6 ms·

CloudFlare acquires CryptoSeal (YC S11)

58 points by rdl 12y ago

jcr 12y ago
Congrats Ryan! I know you might not be able to talk about it much, but the article states "re-introduce a CloudFlare VPN service later in 2015" but I'm wondering, "Why late 2015?"
- diwo 12y ago
  I read it as "later, in 2015" opposed to "in late 2015". Meaning, not now, but in the future -- sometime in 2015 possibly.
- rdl 12y ago
  It was supposed to say "in 2015". 1) There are a bunch of other more-interesting and more-critical projects coming up. There is cool stuff still to be done in the VPN space, but the basics are out there now. 2) CloudFlare is already a huge network; it only makes sense to do something like a VPN if/when we can do it really well.
  - jcr 12y ago
    I'm sure that together you'll do VPN really well. Now you have me looking forward to the CloudFlare blog post where they describe the custom/customized hardware they've put together for the VPN nodes. That will be some interesting reading...
meowface 12y ago
Relating to the excellent amount of funding Cloudflare has been getting... How exactly does Cloudflare afford to be a reverse proxy for millions of domains, at absolutely no charge? Are there some economies of scale I'm missing here? Obviously they make a good amount of revenue from their premium plans, but I suspect the vast, vast majority of all their users are on the free tier. They're nearly an ISP at this point, so from a very naive outsider's perspective it sounds like they would be bleeding money from this approach.
- jgrahamc 12y ago
  Obviously they make a good amount of money from their premium plans You answered your own question. They're nearly an ISP at this point Not really, CloudFlare doesn't have any 'last mile' to pay for.
  - meowface 12y ago
    The thing is, it seems to me like a lot of sites that get a ton of traffic still use their free tier. There are no actual bandwidth limits at the free tier, just some missing features. They never require anyone to upgrade. Even their higher tiers are pretty cheaply priced, including enterprise level: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans https://www.cloudflare.com/plans
    - jgrahamc 12y ago
      They never require anyone to upgrade. People upgrade to get better service (including the missing features) not because of some artificial limit (like bandwidth). If you upgrade because you want to, not because you have to, you're likely a better customer.
      - meowface 12y ago
        Personally I don't think bandwidth is an artificial limit, or that it's unreasonable to require an upgrade after a certain cap. A site with 100,000 daily visitors will be able to afford at least the business tier.
        jgrahamc 12y ago
        Sure, but why treat a customer like a mobile phone customer who has to worry about what plan they are on to figure out how much they are spending? It makes more sense to have flat pricing and to have feature that entice businesses to upgrade.
        12y ago
jws 12y ago
…this acquisition is as much about acquiring the security chops of Ryan Lackey as it is about getting into the VPN business. CryptoSeal customers have been notified that the service is being shut down. For now. Both Lackey and Prince told securitycurrent that they would like to re-introduce a CloudFlare VPN service later in 2015.
- rdl 12y ago
  The CryptoSeal VPN service for consumers got shut down in the fall of 2013 and all the users were migrated off in 2013. The business managed VPN service was super easy to migrate; we had dedicated infrastructure for customers, so it's just a matter of transitioning that to a different ownership agreement in the same colo cage; the customers were notified in advance and are fine with everything.
brandonb 12y ago
Congratulations Ryan!
- rdl 12y ago
  Thanks!
- declan 12y ago
  Ryan, congrats as well! Looking forward to reading your post about how the sale happened, etc.
fearless 12y ago
Why do you think CryptoSeal failed? What are some lessons learned from running a YC startup for the past 3 years? It would be very interesting to see a postmortem.
- rdl 12y ago
  I wouldn't say it failed -- we never got Internet-scale customerbase, but honestly the goal was "do awesome security stuff" more so than "become Facebook". I'm actually writing the post for Saturday; CloudFlare has a bunch of stuff going on this week so I've been pretty busy on top of getting some odds and ends resolved for this announcement.
dmix 12y ago
Congrats Ryan. This part made me curious: > it is about getting into the VPN business. If I remember correctly, CryptoSeal for consumers was shut down after concerns about the security/privacy of VPNs in general. Is Cloudflare in a better position to offer a secure VPN in the US? Maybe they have some better lawyers or infrastructure?
- rdl 12y ago
  Actually yes on all of those points. CloudFlare has a pretty amazing general counsel, Ken Carter, who in addition to being a great lawyer was in a colo racking and stacking servers. He also is the point person for Project Galileo, where CloudFlare offers free service to important free speech organizations. It's also very well resourced financially. CloudFlare has some pretty amazing infrastructure, which they've blogged about -- great peering, lots of POPs, etc. I was working on "how to do VPNs securely post-Snowden and post-Lavabit" after shutting down the consumer VPN service, which is both a technical and legal problem; we can definitely do it at CloudFlare.
xkarga00 12y ago
Post on the CloudFlare blog http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-acquires-cryptoseal http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-acquires-cryptoseal
mkal_tsr 12y ago
> We can’t begin to express how grateful we are for your support throughout this journey. Looks like http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ may need an update
- rdl 12y ago
  Indeed. That was intentional :)
  - davepeck 12y ago
    Congrats, all. May all our journeys be this incredible.
  - mkal_tsr 12y ago
    hehe, congrats! :-)
Ayaz 12y ago
Is this truly only an acquihire, or are they really looking into getting into the VPN business?

58 points by rdl 12y ago

jcr 12y ago

Congrats Ryan! I know you might not be able to talk about it much, but the article states "re-introduce a CloudFlare VPN service later in 2015" but I'm wondering, "Why late 2015?"

diwo 12y ago
I read it as "later, in 2015" opposed to "in late 2015". Meaning, not now, but in the future -- sometime in 2015 possibly.
rdl 12y ago
It was supposed to say "in 2015". 1) There are a bunch of other more-interesting and more-critical projects coming up. There is cool stuff still to be done in the VPN space, but the basics are out there now. 2) CloudFlare is already a huge network; it only makes sense to do something like a VPN if/when we can do it really well.
- jcr 12y ago
  I'm sure that together you'll do VPN really well. Now you have me looking forward to the CloudFlare blog post where they describe the custom/customized hardware they've put together for the VPN nodes. That will be some interesting reading...

meowface 12y ago

Relating to the excellent amount of funding Cloudflare has been getting... How exactly does Cloudflare afford to be a reverse proxy for millions of domains, at absolutely no charge? Are there some economies of scale I'm missing here? Obviously they make a good amount of revenue from their premium plans, but I suspect the vast, vast majority of all their users are on the free tier. They're nearly an ISP at this point, so from a very naive outsider's perspective it sounds like they would be bleeding money from this approach.

jgrahamc 12y ago
Obviously they make a good amount of money from their premium plans You answered your own question. They're nearly an ISP at this point Not really, CloudFlare doesn't have any 'last mile' to pay for.
- meowface 12y ago
  The thing is, it seems to me like a lot of sites that get a ton of traffic still use their free tier. There are no actual bandwidth limits at the free tier, just some missing features. They never require anyone to upgrade. Even their higher tiers are pretty cheaply priced, including enterprise level: https://www.cloudflare.com/plans https://www.cloudflare.com/plans
  - jgrahamc 12y ago
    They never require anyone to upgrade. People upgrade to get better service (including the missing features) not because of some artificial limit (like bandwidth). If you upgrade because you want to, not because you have to, you're likely a better customer.
    - meowface 12y ago
      Personally I don't think bandwidth is an artificial limit, or that it's unreasonable to require an upgrade after a certain cap. A site with 100,000 daily visitors will be able to afford at least the business tier.
      - jgrahamc 12y ago
        Sure, but why treat a customer like a mobile phone customer who has to worry about what plan they are on to figure out how much they are spending? It makes more sense to have flat pricing and to have feature that entice businesses to upgrade.
        12y ago

jws 12y ago

…this acquisition is as much about acquiring the security chops of Ryan Lackey as it is about getting into the VPN business. CryptoSeal customers have been notified that the service is being shut down. For now. Both Lackey and Prince told securitycurrent that they would like to re-introduce a CloudFlare VPN service later in 2015.

rdl 12y ago
The CryptoSeal VPN service for consumers got shut down in the fall of 2013 and all the users were migrated off in 2013. The business managed VPN service was super easy to migrate; we had dedicated infrastructure for customers, so it's just a matter of transitioning that to a different ownership agreement in the same colo cage; the customers were notified in advance and are fine with everything.

brandonb 12y ago

Congratulations Ryan!

rdl 12y ago
Thanks!
declan 12y ago
Ryan, congrats as well! Looking forward to reading your post about how the sale happened, etc.

fearless 12y ago

Why do you think CryptoSeal failed? What are some lessons learned from running a YC startup for the past 3 years? It would be very interesting to see a postmortem.

rdl 12y ago
I wouldn't say it failed -- we never got Internet-scale customerbase, but honestly the goal was "do awesome security stuff" more so than "become Facebook". I'm actually writing the post for Saturday; CloudFlare has a bunch of stuff going on this week so I've been pretty busy on top of getting some odds and ends resolved for this announcement.

dmix 12y ago

Congrats Ryan. This part made me curious: > it is about getting into the VPN business. If I remember correctly, CryptoSeal for consumers was shut down after concerns about the security/privacy of VPNs in general. Is Cloudflare in a better position to offer a secure VPN in the US? Maybe they have some better lawyers or infrastructure?

rdl 12y ago
Actually yes on all of those points. CloudFlare has a pretty amazing general counsel, Ken Carter, who in addition to being a great lawyer was in a colo racking and stacking servers. He also is the point person for Project Galileo, where CloudFlare offers free service to important free speech organizations. It's also very well resourced financially. CloudFlare has some pretty amazing infrastructure, which they've blogged about -- great peering, lots of POPs, etc. I was working on "how to do VPNs securely post-Snowden and post-Lavabit" after shutting down the consumer VPN service, which is both a technical and legal problem; we can definitely do it at CloudFlare.

xkarga00 12y ago

Post on the CloudFlare blog http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-acquires-cryptoseal http://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-acquires-cryptoseal

mkal_tsr 12y ago

> We can’t begin to express how grateful we are for your support throughout this journey. Looks like http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ http://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/ may need an update

rdl 12y ago
Indeed. That was intentional :)
- davepeck 12y ago
  Congrats, all. May all our journeys be this incredible.
- mkal_tsr 12y ago
  hehe, congrats! :-)

Ayaz 12y ago

Is this truly only an acquihire, or are they really looking into getting into the VPN business?