Rocket.net Appoints Dave Koston, of cPanel and Cloudflare, Chief Technology Officer

Today, I’m excited to announce our latest addition to our team, Dave Koston! Dave and I have worked together on various projects over the last twenty years and I couldn’t be more excited to have him on board.

Dave has not only been in the hosting industry for over twenty years, but he was a critical part of building and scaling the world’s largest control panel – cPanel. On top of that, he played a crucial role at Cloudflare in the early days where he helped build features for the world’s largest network… also something we use today at Rocket.net.

Over the course of my career, I’ve learned a great deal about software engineering and architecture from Dave and truth be told… it’s a very big reason why Rocket.net is built the way it is today.

In the beginning, Rocket.net stood out with our SaaS approach to WordPress. We were one of the only companies at the time that actually had an API! With Dave’s vast experience in building API’s and systems at scale, I’m excited to take the Rocket.net platform to the next level.

Read more about Dave joining Rocket.net from our Press Release below:

Rocket.net Appoints Dave Koston, of cPanel and Cloudflare, Chief Technology Officer.

Experienced Startup CTO and Engineering Lead. Delivered products used by millions of businesses.

West Palm Beach, FL. July 19, 2023

Rocket.net, Managed WordPress Hosting Platform, announces the hiring of Dave Koston as its Chief Technology Officer, where he’ll oversee all things Engineering and Infrastructure.

Koston brings over twenty years of experience in enterprise technology to the growing platform. Former VP of Operations and employee number 3 at cPanel, Koston helped grow the business to 75 employees and high double digit MM revenue while also helping cPanel become the leading web hosting control panel software in the world.

Koston also worked at Cloudflare where he led the TLS team, which was responsible for managing SSL Certificates for millions of customers including enterprise customers in banking and other fields. He also led a team at Cloudflare to build the API that powers Cloudflare’s joint venture with Baidu, Yunjiasu (su.baidu.com​).

More recently, Koston was an Area Architect at Coalition, a cyber security startup valued at over $5 billion, where he helped build products to secure and protect businesses across hundreds of different industries.

Dave Koston on his new position, “Joining Rocket.net is one of the most exciting choices I’ve made in my career. Ben and the team have created amazing value for their customers by focusing on pushing the boundaries of content delivery and security through development of new technologies, and most importantly, by being relentlessly passionate about their clients’ success. I can’t wait to help Rocket.net continue to create new innovations and deliver delightful experiences for consumers.”

“Hiring Dave was something I’ve been banking on since the beginning of Rocket.net.” said Ben Gabler, CEO at Rocket.net. “I’ve successfully worked with Dave on various projects over the last twenty years and his experience across the hosting, edge, security and overall SaaS space is invaluable for the future of the Rocket.net platform.”

With Dave leading up engineering, Rocket.net will be heavily investing in new product development, including its all-new Intelligent Edge Platform that leverages AI to balance traffic across multiple CDN platforms around the globe.

About Rocket.net

Rocket.net, based in West Palm Beach, Florida, is a SaaS Platform initially designed for WordPress websites of all sizes. Since its launch in early 2020, Rocket.net has provided an all-in-one solution built on top of the world’s most Intelligent Edge CDN and WAF, providing each WordPress website with an enterprise-level delivery and security experience in 665+ points of presence around the globe. At Rocket.net, edge services such as CDN and WAF (traditionally hard to configure and out of reach for website owners and agencies alike) require zero configuration or advanced knowledge making it possible for website owners to focus on what really matters most: growth.