Matthew Prince

Prince grew up in Park City, Utah, and worked as a ski instructor when he was young. He studied English and computer science in college, then turned to law and technology entrepreneurship.⁠[1][2]

Prince graduated from Trinity College in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, having studied English and computer science.⁠[2][3]

In 2000, Prince graduated from the University of Chicago Law School. He had accepted a job at a law firm but, before beginning to practice, joined a technology company founded by the brother of a law school professor, working there until the company was sold. He later said that his legal training helped him understand the complex institutional issues of the internet industry.⁠[4]

In December 2001, Prince co-founded Unspam Technologies and served as its chairman.⁠[5]

Unspam’s business included helping governments set up registries that prohibit certain marketing contacts.⁠[6]

In 2003, he began teaching technology and law courses at John Marshall Law School in Chicago. In 2004, he and Lee Holloway launched Project Honey Pot, which identified spammers using information collected through websites; the project’s users later said they wanted not only to detect malicious visits but also to stop them.⁠[2][7]

Prince attended Harvard Business School from 2007 to 2009 and worked with classmate Michelle Zatlyn to develop CloudflareCloudflareCloudflare (Cloudflare, Inc.) is a network infrastructure and security company headquartered in San Francisco that describes itself as a connectivity cloud company. Founded in 2009 by Matthew Prince, Michelle Zatlyn and Lee Holloway, it uses its global network to provide content delivery, security and developer platform services for websites and applications, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in September 2019 under the symbol NET.Open the full entry. On April 27, 2009, their team won the Traditional Track of the school’s business plan contest, receiving $25,000 in cash and an equivalent value in professional services.⁠[4][8]

He earned an MBA and was named a Baker Scholar and received the Dubilier Prize.⁠[9]

Prince has been chief executive officer of Cloudflare since July 2009.⁠[5]

The company he co-founded with Zatlyn and Holloway received investment from Venrock and Pelion Venture Partners in November 2009, began private beta testing in June 2010, and publicly launched its service at TechCrunch DisruptTechCrunch DisruptTechCrunch Disrupt is a technology and startup conference organized by TechCrunch, combining interviews, product demonstrations, startup competitions and industry networking for founders and investors.Open the full entry on September 27.⁠[7]

Prince received a 2011 TechFellow Award.⁠[9]

On August 16, 2017, Prince announced that Cloudflare was terminating service for the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, noting that the site had claimed Cloudflare supported its ideology. He also reflected that the ability of private infrastructure companies to remove a website’s protection on their own judgment could give a small number of companies too much power, and he called for clearer rules and legal processes.⁠[10]

In August 2019, after the El Paso shooting, Prince announced that Cloudflare was terminating service for 8chan. Cloudflare considered the site to encourage violence. He also noted that the site could still move to other providers and that removing protection alone would not solve the problems of online hate and violence.⁠[11]

On September 13, 2019, Cloudflare listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol NET.⁠[7]

On September 3, 2022, Prince announced that Cloudflare was blocking Kiwi Farms. He said the situation had escalated over the previous 48 hours, that the company had determined there was an imminent risk of physical harm, and that it had contacted law enforcement; he treated the action as an exceptional safety decision.⁠[12]

Paul Rosenzweig and Katie Stoughton of Lawfare argued that the decision appeared justified, but criticized Cloudflare’s standards for proactive content moderation and the frequency of their enforcement as insufficiently transparent, calling for further disclosure of its policies.⁠[13]

On March 28, 2023, Prince and his wife announced that they had acquired the Park Record, the local newspaper of Park City, from Ogden Newspapers, without disclosing the transaction amount. They proposed converting the newspaper into a nonprofit or public benefit company and expanding free print distribution.⁠[14]

Prince served as chairman of Cloudflare from July 2009; since February 2025, he and Zatlyn have served as co-chairs of the board, and he continues as chief executive officer.⁠[5]

On January 8, 2026, Italy’s communications regulator AGCOM announced a fine of more than €14 million on Cloudflare for failing to comply with domain and IP blocking orders targeting pirated content. The fine was decided on December 29, 2025.⁠[15]

Cloudflare filed an appeal on March 8. Prince criticized the blocking requirements as affecting global DNS services; the company raised concerns about overblocking and the appeals process. AGCOM denied that the system harms legitimate websites.⁠[16]

In a Masters of Scale interview published in March, Prince likened AI to a power tool that increases efficiency and stressed that employees need to learn new skills. He still expected headcount to grow at the time and talked about expanding intern hiring; these remarks preceded the company’s layoff announcement in May.⁠[17]

He also discussed the impact of AI crawling on content revenue, arguing that content creators should be able to choose the terms of access; on agentic shopping, he said merchants need more verifiable quality signals as AI changes how consumers make choices.⁠[17]

On May 7, Prince and Zatlyn co-signed an announcement of global job cuts affecting more than 1,100 people. They described the changes as reorganizing how work is done around AI and said the cuts were not an assessment of departing employees’ individual performance. The company offered severance support, including paying base salary through the end of the year.⁠[18]

The company later disclosed that the layoffs represented about 20% of its total workforce, with related charges expected to be up to $165 million, and expected them to be substantially complete by the end of September.⁠[19]

In June 2026, Prince publicly floated the idea of buying the Park City ski resort from Vail Resorts, including keeping it on the Epic Pass, investing in infrastructure, and letting employees share in the profits. Vail chief executive officer Rob Katz responded that the resort is not for sale.⁠[1]

On June 30, Cloudflare shareholders approved capital structure proposals including the creation of non-voting Class C stock. The related 8-K/A discloses the results of the shareholder vote.⁠[20]

In July 2026, the Regional Administrative Court of Lazio dismissed the appeals of Cloudflare Inc. and Cloudflare Portugal, upholding the anti-piracy orders and the fine; the court also rejected the argument that the Portuguese regulator should have exclusive jurisdiction.⁠[21]

In its quarterly report filed in August, Cloudflare stated that the capital structure change was still at the planning stage and subject to developments in litigation. As of August 5, there were 8 related lawsuits, 7 of them consolidated, alleging that the arrangement would allow the founders to increase liquidity while maintaining control and raising fiduciary duty issues; the company and its board consider these claims to be without merit.⁠[19]

On September 23, a Utah judge dismissed two lawsuits challenging earlier planning decisions on Prince’s residential project, on grounds involving a new settlement arrangement that had superseded the original decisions. A separate challenge by neighbors to the new settlement continues; the city maintains that the arrangement is lawful, while the neighbors dispute it.⁠[22]

On September 27, Prince and Zatlyn discussed in their annual founders’ letter the impact of AI on internet traffic, computing costs, and content payment models. They argued that small teams should also have access to AI infrastructure and opposed a future internet concentrated among a few large companies.⁠[23]

Cloudflare scheduled The Cold Start live pitch competition for October 19, 2026, in San Francisco, inviting 5 teams to present for 10 minutes each, judged by Prince, Zatlyn, and Dane Knecht. The judges’ prize includes $500,000 in Cloudflare credits, and the audience choice prize is $100,000 in credits.⁠[24]

Cloudflare’s official biography lists Prince as a member of the Council on Foreign RelationsCouncil on Foreign RelationsThe Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is a nonpartisan, independent U.S. membership organization and think tank founded in 1921 and based in New York, which has published Foreign Affairs since 1922 and takes no institutional positions on policy; Michael Froman has been its 15th president since 2023.Open the full entry.⁠[9]

Trinity College: Official website: https://www.trincoll.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

University of Chicago Law School: Official website: https://www.law.uchicago.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[4]

Harvard Business School: Official website: https://www.hbs.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]

Unspam Technologies: Official website: https://www.unspam.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

John Marshall Law School: Official website of the institution after the merger: https://law.uic.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[25]

The school merged into the University of Illinois Chicago in 2019 and was renamed UIC Law in 2021.⁠[26]

Project Honey Pot: Official website: https://www.projecthoneypot.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[27]

Cloudflare: Official website: https://www.cloudflare.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[28]

Council on Foreign Relations: Official website: https://www.cfr.org/ (opens in a new window).⁠[29]

X: Public account: https://x.com/eastdakota (opens in a new window). LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mprince/ (opens in a new window).⁠[9][3]