Matthew Prince, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of IT service management company Cloudflare, was stunned after receiving a random email offering to buy his $54 million company. He wondered how big a company had to be before the spam emails finally stopped.
On social media platform X, Mr Prince shared the screenshot of the email received. It reads, "Hey Matthew, we have a private equity firm in our network who is very interested in acquiring Cloudflare. Given their mandate, this opportunity is an excellent match."
It further asked, "Would you be open to discussing this opportunity?"
Mr Prince wondered if CEOs of tech giants Microsoft and Apple also received such spam emails. He wrote, "At what size company do you think you stop getting these spam messages? Like do you think Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg still get them?"
The post quickly went viral, with many social media users sharing their opinions in the comments.
One person wrote, "You really think people at the top read their emails? They are read by an assistant who cherry picks the most relevant emails and sometimes sprinkles in reality as long as it's not too jarring."
"You know it would be hilarious if you actually replied and said yes (laughing emojis). Then record everything. Instant hit," commented another.
Someone asked asked, "Do you still get job offers at other companies too?"
Mr Prince replied, "Very rarely. And usually when they think they're emailing another Matthew at the company."
Cloudflare, Inc. is an American firm that offers a variety of services, including ICANN-accredited domain registration, wide area network services, reverse proxies, cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and content delivery network services.
Cloudflare generated $1.4 billion in revenue last year and has a market valuation of $54.25 billion, according to Forbes.
