12 ms·

Cloudflare launches app development platform, announces $100M investment fund

108 points by janober 9y ago

shimon_e 9y ago
What is cloudflare's endgame for investors? For some reason I don't think there are enough enterprise customers for cloudflare to become a multi billion dollar company. I love cloudflare and am a happy customer but I'm really interested to know what these investors are thinking before they put up 100s of millions in investment.
- Kpourdeilami 9y ago
  To me, it seemed like they're putting the money into the apps that run on CloudFlare's platform and not CloudFlare itself
  - thephyber 9y ago
    I agree, but I think there's an implicit additional $100MM investment in CloudFlare, for qualifying companies. This seems analogous to when FB neutered FP Games from NewsFeed, Zynga took a nosedive and Zynga didn't seem to thrive outside of the FB App ecosystem.
- jgrahamc 9y ago
  What is cloudflare's endgame for investors? For some reason I don't think there are enough enterprise customers for cloudflare to become a multi billion dollar company. Why not? Also, Cloudflare has literally millions of web sites, APIs, applications using it. We are not limited to enterprise deals at all.
  - shimon_e 9y ago
    Actually, I just crunched some numbers and its not unreasonable to estimate that you are currently doing 8 figure sums monthly. Maybe it's not a bad idea to invest in cloudflare :)
- ryanlol 9y ago
  There's no lack of governments and non-governments who'll gladly pay for access to the plaintext web traffic hitting the literally millions of web sites, APIs and applications on CloudFlare.
  - eastdakota 9y ago
    See the "Things We Have Never Done" section: https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency/ https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency/
    - dsl 9y ago
      Google went years without knowing their backhaul had been compromised. If you think your cooperation stands in the way of the NSA using you for bulk collection, I've got a bridge to sell you.
tyingq 9y ago
"At its core a Cloudflare app is set of JavaScript and/or CSS files which run on a website, and an install.json file which instructs tools like Cloudflare Apps how to use those files." Sounds like all of your code executes in the browser then, somewhat like tampermonkey user scripts or basic browser web extensions.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  Distributed Lambda, which isn't far fetched since AWS' Cloudfront can run Lambda functions at the edge (with reduced functionality).
- e12e 9y ago
  So, it's a "platform" for MITM as edge-includes in the CDN?
  - tyingq 9y ago
    That's fairly accurate, as far as I can tell. Your "code" looks VERY similar to the code you would write for a chrome web extension. The delivery mechanism for the code is the MITM capability...looks very much like edge-side-includes. They have a sample app here: https://github.com/CloudflareApps/CornerRibbon https://github.com/CloudflareApps/CornerRibbon
pfraze 9y ago
This is the result of Cloudflare's eager.io acquisition. You might remember eager from some of their really awesome blog posts on the histories of various techs [1][2]. 1 https://eager.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-weird-scripting-languages/ https://eager.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-weird-scripting-lan... 2 https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/ https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/
- pfraze 9y ago
  Now that I've said something nice, I'm going to follow that up with a big F U to this app: https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/noadblock https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/noadblock EDIT: a little pre-debate warmup for anybody that wants to get into it. Point 1: Users have the right to block. Counter-point: Content provider have the right to deny access. Point 2: Ads are bad for users. Counter-point: there is none, ads are bad for users.
  - mrkurt 9y ago
    It's super tempting to label something "noadblock" because it sounds like money to publishers (I know this because I've been trying like crazy to get publishers to use proxy level middleware), but you're right. The reality is, you can inject advertisements into content at the proxy level that are better for peoples' privacy, keep pages fast, and are less disruptive for readers. The thing is, publishers have a ton of unsellable inventory that you can blame on ad blockers, but it's really the end result of shitty advertising and privacy overreaches. Doing better ads will get them around ad blockers, but doing better ads from the beginning may have prevented the rise of ad blockers at all.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Actual counter-point: blocking all ads is shortsighted. As more and more people do it, the sites you are currently blocking from showing you ads will have to switch to a paid model, with many probably failing. Only a select few news sources will survive. Local news in non-metropolitan areas will be even worse than it is now. People will start consuming news exclusively from the one or two (maximum) sources they pay for, whereas now they probably read at least one article from 50+ sources every month. Elections will happen, but very few people will actually have enough information. All political oversight will seize, because actual behaviour is no longer tied to re-election. But, at least, most politicians will have very nice names. Alternative scenario: smart blocking: start with allowing all, then blacklist individual ads based on the publisher, content/behaviour of the ad, and reputation of the ad network. That would incentive ads to actually get better.
kentt 9y ago
I'd be very wary about investing my time and resources on a platform with such a corrupt CEO. Just a few months ago he was blatantly lying* about the massive security issues they were having. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721644
- j_s 9y ago
  Most likely relying on second-hand info that was just wrong. I doubt he based that post entirely on searching the caches himself. That whole incident was a mess though, tying up a lot of peoples' time who didn't work for CloudFlare. Centralization of services is always painful when things go wrong, and that may be a reason to avoid CloudFlare. The only other beef I can think of against CloudFlare is how they play both sides of the DDoS game, hosting the sites selling them (free speech!) and charging the victims for protection. PS. CloudFlare does deserve some flak / second thoughts for the whole Cloudbleed thing, but I don't think your response is quite on target.
  - soared 9y ago
    Making claims based on unreliable second-hand info, as a CEO, is almost as bad as lying IMO.
    - j_s 9y ago
      Cloudbleed (most specifically what I will call the marketing side of the response) reflects poorly on the tech people at CloudFlare, for sure. It's unusual to see someone accused of blatantly lying on HN and I put my alternative interpretation out there to hopefuly temper that opinion a bit. As you mentioned, the end result is pretty much equivalent since all we have is the completely wrong output.
    - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
      He might not have known it was second-hand info, or could have been led to believe it was good info from a good source (we'd need the message that led him to believe that thing -- and publicly throwing a subordinate under the bus for giving you bad info will obviously not go well). I would differentiate that from lying, and fairly, he gets to deal with the consequences either way because he is the CEO.
jgrahamc 9y ago
Apps announcement: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-apps-2/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-apps-2/ Fund announcement: https://blog.cloudflare.com/developer-fund/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/developer-fund/
bearjaws 9y ago
"Put a google map in a browser with no code" Because copy pasting the markup / js was so difficult?
- kentonv 9y ago
  Imagine you are a dentist who has a web site for your practice.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Yeah, don't underestimate how annoying stuff is for most people. Even partially technically-aware users are right to prefer some easy click-n-add system vs getting into details themselves. Though I'm not sure how much those users intersect with Cloudflare users...
  - veb 9y ago
    Are you saying it's going to be easier for a dentist to set up their DNS with Cloudflare and then go through these steps?
- tyingq 9y ago
  I can see this being used in large corporations to end-around a sluggish IT group.
- irtefa 9y ago
  There are developers (https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/storemapper https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/storemapper) who are making a significant amount of money from apps like these. For some people 'copy pasting' is hard. Most people don't know how to code and don't want to deal with it.
- trengrj 9y ago
  The use case is probably not around maps but more around ads. Say you have a web project using cloudflare. There can be a single button on cloudflare called "monetise" which injects ads into the page. Additionally I've seen that major media sites use analytics services for tagging and have a way via the tagging tool to inject javascript.. This is a pretty terrible idea but allows the tagging changes to not be coordinated with site changes as usually a different team controls the tagging. Cloudflare would be able to provide another way to inject custom analytics / tracking into pages.
Kudos 9y ago
I guess this explains the Cloudflare CEO's sudden uptick in anti-AWS tweets. https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/877697707464302593 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/877697707464302593 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/876951966521348096 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/876951966521348096 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/873041178718908416 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/873041178718908416 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/870174216104034304 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/870174216104034304
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  How? Cloudflare doesn't host (and makes a big deal of that point); the actual app backends need to be hosted somewhere. They partner with Google (connectivity between CF and GCP), which is in the same business as AWS. A more likely reason is AWS's own anti-DDoS offering, AWS Shield.
  - tyingq 9y ago
    Maybe CF is a little tired of being the workaround for AWS egress charges too.
    - MichaelGG 9y ago
      Again, why would that apply just to AWS? Being a "workaround" would apply to anyone offloading bandwidth - Azure, GCP, and AWS have similar pricing.
      - tyingq 9y ago
        It applies mostly to AWS because of their respective marketshare in that space. Even more so specifically considering the S3 service.
djhworld 9y ago
Can anyone explain what this would be used for? From the looks of the demo it looks like you instruct CloudFlare to inject some code, e.g. embedded google maps into a website at a location in the DOM. How is that different from the website owner from just putting an embed link in their website and updating the site? Or is the idea you can add/remove these things dynamically through the CloudFlare web interface without having to touch any code?
- zackbloom 9y ago
  You can get a good idea of how it works by clicking through some previews, you don't have to actually use Cloudflare yet to preview apps on a site: https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/ https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/
- kentonv 9y ago
  > Or is the idea you can add/remove these things dynamically through the CloudFlare web interface without having to touch any code? Yes. There is a fancy preview thingy which lets you visually choose where to inject the element into the DOM, and a configuration UI which supports things like provisioning OAuth credentials for APIs, etc. No code needed (on the part of the site owner; code is written by app publisher).
- thephyber 9y ago
  > How is that different from the website owner from just putting an embed link in their website and updating the site? One click to install, plus developers can charge clients using CloudFlare's payment system (70/30 rev share). From the CloudFlare Docs site[1]: > We will bill the user as a part of their normal Cloudflare bill, beginning on the first of the next month (prorated based on when they installed the app). We will then send you your ~70% cut via our payment provider who supports a wide variety of transfer methods. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-app/charging-for-your-app https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-...
phmagic 9y ago
A platform that pays developers to use it is no platform at all. Yes, there's exceptions to every rule. But I have yet to see this strategy of a platform fund ever succeed. Better to build (or tap into) a captive audience and then sell that to developers.
- thephyber 9y ago
  You almost seem like you're trolling, but to clarify in case anyone else doesn't get it: This is a low friction app ecosystem with 70/30 rev share[1] for what CloudFlare claims is 6m+ websites. Also, their VC are also willing to back companies in their app ecosystem, too. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-app/charging-for-your-app https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-...
  - phmagic 9y ago
    Thanks for clarifying. I guess my main confusion is that I don't understand the audience who would benefit from these apps. I imagine one member of the audience is someone who runs a popular blog and want to add a widget but don't want to copy and paste code. A quick search on Google would solve my problem, or I'd hire someone on eLance to make the change for me instead of paying a monthly subscription for an app.
zackbloom 9y ago
I'm a lead engineer on the Cloudflare Apps team and I'd love to answer any questions. Cloudflare has been working on building apps into our platform for over six years, and I've personally been working on this codebase for over three (1200 days exactly today in fact). The initial goal of Apps is to make it possible for everyone to use all the tools technical people find and use on Github and npm everyday. Our long term goal is to make it possible for developers to make a living building tools which make the web better. As an engineer myself, the moment I will personally enjoy the most is when a developer makes $1MM on the store meaning it has truly changed their lives. That will be when this experiment is proven a success and we can't wait! UPDATE: I found a visualization that Teffen Ellis on our team made of every commit throughout the history of the project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6EsMIhQjoQYT2pmS05hU1RuUTQ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6EsMIhQjoQYT2pmS05hU1RuUTQ...
- qiqing 9y ago
  Hey Zack, two questions: 1) What were the interesting technical challenges of evolving the Eager codebase and integrating with Cloudflare since the acquisition? 2) What has surprised you so far in the feedback about developer experience?
  - zackbloom 9y ago
    If anyone doesn't know Eager was the company Adam Schwartz and I founded in 2014 which became the current version of Cloudflare Apps. The challenges are probably pretty obvious, you have to take this codebase and application which were meant to live on its own and conform it to the way another system works. In the process you have to adapt your deployment, auth, style, etc. to work in this alternative reality. At times it can seem like you spend months working just to get back to the feature set you started with. At others you get to see the vision of an integration you sketched on a whiteboard six months ago become reality and you're blown away that this crazy idea could ever actually work. The definition of 'you' also changed a lot in that process, we went from being a small team to getting support and assistance from dozens of passionate people. It's a very different world where your resources can scale to your vision, instead of having to compromise what you want to build at every turn. Particularly when you work at a company with as sweeping a vision as Cloudflare, you also get a chance to expand your vision itself. At Eager it was a romantic dream to think we would get on a hundred thousand sites. With our launch today we reach six million. The idea of a $100mm apps fund, or having 60 apps in the store before we even launched, were not things which startup-Eager could have pulled off. My biggest surprise is gonna be a little silly but it's it's when someone builds a really great app without any help or guidance. As much work as you put into the API or docs it's always a little shocking when someone builds something from scratch on the platform you work on every day, and it works well, out of the box.
mariust 9y ago
I think it would be nice to have a couple of examples of the type of websites hosted by cloudflare so that as a developer I can get a sense of what apps would work best. Further more ... if it's an app store (like) concept why does it not describe the way developers can make income just from creating an app not an app and a connected service that would require a server setup, I mean describe the revenue model and the cut that cloudflare would get and us as developers will get in the end. Thank you
thisisit 9y ago
Am I missing something here? I don't see any pricing model which will encourage people to post their "apps" here.

108 points by janober 9y ago

What is cloudflare's endgame for investors? For some reason I don't think there are enough enterprise customers for cloudflare to become a multi billion dollar company. I love cloudflare and am a happy customer but I'm really interested to know what these investors are thinking before they put up 100s of millions in investment.

Kpourdeilami 9y ago
To me, it seemed like they're putting the money into the apps that run on CloudFlare's platform and not CloudFlare itself
- thephyber 9y ago
  I agree, but I think there's an implicit additional $100MM investment in CloudFlare, for qualifying companies. This seems analogous to when FB neutered FP Games from NewsFeed, Zynga took a nosedive and Zynga didn't seem to thrive outside of the FB App ecosystem.
jgrahamc 9y ago
What is cloudflare's endgame for investors? For some reason I don't think there are enough enterprise customers for cloudflare to become a multi billion dollar company. Why not? Also, Cloudflare has literally millions of web sites, APIs, applications using it. We are not limited to enterprise deals at all.
- shimon_e 9y ago
  Actually, I just crunched some numbers and its not unreasonable to estimate that you are currently doing 8 figure sums monthly. Maybe it's not a bad idea to invest in cloudflare :)
ryanlol 9y ago
There's no lack of governments and non-governments who'll gladly pay for access to the plaintext web traffic hitting the literally millions of web sites, APIs and applications on CloudFlare.
- eastdakota 9y ago
  See the "Things We Have Never Done" section: https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency/ https://www.cloudflare.com/transparency/
  - dsl 9y ago
    Google went years without knowing their backhaul had been compromised. If you think your cooperation stands in the way of the NSA using you for bulk collection, I've got a bridge to sell you.

tyingq 9y ago

"At its core a Cloudflare app is set of JavaScript and/or CSS files which run on a website, and an install.json file which instructs tools like Cloudflare Apps how to use those files." Sounds like all of your code executes in the browser then, somewhat like tampermonkey user scripts or basic browser web extensions.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Distributed Lambda, which isn't far fetched since AWS' Cloudfront can run Lambda functions at the edge (with reduced functionality).
e12e 9y ago
So, it's a "platform" for MITM as edge-includes in the CDN?
- tyingq 9y ago
  That's fairly accurate, as far as I can tell. Your "code" looks VERY similar to the code you would write for a chrome web extension. The delivery mechanism for the code is the MITM capability...looks very much like edge-side-includes. They have a sample app here: https://github.com/CloudflareApps/CornerRibbon https://github.com/CloudflareApps/CornerRibbon

pfraze 9y ago

This is the result of Cloudflare's eager.io acquisition. You might remember eager from some of their really awesome blog posts on the histories of various techs [1][2]. 1 https://eager.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-weird-scripting-languages/ https://eager.io/blog/a-brief-history-of-weird-scripting-lan... 2 https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/ https://eager.io/blog/history-of-email/

pfraze 9y ago
Now that I've said something nice, I'm going to follow that up with a big F U to this app: https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/noadblock https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/noadblock EDIT: a little pre-debate warmup for anybody that wants to get into it. Point 1: Users have the right to block. Counter-point: Content provider have the right to deny access. Point 2: Ads are bad for users. Counter-point: there is none, ads are bad for users.
- mrkurt 9y ago
  It's super tempting to label something "noadblock" because it sounds like money to publishers (I know this because I've been trying like crazy to get publishers to use proxy level middleware), but you're right. The reality is, you can inject advertisements into content at the proxy level that are better for peoples' privacy, keep pages fast, and are less disruptive for readers. The thing is, publishers have a ton of unsellable inventory that you can blame on ad blockers, but it's really the end result of shitty advertising and privacy overreaches. Doing better ads will get them around ad blockers, but doing better ads from the beginning may have prevented the rise of ad blockers at all.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Actual counter-point: blocking all ads is shortsighted. As more and more people do it, the sites you are currently blocking from showing you ads will have to switch to a paid model, with many probably failing. Only a select few news sources will survive. Local news in non-metropolitan areas will be even worse than it is now. People will start consuming news exclusively from the one or two (maximum) sources they pay for, whereas now they probably read at least one article from 50+ sources every month. Elections will happen, but very few people will actually have enough information. All political oversight will seize, because actual behaviour is no longer tied to re-election. But, at least, most politicians will have very nice names. Alternative scenario: smart blocking: start with allowing all, then blacklist individual ads based on the publisher, content/behaviour of the ad, and reputation of the ad network. That would incentive ads to actually get better.

kentt 9y ago

I'd be very wary about investing my time and resources on a platform with such a corrupt CEO. Just a few months ago he was blatantly lying* about the massive security issues they were having. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13721644

j_s 9y ago
Most likely relying on second-hand info that was just wrong. I doubt he based that post entirely on searching the caches himself. That whole incident was a mess though, tying up a lot of peoples' time who didn't work for CloudFlare. Centralization of services is always painful when things go wrong, and that may be a reason to avoid CloudFlare. The only other beef I can think of against CloudFlare is how they play both sides of the DDoS game, hosting the sites selling them (free speech!) and charging the victims for protection. PS. CloudFlare does deserve some flak / second thoughts for the whole Cloudbleed thing, but I don't think your response is quite on target.
- soared 9y ago
  Making claims based on unreliable second-hand info, as a CEO, is almost as bad as lying IMO.
  - j_s 9y ago
    Cloudbleed (most specifically what I will call the marketing side of the response) reflects poorly on the tech people at CloudFlare, for sure. It's unusual to see someone accused of blatantly lying on HN and I put my alternative interpretation out there to hopefuly temper that opinion a bit. As you mentioned, the end result is pretty much equivalent since all we have is the completely wrong output.
  - FLUX-YOU 9y ago
    He might not have known it was second-hand info, or could have been led to believe it was good info from a good source (we'd need the message that led him to believe that thing -- and publicly throwing a subordinate under the bus for giving you bad info will obviously not go well). I would differentiate that from lying, and fairly, he gets to deal with the consequences either way because he is the CEO.

jgrahamc 9y ago

Apps announcement: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-apps-2/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-apps-2/ Fund announcement: https://blog.cloudflare.com/developer-fund/ https://blog.cloudflare.com/developer-fund/

bearjaws 9y ago

"Put a google map in a browser with no code" Because copy pasting the markup / js was so difficult?

kentonv 9y ago
Imagine you are a dentist who has a web site for your practice.
- MichaelGG 9y ago
  Yeah, don't underestimate how annoying stuff is for most people. Even partially technically-aware users are right to prefer some easy click-n-add system vs getting into details themselves. Though I'm not sure how much those users intersect with Cloudflare users...
- veb 9y ago
  Are you saying it's going to be easier for a dentist to set up their DNS with Cloudflare and then go through these steps?
tyingq 9y ago
I can see this being used in large corporations to end-around a sluggish IT group.
irtefa 9y ago
There are developers (https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/storemapper https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/storemapper) who are making a significant amount of money from apps like these. For some people 'copy pasting' is hard. Most people don't know how to code and don't want to deal with it.
trengrj 9y ago
The use case is probably not around maps but more around ads. Say you have a web project using cloudflare. There can be a single button on cloudflare called "monetise" which injects ads into the page. Additionally I've seen that major media sites use analytics services for tagging and have a way via the tagging tool to inject javascript.. This is a pretty terrible idea but allows the tagging changes to not be coordinated with site changes as usually a different team controls the tagging. Cloudflare would be able to provide another way to inject custom analytics / tracking into pages.

Kudos 9y ago

I guess this explains the Cloudflare CEO's sudden uptick in anti-AWS tweets. https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/877697707464302593 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/877697707464302593 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/876951966521348096 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/876951966521348096 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/873041178718908416 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/873041178718908416 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/870174216104034304 https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/870174216104034304

MichaelGG 9y ago
How? Cloudflare doesn't host (and makes a big deal of that point); the actual app backends need to be hosted somewhere. They partner with Google (connectivity between CF and GCP), which is in the same business as AWS. A more likely reason is AWS's own anti-DDoS offering, AWS Shield.
- tyingq 9y ago
  Maybe CF is a little tired of being the workaround for AWS egress charges too.
  - MichaelGG 9y ago
    Again, why would that apply just to AWS? Being a "workaround" would apply to anyone offloading bandwidth - Azure, GCP, and AWS have similar pricing.
    - tyingq 9y ago
      It applies mostly to AWS because of their respective marketshare in that space. Even more so specifically considering the S3 service.

djhworld 9y ago

Can anyone explain what this would be used for? From the looks of the demo it looks like you instruct CloudFlare to inject some code, e.g. embedded google maps into a website at a location in the DOM. How is that different from the website owner from just putting an embed link in their website and updating the site? Or is the idea you can add/remove these things dynamically through the CloudFlare web interface without having to touch any code?

zackbloom 9y ago
You can get a good idea of how it works by clicking through some previews, you don't have to actually use Cloudflare yet to preview apps on a site: https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/ https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/
kentonv 9y ago
> Or is the idea you can add/remove these things dynamically through the CloudFlare web interface without having to touch any code? Yes. There is a fancy preview thingy which lets you visually choose where to inject the element into the DOM, and a configuration UI which supports things like provisioning OAuth credentials for APIs, etc. No code needed (on the part of the site owner; code is written by app publisher).
thephyber 9y ago
> How is that different from the website owner from just putting an embed link in their website and updating the site? One click to install, plus developers can charge clients using CloudFlare's payment system (70/30 rev share). From the CloudFlare Docs site[1]: > We will bill the user as a part of their normal Cloudflare bill, beginning on the first of the next month (prorated based on when they installed the app). We will then send you your ~70% cut via our payment provider who supports a wide variety of transfer methods. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-app/charging-for-your-app https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-...

phmagic 9y ago

A platform that pays developers to use it is no platform at all. Yes, there's exceptions to every rule. But I have yet to see this strategy of a platform fund ever succeed. Better to build (or tap into) a captive audience and then sell that to developers.

thephyber 9y ago
You almost seem like you're trolling, but to clarify in case anyone else doesn't get it: This is a low friction app ecosystem with 70/30 rev share[1] for what CloudFlare claims is 6m+ websites. Also, their VC are also willing to back companies in their app ecosystem, too. [1] https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-app/charging-for-your-app https://www.cloudflare.com/apps/developer/docs/writing-your-...
- phmagic 9y ago
  Thanks for clarifying. I guess my main confusion is that I don't understand the audience who would benefit from these apps. I imagine one member of the audience is someone who runs a popular blog and want to add a widget but don't want to copy and paste code. A quick search on Google would solve my problem, or I'd hire someone on eLance to make the change for me instead of paying a monthly subscription for an app.

zackbloom 9y ago

I'm a lead engineer on the Cloudflare Apps team and I'd love to answer any questions. Cloudflare has been working on building apps into our platform for over six years, and I've personally been working on this codebase for over three (1200 days exactly today in fact). The initial goal of Apps is to make it possible for everyone to use all the tools technical people find and use on Github and npm everyday. Our long term goal is to make it possible for developers to make a living building tools which make the web better. As an engineer myself, the moment I will personally enjoy the most is when a developer makes $1MM on the store meaning it has truly changed their lives. That will be when this experiment is proven a success and we can't wait! UPDATE: I found a visualization that Teffen Ellis on our team made of every commit throughout the history of the project: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6EsMIhQjoQYT2pmS05hU1RuUTQ/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6EsMIhQjoQYT2pmS05hU1RuUTQ...

qiqing 9y ago
Hey Zack, two questions: 1) What were the interesting technical challenges of evolving the Eager codebase and integrating with Cloudflare since the acquisition? 2) What has surprised you so far in the feedback about developer experience?
- zackbloom 9y ago
  If anyone doesn't know Eager was the company Adam Schwartz and I founded in 2014 which became the current version of Cloudflare Apps. The challenges are probably pretty obvious, you have to take this codebase and application which were meant to live on its own and conform it to the way another system works. In the process you have to adapt your deployment, auth, style, etc. to work in this alternative reality. At times it can seem like you spend months working just to get back to the feature set you started with. At others you get to see the vision of an integration you sketched on a whiteboard six months ago become reality and you're blown away that this crazy idea could ever actually work. The definition of 'you' also changed a lot in that process, we went from being a small team to getting support and assistance from dozens of passionate people. It's a very different world where your resources can scale to your vision, instead of having to compromise what you want to build at every turn. Particularly when you work at a company with as sweeping a vision as Cloudflare, you also get a chance to expand your vision itself. At Eager it was a romantic dream to think we would get on a hundred thousand sites. With our launch today we reach six million. The idea of a $100mm apps fund, or having 60 apps in the store before we even launched, were not things which startup-Eager could have pulled off. My biggest surprise is gonna be a little silly but it's it's when someone builds a really great app without any help or guidance. As much work as you put into the API or docs it's always a little shocking when someone builds something from scratch on the platform you work on every day, and it works well, out of the box.

mariust 9y ago

I think it would be nice to have a couple of examples of the type of websites hosted by cloudflare so that as a developer I can get a sense of what apps would work best. Further more ... if it's an app store (like) concept why does it not describe the way developers can make income just from creating an app not an app and a connected service that would require a server setup, I mean describe the revenue model and the cut that cloudflare would get and us as developers will get in the end. Thank you

thisisit 9y ago

Am I missing something here? I don't see any pricing model which will encourage people to post their "apps" here.