While upgrading startups to the startup plan, I often get inquiries from startups that are fully bootstrapped and not affiliated with any accelerator program. Many of them, especially AI startups, are very promising and would benefit highly from the startup plan.
Typically, they also apply for the Workers Launchpad program, for whom semi-finalists can get upgraded to the startup plan as a benefit. But many of those startups would benefit from getting upgraded right away rather than wait for the review process for each cohort.
Starting today, AI startups no longer need an accelerator affiliation or an employee referral in order to qualify for the Startup Program.
Fill out this form with the email address associated with your Cloudflare account: form here. For accelerator, select “AI” from the dropdown menu. In the Comments section, include the following information:
Indication that the startup has raised less than $3M USD (e.g., link to Crunchbase).
Link to a landing page, pitch deck, or article that describes what the startup does. It should be apparent from these materials that the startup is an AI startup (e.g. mention LLMs if that’s what you’re using).
Which Cloudflare developer products are you using.
Starting a business is hard. And we know that the first few years of your business are crucial to your success.
Cloudflare’s Startup Plan is here to help.
Last year, we piloted a program to a select group of startups for free, with a selection of products that are very high leverage for young startups, early in their product development, like Workers, Stream, and Zero Trust.
Over the past year, startup founders repeatedly wrote into [email protected], and most of these emails followed one of 2 patterns:
A startup would like to request additional products that are not a part of the startup plan, often Workers KV, Pages, Cloudflare for SaaS, R2, Argo, etc.
A startup that is not a part of any accelerator program but would like to get on the startup plan.
Based on this feedback, we are thrilled to announce that today we will be increasing the scope of the program to also include popularly requested products! Beyond that, we’re also super excited to be broadening the eligibility criteria, so more startups can qualify for the plan.
What does the Cloudflare Startup Plan include?
There’s a lot of additional value that’s in the latest version of the plan. Here’s how things have evolved from v1.0:
Cloudflare’s CDN is a distributed network of servers that provides several advantages for a website. By caching website content, Cloudflare helps improve page load speeds, reduce bandwidth usage, and reduce CPU usage on the server.
Cloudflare WAF protects a customer’s Internet properties from common vulnerabilities like SQL injection attacks, cross-site scripting, and cross-site forgery requests, with no changes to its existing infrastructure.
Cloudflare DNS is an enterprise-grade authoritative DNS service that offers the fastest response time, unparalleled redundancy, and advanced security with built-in DDoS mitigation and DNSSEC.
Cloudflare DDoS protection secures websites, applications, and entire networks while ensuring the performance of legitimate traffic is not compromised.
Page Rules allows you to conditionally change zone settings such as security level or rocket loader settings. It is also how cache settings are configured for traffic passing through the zone.
Cloudflare Workers allows developers to augment existing applications or create entirely new ones through a lightweight execution environment without configuring or maintaining infrastructure.
Cloudflare Stream provides out-of-the-box video infrastructure that handles storage, encoding, and delivery. Using the Stream API, customers can build video functionality affordably and with minimal engineering effort.
Cloudflare R2 Storage allows developers to store large amounts of unstructured data without the costly egress bandwidth fees associated with typical cloud storage services.
Workers KV is a global, low-latency, key-value data store. It supports high read volumes with low-latency, making it possible to build highly dynamic APIs and websites which respond as quickly as a cached static file would.
Offers the benefits of Cloudflare’s SSL management to SaaS company’s customers. Allows SaaS customers to use their custom vanity domains while maintaining a branded customer experience, improved SEO rankings, and all the perks of dedicated certificates.
Advanced Certificate Manager is a flexible and customizable way to issue and manage certificates in Cloudflare. Customers use Advanced Certificate Manager when they want something more customizable than Universal SSL but still want the convenience of SSL certificate issuance and renewal.
Resize images for a variety of device types and connections from a single-source master image. Images can be manipulated by dimensions, compression ratios, and format (WebP conversion where supported). It is a feature of Speed→Optimization on the Dashboard.
Cloudflare Images lets you set up an image pipeline in minutes. Build a scalable image pipeline to store, resize, optimize and deliver images in a fast and secure manner.
Argo Smart Routing improves Internet performance by intelligently routing end users through less congested and more reliable paths over the Internet using our network.
Improve application performance and availability by steering traffic away from unhealthy origin servers and dynamically distributing it to the most available and responsive server pools.
Cloudflare Waiting Room allows organizations to route excess users to a custom-branded waiting room, helping preserve customer experience and protect origin servers from being overwhelmed with requests.
Comprehensive email security solution to eliminate the risk from phishing, which is the root cause of damage in 95% of all cybersecurity incidents. Configuration with Google and Microsoft in 5 minutes.
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*Product-specific usage limits apply
With the expanded product basket, the Startup Plan v2.0 provides four times the value of the original program. As an added bonus when new Cloudflare products are in beta, participants on the Startup Plan are welcome to share their use case and potentially receive early access.
How to join the Cloudflare Startup Program
Eligibility criteria for startups new to the program
To be eligible for the Startup Plan, your startup must be at an early stage (i.e. raised less than $3 million) and enrolled or recently graduated from a participating accelerator program.
If you are a founder in a participating accelerator program, navigate to the Cloudflare perk from your program’s vendor perk page and follow the instructions there. Those instructions will lead you to this plan page where you can select your program from the list.
If your accelerator program is not on the list, please email us at [email protected] and include the details of your perk manager. We’ll get in touch with them directly.
What if I’m already on the V1 Startup Plan? Can I get access to the products on the V2 plan?
Yes! Startups currently on the Startup Plan will automatically have the additional products added to your accounts in the coming weeks, no action required. This upgrade will apply for the remainder of the year that your company is on the Startup Plan.
If you have any questions about making the most of your plan, drop a line to [email protected] with any questions.
Special Eligibility: Referral Program, Alumni Program, Workers Launchpad
Over our years at Cloudflare, we have had the privilege of working with some remarkable technologists who have gone on to work on extraordinary projects after their time at Cloudflare. Moreover, there are startup founders who interface with teams at Cloudflare, whether through participation in the Cloudflare Community or because they were former coworkers elsewhere.
These startups are now also eligible:
Workers Launchpad funding program: If you are building on Cloudflare Workers, simultaneously apply for the Workers Launchpad funding program here, which will make you eligible for introductions to leading investors, additional mentorship opportunities, and other perks.
Referral Program: “Referred by (include details in comments)” is now an option in the Select Accelerator dropdown menu on the Startup Plan landing page. Please include the email address of your contact at Cloudflare in the comments field. Your account will be upgraded once your contact validates the referral.
Alumni Program: “Cloudflare Alumni” is now also an option in the Select Accelerator dropdown menu.
Questions about the program? Drop us a line at [email protected], and we’ll be in touch.
Early in the life of most startups, there is a time of incredible hustle, creative problem solving, and making the impossible possible through out-of-the-box thinking and elbow grease. Grizzled veterans, who have lived through those days of running on coffee and shoestring budgets, look back on that time and fascinate the newcomers with war stories of back in the day, of adventures and first wins, when they kept the lights on by sheer force of will.
To help early stage startups get going, Cloudflare is giving away one year of the Startup Enterprise plan to all early stage startups in participating accelerator programs. That early stage time is special for product development, and entrepreneurs unlock worlds of possibilities when they have advanced tools on their hands, such as the power of the Cloudflare network.
What’s included in the Startup Enterprise plan?
In addition to the core offerings in the Pro and Business plans (e.g., CDN, DNS, WAF, custom SSL cert, 50 page rules), when founders sign up for the Startup Enterprise plan they’ll get special access to:
An affordable, scalable, on-demand video platform with simple, comprehensive APIs.
Additionally, when there are new Cloudflare products that are still in early access, participants on the Startup Enterprise plan can tell us about their use case for the product managers’ consideration for early access.
What startups are eligible for the Startup Enterprise plan?
To be eligible for the Startup Enterprise plan, a startup must be currently enrolled in a participating accelerator program or be a recent graduate. Additional eligibility criteria will be listed on the vendor perk info page of the accelerator program.
Get started
If you are a founder in a participating accelerator program, find the Cloudflare perk from your program’s vendor perk page and follow the instructions there.
If you are a founder in a program that is not yet a partner, drop us a line at [email protected], or ask the folks who run the vendor perk program at your accelerator program to drop us a line at [email protected].If you run or work for an accelerator program, or are friends with folks who do, do drop us a line at [email protected]. We’d love to make our tools available to your portfolio companies.
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