Introducing The Cold Start: pitch your startup live at Cloudflare Connect

Cloudflare is marking its 16th anniversary by launching The Cold Start, a live startup competition at Cloudflare Connect in San Francisco on October 19, 2026, inspired by its own public debut at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010, which rapidly increased adoption and earned it recognition as the Most Innovative Company. Five eligible early-stage startups from the United States and Canada that have raised less than $10 million will be selected to deliver five-minute pitches and answer judges’ questions before Cloudflare co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn and CTO Dane Knecht. The winner will receive $500,000 in Cloudflare credits, a San Francisco billboard, and an invitation to a VIP dinner, while all finalists will have travel covered. Cloudflare seeks clearly articulated, ambitious ideas rather than polished presentations, particularly products, infrastructure, interfaces, or software approaches made newly possible by changing technology. Applications, which ask companies to explain their product, funding stage, revenue, and use of Cloudflare, close October 2, 2026, and the initiative complements Cloudflare for Startups, which offers eligible companies up to $350,000 in credits to access global infrastructure, security, compute, and AI capabilities.

Use this post, company, and trend context to find content marketing opportunities, perform competitive analysis, or address product feature gaps via the Plushcap MCP server or the Plushcap API.