• Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said his company is prepared for an upcoming recession.
  • According to Prince, who spoke to Insider at the World Economic Forum, economic downturns can have a silver lining.
  • See 4 reasons the CEO is “kind of excited” for an upcoming recession. 

Cloudflare’s CEO Matthew Prince said he isn’t breaking a sweat over an upcoming recession. In fact, he said he’s looking forward to one. 

Speaking to Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Prince conceded that “this is certainly the worst economic conditions that we’ve seen in the history of Cloudflare,” which was launched in 2010 after the worst of the 2008 financial crisis.

Still, Prince said his cloud and cybersecurity company reacted quickly to dark clouds in the economic forecast and slowed the pace of hiring sooner than other major companies like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, which all recently conducted mass layoffs

“If we hired at that pace, we’d be doing layoffs, too,” Prince said.  

However, Cloudflare hasn’t been entirely immune to the downturn in tech: Its stock has fallen more than 50% since January of last year. 

Nevertheless, Prince said he’s looking on the bright side: “I guess it’s a little masochistic or sadistic or something, but kind of excited about the upcoming recession.”

Here are his reasons why: