matthew. And although you might not need that much of an introduction, you're no Whoopi Goldberg.
So would you mind introducing yourself to the crowd?
Actually, in a fun fact, Whoopi Goldberg and I share, we're both born on November 13th.
So we share the same birthday. So all the appropriate. I'm one of the co-founders and CEO and part-time janitor of Cloudflare.
All right.
Well, your first question. First question of the game is the first spam email was sent in 1978.
What was it selling? It was... Careful now, this is a kid friendly show, Matthew.
It was actually is not a very kid friendly topic, but it was the accident law services of Doug Kramer and LLP.
If you've gotten hurt in an accident, call 1-800-Kramer-Law, which I think, Doug, that's still your phone number, isn't it?
It is. And, you know, it's still a side gig for me, a side hustle.
So feel free to call. If you or any of your loved ones have been injured in an accident.
OK, so, you know, actually, Doug and I are, we were both alive in 1978, although I would like to point out that Doug is a lot older than I am.
And so and my last company was an anti-spam company.
So you'd think I would know this. And somewhere deep in the recesses of my brain, I think maybe I do.
I think it was actually, it was a like a financial services firm.
It was like a stock brokerage solicitation.
Financial services. Colin, do you agree or disagree? I'm going to agree with that.
Good thing you don't work here. It was not. It was computers.
The first spam email was trying to sell computers. Sorry, Colin. All right.
So what that means is Lee gets the square. Thought it was going to be one of those chain mail.
Forward, forward, forward. Forward this if you want money in your bank account.
So Lee gets the square and the board. Lee, would you like to pick a name?
Yes, I'll go with Doug Kramer. All right, Doug. Good. You mind introducing yourself to the crowd?
Would you like to try again off of mute?
Doug's on mute. I'm Doug Kramer. I'm the company's general counsel and old enough to think that Paul Lind is the only legitimate heir to the center square.
I don't know who that is. Yeah, see, that's the point.
Look it up. Harsh. One of those 1970s artifacts of game shows that are wildly out of date.
Go watch Match Game for a bit. It's crazy. All right. So your question is the one probably Matthew wanted.
What did Project Honeypot track online?
Oh, so Honeypot. So Project Honeypot came out about the time of the Jerry Seinfeld animated film, The Bee Movie, and very concerned about global depletion in pollinating bees to maintain the honey population.
Attempted to use the power of the Internet to solve that problem.
Subsequently recorded in the documentary series Black Mirror, it had some pretty negative ultimate effects.
So it's something we don't try to talk about very much.
No, actually, it's variations on a theme.
They were going after spam as well. They were trying to identify and isolate and deal with proliferation of spam online.
All right, Spammers. Lee, do you agree or disagree?
I totally agree. I'll totally agree. That is correct. Gotta be able to trust your lawyers, Lee.
All right. So let me add you to the board. He's obligated not to lie.
Colin, it doesn't look like you have a lot of options.
So I get to pick now? Yep. Board is yours. Okay, I'll go with the bottom middle.
Bottom middle for the block. Elisa, would you mind introducing yourself?
Hey, I'm Elisa Durrett, and I'm the head of legal for commercial transactions at Cloudflare.
All right. Yeah, this really can't be a fun game then.
Right. You're just totally like killing people. I am totally in trouble. All right.
Your question is, let me scroll down. The earliest known use of this Internet staple traces back to a message board post made by user Scott Fallman in 1982.
1982 message board. So, um, I'm gonna guess that that's probably, I'm gonna say some sort of like emoticon.
I don't think it was, I don't think it was a hashtag because that came later.
At least I think. I think that's a Twitter thing. I'm gonna say it's What year did never gonna give you up come out?
Right. Rick rolled.
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say emoticon.
All right, emoticon. Colin, do you agree or disagree?
I'm making this not very exciting. I'm gonna agree. I think it was the first use of the smiley.
It was the first use of the smiley. So, Colin gets the block.
We put that up on the board. All right. And Dan have to keep vamping because we only have two games and that would have been a really fast game.
The struggle would have been real.
I mean, we do only have 30 minutes to kill this time. But so here's the state of the board.
Lee, it is your pick. I'll go with Alec. Alec. Welcome to Silicon Valley Squares.
Would you mind introducing yourself. Yeah, I'm Alec.
I'm based in our Lisbon office. And so it's like a really good time for a game show for me and probably not in San Francisco and I think my job at this point is wondering what convinced me to join a game show with three lawyers in the early morning.
But I work on our security team specifically infrastructure security. Awesome.
Alec, let me tell you about what time it is in London when it's 8pm in San Francisco.
Oh yeah, you'll get no sympathy from Andre. He jumps on at like 4am. I'm living that life.
I'm living that life here too. I bookmarked timezone.com and I sent it to Tina in San Francisco pretty early.
All right, Alec, your question. Multiple choice.
The Internet requires over 50 million joules, 50 million watts or 50 million horsepower to keep running.
I mean, if we're talking watts, it's got to be 1.21 gigawatts, which is definitely over 50 million watts.
But I would have to go with watts.
The only reason I know this is I've heard people on the infrastructure team talking about watts recently and that could be completely wrong, but they have been talking about watts.
All right, Watts, Lee, do you agree or disagree? That sounded like a very logical answer.
So I'm going to have to agree. Oh, it was actually horsepower.
Unfortunately, I don't have dates or sourcing to this other than the trivia itself.
You have no idea either, Dan. You can't actually answer that.
It was horsepower. That's what I'm leaning with. All right, X gets the square.
People would ask how Cloudflare works and we would say squirrels, which I still think is the best answer.
Hey, squirrel power. You just need a lot of them. All right, Colin, let me bring the board back up.
The board is yours. I'll go with Keri Space.
Hi, Colin. Hi, I'm Keri. I'm a designer in San Francisco. All right, Keri, your question is gmail.com was a domain originally owned by this famous cartoon animal.
Well, most of what I know about Gmail is that it came out on April 1 because we keep modeling our launches after it.
And it started as a joke, I suppose, because it is a cartoon, but our launches have been a little bit more serious.
So, something starting with G, obviously. Could it be the original cartoon cat, Garfield?
Keri says Garfield.
Do you agree or disagree? With a lot of confidence, I say Garfield.
I was going to say, I was going to just say Garfield immediately. So, you just got to say it with confidence.
Yeah, no, it was Garfield. And I studied this back in college.
I wrote my thesis on it. Garfield major. Yeah, yeah. There aren't a lot of those that come out.
There's not a lot of money in that. All right, Colin, what do you say?
I'm going to say Garfield. And I disagree. I think there is a lot of money in Garfield.
I just haven't found it yet. Garfield is correct. Garfield was originally, or gmail.com was originally owned by Garfield and they tried to provide an email service.
Just to Garfield? To Garfield fans. I think it was an internal or kind of to their fans.
Or enthusiasts of old presidents. Oh, yeah, that's true.
No one ever talks about that Garfield. No one should. I think he was kind of a terrible human being.
No, I'm kind of sorry I brought him up. We still got a pretty stagnant board.
Lee, your choice. Where would you like to go? And just a reminder, first to five is also an adequate strategy to win the game.
All right.
So I'm going to have to go with Rory. Rory. All right, Rory, would you mind introducing yourself?
Yeah, sure. Hi, Dan. So my name is Rory. I'm a privacy specialist based here in London for Cloudflare.
And I'm part of the security team.
And I see you're trying to out dazzle me here. I'm a little exalted. It's working, I gotta say.
It's June, so I'm celebrating with like the most rainbows I can get.
That is the shiniest coat I have ever seen, you know, digitally. Absolutely delightful.
I'm just impressed that you can wear anything long sleeve right now. I'm in a light linen shirt and I'm melting in London right now.
All right. Your question is, how long did it take for the Internet to cross 50 million users?
50? Five zero?
Five zero. Oh, well, OK. So if Al Gore invented the Internet in, say, 1988-ish, what would it be?
I mean, early Internet usage. It was something that really drive usage early on, I think, in the Internet.
People were looking for memes.
Porn. No, clean that mind. Memes. I think it was cat memes. I think one cat meme, that was all it took for there to be 50 million users on the Internet.
Which one?
I mean, that's not a unit of time, but... One cat meme is only a unit of time.
We now have 50 million viewers on this show. Two cats. Oh, we're up to 100 million.
We just broke Cloudflare TV. It took us 14 minutes, too. So one cat meme is equivalent to 14 minutes.
OK, there we go. We have the ratio. OK, so how long would it have taken for one cat meme to break the Internet?
I reckon five years. Five years.
All right. Would you agree or disagree with that? You know, that's a really flashy answer, Rory, and I'm going to have to disagree.
Oh, Rory, it was five years.
So Colin gets the square. Colin cannot win on a miss. He has to earn it himself.
So that is part of the rules. Colin, I assume you want to go with Rory? Sure.
That's great. I mean, you could play elsewhere, you just wouldn't be able to win the game.
Nah, I'll go with Rory. That sounds good. All right, Rory, your question, and this is to allow Colin to win game one.
What does URL stand for? URL...
It's got to be... Universal Resource... Locator?
Yeah. All right.
What do you think, Colin, for the win? I'm stuck between locator and location.
I'm going to actually go with Rory's answer, though. Remember, this show, technically correct is the best kind of correct.
Yeah, I don't have any SEs on the line, but generally they're always my producers.
So that is incorrect. It is Uniform Resource Locator.
Uniform, not universal, or universe. All right, so it took a little bit, but Lee gets the square.
How is it that we all think it's Universal Resource Locator?
Because that's URI, Universal Resource Indicator. And he said it with confidence.
And I said it with confidence, yeah. It's all about the confidence.
Naming things is hard. All right, Lee, board is yours, and we might fill this board here.
I don't see my board choices.
Lucas, Shane, and Andre.
Let me get the board back up. All of this production value going on.
There we go. I'm going to go with Lucas. All right, Lucas, would you mind introducing yourself to everyone on the live stream?
Can you hear me? Yes. Yep, loud and clear.
I was having audio issues, but they're fixed. I'm an engineer in the London office working on protocols and standardization stuff.
And I have hay fever, so I took a nice walk out just before this meeting.
So I was getting it very fine, and now I'm full of pollen, so I apologize.
All right, well, I mean, you're socially distanced, so we can't tell.
Great, I could get my mask, actually.
All right, your question is, what term for a large number of small objects communicating with each other was coined in 1999?
So if I have my history right, I think something like Napster launched in 1999, which had a lot of small devices communicating with each other.
So I'm going to go with Napster here. That was the term.
All right, Napster, Lee, do you agree or disagree? I think that was a great answer.
I'm going to have to agree. Oh, it was not Napster. It was IOT. Oh. Indicator of things.
Yeah, IOT has been around as a phrase for a long time. All right, so Colin gets Lucas's spot, and again, we're racing to five at this point.
Or just a cool design.
Yeah, that's true. If we fill the board, that way everyone gets to participate.
That's another goal that we're after. All right, Colin, the board is yours.
Where would you like to go? So in service of that goal, I'll go with Shane.
All right, Shane, how are you doing? Do you mind introducing yourself? Yeah, I'm Shane Osa.
I'm on the customer support team at Cloudflare. I handle the training for the team.
All right, Shane, your question is, this pop song is still the most viewed YouTube video of all time.
Which pop song? If Baby Shark was a pop song, it would definitely be Baby Shark.
For all the parents out there. But the most popular song on YouTube ever has got to be Despacito.
Despacito.
Despacito. Do you agree or disagree? Before it gets into everyone's heads.
So I think this is where you put up the rick roll, right? This is where you cut to the rick roll.
No, I'm going to say Taylor Swift. I'm trying to think of the most popular one, though.
Is the artist name enough? Colin, I'm going to step in as your lawyer here.
You don't have to come up with the right answer.
You just have to agree or disagree. Yeah, disagree. I'll just keep it simple.
You've got a billion songs or Shane's song. It's the Essie in me coming out where I have to be technically correct.
All right, so the disagree is correct.
The correct answer is Gangnam Style. And so Colin takes game one with five X's.
All right, so with that, we'll briefly skip this ad for the Cloudflare Partner Network.
If you want to become a partner of Cloudflare, feel free to check out portal.Cloudflarepartners.com.
And that's the end of that ad. Let's move on to game two.
We've got a clear board. Everyone knows each other except Andre, but he's been here enough times.
And let's kick it off. So, Leigh, would you like to begin game two?
Yes, I'm going to start with Matthew. All right, Matthew. I don't have a joke for this right now, so we'll just move forward.
Were you telling jokes before?
I'm making this up as I go along. All right. Cloudflare launched as a company at this tech event.
I think you were there. It was a Jerry Lewis telethon, which only Doug remembers on this call.
He's old enough to remember who Jerry Lewis was.
No, Cloudflare launched at TechCrunch Disrupt on September 27th of 2010.
All right, Leigh, would you agree or disagree?
TechCrunch Disrupt. All right. So, Matthew, you had me there for a second on the Jerry Lewis thing.
I was like, that cannot be true.
So, yes, I will agree with what his answer is. All right, that is correct.
So, you're up on the board at the center square. And Mike Errington has just agreed to do a Cloudflare TV segment.
He was the founder of TechCrunch. So, stay tuned for that schedule.
All right. Well, if he wants to join us for tic-tac-toe, he's more than welcome.
All right, Colin, board is yours. I'll go with Andre. Andre. Now, I know the Cloudflare Silicon Valley Squares aficionados already know who you are.
But for everyone else, would you mind introducing yourself? For both of our new viewers, I am Andre.
I am on the WAF team here in London. All right, Andre. Your question.
Who is considered the father of the computer? Okay, so I have a confession here.
We're going to give everyone a little bit behind the scenes. So, the squares can see all the questions beforehand.
And there's actually answers next to them, except for this one.
There is actually no answer next to this one. I'm finding that out.
I'm reviewing my answer somewhere. I remember who it is, but, you know.
Okay. I did not look at the answers. They are in hidden white text. So, if you didn't, like, highlight them and do a little bit of...
Yeah, there you go.
So, you actually have to legitimately guess here. Or Google it. No, I don't have to guess.
I do know the answer. And I'm going to be upset if you mark this as the wrong answer.
Oh. The father of the computer is Charles Babbage. With the Babbage computing machine.
I see nods. Everyone thinks I'm right. Colin, do you agree or disagree?
Al Gore. I'm supposed to be making the jokes here. You're the contestant.
Yeah, no. Disagree. Disagree. You're saying the father of the computer is Al Gore.
Well, I'm going to go ahead and refer you to my legal counsel. And say that I don't have to actually give you a right answer.
I just have to give you a yes or no.
That is true. He gets the other six billion people on the planet. Alright. So, you disagree with Andre.
That is incorrect. It is Babbage as the father of the computer.
So, Lee. Lee gets the square. Alright. Oh, we can go for a quick win.
We've got about five minutes left in the game. Lee, would you like to take it away?
Yes. Alec. You've got to come through for me this time, buddy. I make no promises.
I mean, he was the one square that forgot the Zoom background. Like, you've got to keep that in mind.
So, yeah. Okay. I was waiting for someone to bring that up.
I only have Zoom on a Chromebook. And Zoom has decided that Chromebooks are second-class citizens in the computing world.
And there's absolutely no way to change your background.
I get this every week on my one-on-one with my boss. Because he's got fancy backgrounds.
And he changes them in the middle of meetings just to prove a point that I can't.
And so, I've been feeling this for a while, and I work from home.
And it's not going to go away anytime soon. You should just be like me, where I don't have a background.
I'm actually just in San Francisco right now.
This is live. It's actually Marin. Alright. So, I do see a future square.
Or a square in Colin's future here. He's already rocking the jokes.
So, your question, Alec. For the potential win of Game 2 is, what does Wi -Fi stand for?
What freaking idiot invented it? I've spent more time answering why doesn't the Wi-Fi work than I think any other question in my life.
I actually at one point told one of my uncles that he has chicken wire in his walls.
Because I didn't want to trouble his Wi-Fi anymore. Okay, I don't think Wi-Fi stands for anything.
I think it's a brand name like Kleenex.
Alright, doesn't stand for anything. Ali, do you agree or disagree? I agree.
Agree. It doesn't stand for anything. So, Leigh takes Game 2. And we're all tied up.
And with that, I want to thank all of the squares. I want to thank Leigh for being an amazing contestant.
She jumped on last minute. And thank you all for those watching either the live stream or recording.
We know you ran out of Netflix and we're sorry.
And with that, any closing statements from my squares?
Particularly the legal team? Are we still good? I have nothing to do with the legal approval for this game.
I just want to make that clear. That's my personal disclaimer.
That has nothing to do with the game or the company. He had legal support.
But he still didn't win. Do I need that on the title card?
I already knew I wasn't approved by marketing from the last game.
Are you following brand guidelines?
I'm impressed that we have ads. That's a new innovation.
It's not new. The second oldest profession is probably advertising, right?
Is marketing tracking the spike we're seeing this morning? And is investor relations the spike in the share price as a result of that plug?
Our phones are ringing off the hook now.
I could argue ever since Silicon Valley squares has come out, our stock price has only gone up.
I can't argue with that. Today it's at about 1%.
Take it for what it is. You may not want me to be the center square anymore. Do you have the question about correlation not matching causation that you want to ask right now, Dan?
No. I'm confident. I'm good. If anyone out there is watching and unemployed, if you want to participate in this shenanigans, we are hiring.
So just go on to our opportunities page.
Part of your job interview will be being a contestant though.
So fair warning. Part of the interview.
It's the thread or a promise. All right.
With that, it looks like we got two games in and it just on time. Again, thank you all the squares.
Thank you, contestants. And thank you, viewers. Until next episode of Silicon Valley squares.
Bye. Thanks, everyone. Bye. Bye.
Bye.
Bye. Bye.
Bye. Bye.