Matthew Prince, co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, debates host Harry Stebbings on whether successful tech companies actually started by targeting narrow niche markets.
“It is very hard to find an actual startup founder that, that started out saying, we're going to do this small niche thing, and then it grew into this, is this big task. Almost everyone early on, you know, it's why founders, you know, can come across as so, so crazy is because of the fact that that, that, that, that they do have these wild big visions.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Matthew Prince
Opinion
Prince: The Bay Area is terrible for scaling companies
“It's, it is, I mean, when we were starting, and by the way, it's why it's the best place to start companies, but it's a terrible place to scale companies.”
Matthew PrinceOct 24, 2023▶ 7:35Harry debates Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "Should startups target niche markets?" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
AssertionSupported
Prince: The story of eBay starting with Beanie Babies is PR BS
“So, so the eBay example, you're like eBay started with Beanie Babies. So I've talked to the founders of eBay about that. That's complete and utter PR retrospective BS.”
Matthew PrinceOct 24, 2023▶ 11:59Harry debates Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "Should startups target niche markets?" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Prince: Starting in a narrow niche creates local minimums that hinder growth
“Where it runs a risk is if you start, start to say, you know, we've got to do X. First of all, you'll attract people that think X is, even though you say the journey is much longer that they'll think that that's the end state. And then secondly, it might be th…”
Matthew PrinceOct 24, 2023▶ 14:24Harry debates Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "Should startups target niche markets?" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Prince: Bootstrapped Tough Mudder might be more successful than Cloudflare
“I think it's an open question whether, you know, they've been more successful or we've been more successful. Like, they have no costs. They've got this thing that's just a machine that just kicks off a ton of cash, and he can go and focus on, you know, other t…”
Matthew PrinceOct 24, 2023▶ 25:55Harry debates Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince: "Should startups target niche markets?" · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Prince: Jeff Bezos is optimizing his life for Instagram
“And for a long time, I looked at like, you know, Jeff Bezos. I was like, wow, he seems like he has a pretty good life. He's not a pretty happy person. And out today, it seems like he's optimizing his life for Instagram, which is weird.”
Matthew PrinceOct 16, 2023▶ 9:19Matthew Prince: The Two Biggest Mistakes Every Founder Makes | E1072 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Prince: Most founders end up miserable or dead after leaving
“So I think that they, I think that there's, unfortunately, there's a lot of founders who, after they leave their companies end up either miserable or dead.”
Matthew PrinceOct 16, 2023▶ 9:49Matthew Prince: The Two Biggest Mistakes Every Founder Makes | E1072 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.