Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince doesn’t like the name of his own company.
Responding to an X user who said the name Cloudflare is “not good” and “not aspirational,” Prince agreed.
“I’d add: too long, hard for English speakers to say Cluh and Fluh next to each other so becomes Cloudfare, multiple ways to spell flare/flair,” he wrote.
He said it’s better than his original idea, however. Prince said he considered “Project Web Wall,” which he joked would be a “nightmare” for the late broadcast journalist Barbara Walters, who had a distinctive speech impediment.
Cloudflare is one of the companies that helps keep the internet running behind the scenes. It helps websites and apps load faster, route traffic, and defend against cyberattacks, including DDoS attacks and bot traffic. The company says its tools protect websites, apps, APIs, and AI workloads while speeding up performance through its content delivery network.
When Cloudflare goes down, it often takes large parts of the internet down with it. A large Cloudflare outage last year disrupted ChatGPT, X, and other major sites.
For a company whose business is so essential, it’s surprising how often it’s mispelled or mispronounced. Typos appear in developer forums, support threads, and even public bug reports.
Prince’s introspection about his company’s name came after a turbulent week.
On Thursday, Cloudflare laid off more than 1,100 employees, or about 20% of its staff.
In a memo announcing the layoffs, Cloudflare executives said the company’s AI use had surged “more than 600% in the last three months alone,” and that it needed to rethink its structure to move faster and deliver more value to customers.