Twilio S-1 • Hacker News Board

Re: Twilio S-1

#61

Post by ojbyrne » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:49 PM UTC

hamana wrote: post #45

> Jeff Lawson(1) --- 8,623,617 --- 11.9% How pathetic is this? Around 90% of the company is taken by the vulture capitalists and you, as a founder, only get to keep 12%. Bill Gates at the time of Microsoft's IPO had around 50% of the company.

As the quora question here - https://www.quora.com/How-did-Bill-Gates-own-such-a-large-sh... - says, its for a pretty straightforward reason, economics.

If you need investor money to grow, you get diluted. If you don't you don't.

Re: Twilio S-1

#62

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

breaker05 wrote: post #52

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get an "Invalid Attack Plan" error when trying this out :(

shit! I'll figure it out real quick. What plan did you choose?

The 30 one.

Re: Twilio S-1

#63

Post by cissou » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:50 PM UTC

If someone with better knowledge of S-1s could shed light on this: where can we see the option pool / option grants awarded to employees? Must be somewhere in there, no?

Re: Twilio S-1

#64

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

hamana wrote: post #45

> Jeff Lawson(1) --- 8,623,617 --- 11.9% How pathetic is this? Around 90% of the company is taken by the vulture capitalists and you, as a founder, only get to keep 12%. Bill Gates at the time of Microsoft's IPO had around 50% of the company.

[deleted]

Re: Twilio S-1

#65

Post by allworknoplay » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

josefdlange wrote: post #43

As a naive nincompoop, is there any way for me to guess the initial price of a share when they become available?

Down the line there will be estimates -- companies progressively update their S-1s as they approach the actual IPO date. It's almost always challenging to get in at the opening price, though -- usually those are deals done with big funds and banks that help place shares.

Re: Twilio S-1

#66

Post by calbear81 » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:52 PM UTC

JoshGlazebrook wrote: post #14

jastr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha this is great! I use Twilio for TheSimplePostcard.com

I'd like to be on the team working on printing GIFs please.

You would use a lenticular printer for that right? Animated GIFs!

Re: Twilio S-1

#67

Post by afarquhar » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

karangoeluw wrote: post #39

runako wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not being managed for profitability; they are being managed for scale. They are growing at near 100% y/o/y, so management has decided to keep the pedal down until they win the market. Profitability comes in the out years, way down the line. Amazon is the most famous (successful) example of this. I don't work there, but I can assure you that nothing at Twilio is structured to be a profitable small company.

It's just absurd that a company can't be profitable with 28M paying users some of which include Uber and WhatsApp.

it says "In thousands, except share, per share and customer data" - so it may be 28 thousand accounts. May have misread this though

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1447669/000104746916...

Re: Twilio S-1

#68

Post by chrdlu » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:55 PM UTC

karangoeluw wrote: post #39

runako wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not being managed for profitability; they are being managed for scale. They are growing at near 100% y/o/y, so management has decided to keep the pedal down until they win the market. Profitability comes in the out years, way down the line. Amazon is the most famous (successful) example of this. I don't work there, but I can assure you that nothing at Twilio is structured to be a profitable small company.

It's just absurd that a company can't be profitable with 28M paying users some of which include Uber and WhatsApp.

It's not that they can't be profitable. It's more along the lines that they are re-investing all of their profits to grow the business. The market Twilio is in has plenty of room to grow and Twilio has to aggressively capture it or else someone else will. If they wanted to become profitable, they can. They're just spending a lot to continue to double every year.

Re: Twilio S-1

#69

Post by matthewowen » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:57 PM UTC

hamana wrote: post #45

> Jeff Lawson(1) --- 8,623,617 --- 11.9% How pathetic is this? Around 90% of the company is taken by the vulture capitalists and you, as a founder, only get to keep 12%. Bill Gates at the time of Microsoft's IPO had around 50% of the company.

The major investors (Bessemer, USV, Fidelity) amount to 48.2%. Bear in mind that other founders and employees will also hold equity, and that Jeff Lawson already cashed out a big chunk of equity (detailed in the doc).

Given that Twilio has raised a lot of money across a number of rounds (six listed in the document) as a loss making company, none of this seems that strange to me.

Re: Twilio S-1

#70

Post by evanpw » Thu, May 26, 2016, 5:58 PM UTC

hamana wrote: post #45

> Jeff Lawson(1) --- 8,623,617 --- 11.9% How pathetic is this? Around 90% of the company is taken by the vulture capitalists and you, as a founder, only get to keep 12%. Bill Gates at the time of Microsoft's IPO had around 50% of the company.

From a 1986 Fortune article: "With pretax profits running as high as 34% of revenues, Microsoft needed no outside money to expand."

[1] http://fortune.com/2011/03/13/inside-the-deal-that-made-bill...