Silicon Valley Squares
Presented by: Dan Hollinger
Originally aired on October 8, 2021 @ 12:30 PM - 1:00 PM EDT
Join for a special edition of Silicon Valley Squares, featuring Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in the center square!
English
Game Show
Transcript (Beta)
Hello, hello Silicon Valley, I'm Dan Hollinger.
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 will 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. What would you mind introducing yourself to the lovely audience.
Yes, I'm Lee Carlson I'm executive assistant to Thomas Cypher RCFO and I think this 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 whoopee whoopee Goldberg So would you mind introducing yourself.
This in a fun fact whoopee Goldberg and I share.
We're both born on November 13 so we share the same birthday.
So all the all the appropriate. I'm one of the co founders and and CEO and part time janitor of 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 Yeah, 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 aside.
So feel free to call if you are any of your loved ones have been injured in an accident.
Okay, so, you know, I actually Doug and I are.
We're, we were both alive in in 1978 although I would like to point out that Doug is a lot older than I am and And so, and my last company was anti spam probably so you 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 a like a stock brokerage Solicitation All right, financial services.
Colin, do you agree or disagree.
I'm gonna agree with that. Oh, good thing you don't work here. It was not.
It was computers. The first spam email was trying to sell computers. Alright, so what that means is Lee gets the square.
Thought it was going to be one of those chain mail.
Forward, forward, forward. Or 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.
You like to try again off of mute.
I'm the company's general counsel and and old enough to think that Poland is the only legitimate heir to the center square.
I don't know who that is.
Yes, see, that's the Harsh. One of those 1970s artifacts of game shows that are wildly out of date.
Go watch match game for a bit. It's, 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 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.
I subsequently recorded in the documentary series Black Mirror.
It had some pretty negative ultimate effects.
So it was, it's something we don't try to talk about very much.
No, actually, it's it's it's variations on the theme. It was they were going after spam as well.
They were trying to identify and and and isolate and deal with proliferation of spam online.
Spammers lead you agree or disagree. I totally agree.
I'll totally agree that is correct. Got to be able to trust your lawyers Lee.
All right, so let me let me add you to 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 to the bottom middle.
Bottom middle for the block a Lisa, would you mind introducing yourself.
Hey, I'm Elisa direct and I'm the head of legal for commercial transactions at Cloudflare All right.
Yeah, this really can't be a fun, fun game that Right, you just totally like 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 going to 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 going to say it's What year did never going to give you up, come out.
Again, right. Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it emoticon All right, emoticon Colin.
Do you agree or disagree.
I'm making this not very exciting. I'm going to 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 then Have to keep vamping because we only have two games and that would have been a really fast game.
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 and 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 I would have to go with watts.
Only 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 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. And unfortunately, I don't, I don't have dates or sourcing to this other than the trivia itself, but 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.
Joke that it how you know people would ask how Cloudflare works and we would say squirrels, which I still think is the best answer, but Power.
You just need a lot of them.
All right, Colin. Let me bring the board back up the the board is yours. I'll go with a carry space.
Hey, Hi, I'm Carrie. I'm a designer in San Francisco. All right, Carrie.
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 it started as a joke, I suppose, because it is is a cartoon but but our launches have been a little bit more serious so Something starting with G, obviously.
Could it be the original cartoon cat Garfield.
Or he says Garfield.
Do you agree or disagree. With a lot of confidence. I say Garfield.
I was gonna say I was going to just say Garfield immediately. So you just gotta say with confidence.
Yeah, no, it was Garfield and I studied this back in college.
I wrote my thesis on it. Garfield major. Yeah, yeah, they 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 gonna say Garfield and I disagree.
I think there is a lot of money in Garfield.
Garfield is correct.
Garfield was originally our 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 her kind of To their Enthusiasts of Old presidents.
Oh yeah, that's true. No one ever talks about that Garfield. All right, we Think he was kind of a terrible human being.
Sorry about about 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.
Alright, so I'm gonna have to go with Rory Hey, 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 it's June. 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 50 50.
Oh, well, okay. So if Al Gore invented the Internet in say 1988 ish What would it be?
I mean, early Internet usage was something that really drive usage early on.
I think in the Internet people were looking for means For so I think no Mind means I think is cat means I think one cat meme.
That was all it take. It took for there to be 50 million users on the Internet Which one?
I mean, that's not a unit of time, but We now have 50 million viewers on this show Cats Million users.
We just broke their TV.
It took us 14 minutes to so one one happening is equivalent to 14 minutes.
Okay, there we go. We have the ratio. Okay, so let's how long would it have taken for one cat mean 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, Roy, it was five years.
So Collins is a square and Cannot win on a 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. All right. I mean, you could play elsewhere. You just wouldn't be able to win the game.
Now I'll go with Rory. That sounds all right. All right, Rory, your question.
And this is, you know, this is to allow Colin to win game one.
What does URL stand for URL, it's got to be Universal resource Locator 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. I remember the show that technically correct is the best kind of correct Yeah, we aim for tech.
I don't have any SEs on the line, but but generally they're always my my producers.
So that is incorrect.
It is uniform resource locator. Uniform not universal or universe.
Alright, so took a little 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. I said it with 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.
You got to show the board. Lucas Shane and Andre. Oh, let me, let me get the board back up.
All of this production value going on. There we go.
I'm gonna go with Lucas. All right, Lucas. Would you mind introducing yourself to everyone on the Hello live stream.
Yes. Yep. Loud and clear. I was having audio issues, but they're fixed.
I'm a 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, 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.
I IOT. Oh. All right. Indicator of things. Yeah. IOT has been around as a phrase for a long time.
That's. All right. So Colin, Colin gets Lucas's spot.
And again, we're racing to five at this point. One, two, three, four. Or just a cool design.
Yeah, that's true. If we fill the board that way, everyone gets to participate.
That's that's another 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 rickroll, right? Like this is where you cut to the rickroll.
No, I'm going to say Taylor Swift's. I'm trying to think of the most popular one, though.
Is the artist name enough? 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. You got a billion songs or Shane's song.
It's the S.E. 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 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.
He's old enough to remember who Jerry Lewis was. 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, who is 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 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? Outlaw.
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. All right. So, you disagree with Andre.
That is incorrect. It is Babbage as the father of the computer. So, Lee gets the square.
All right. 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. All right. 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 two is, what does Wi-Fi stand for?
What freaking idiot invented it?
I spent more time.
How did that work? Yeah. Man, 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. All right. Doesn't stand for anything.
Leigh, do you agree or disagree? I agree.
Agree. It doesn't stand for anything. Woo! So, Leigh takes game two. 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.
All of them is lucky he had legal support, but he still didn't win.
Represent the views of CrowdFlare.
She said. 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 not sure. I'm impressed that we have ads. That's a new innovation.
I mean, it's not new. Like 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 sales price, the share price as a result of that plug?
Our phones are ringing off the hook now. I mean, I could argue ever since Silicon Valley squares has come out, our stock price has only gone up.
I can't argue with that. It's at about 1%. So, you know, take it for what it is.
I don't know. You have the question about correlation, not matching causation that you want to ask right now, Dan.
No, no. 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 a 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. And again, thank you all the squares.
Thank you, contestants. And thank you viewers until, Until next episode of Silicon Valley squares.
Bye. Thanks everyone. Bye. Bye.
Bye.
Bye.