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Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
151–160 of 292 posts
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah definitely not a good sign for Twilio - the tried and true playbook will now get executed once again. Fire a bunch of people, especially those that are most tenured and have the highest salaries. Raise prices each quarter to achieve revenue growth with the assumption that customers are more inelastic than suspected and won't leave. Doubtful that any smart acquisitions will occur, given that requires an actual un…
> Fire a bunch of people, especially those that are most tenured and have the highest salaries. That's already done
Not even close to enough. Look at the growth of revenue and headcount. It is clear another huge cut has to be made.
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#153Given the successor, they'll either flip Twilio or go private equity - in both cases Twilio as we know it is toast.
Amazon could snatch, also Oracle the evergreen. SFDC is the dark horse, don't see MSFT touching it due to massive AWS setup.
Godspeed.
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#154not good for twilio. probably will bounce up in the short run as they increase financial discipline. (ie cut projects and teams). but then its not clear to me what their tech/product vision is going forward. and their core markets of sms and voip are slowly being replaced by other channels. (IE companies like Stream for chat, braze for notifications & marketing, authy for 2fa etc)
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't. But could most people name Jeff, even in tech? I bet people in finance certainly know (and closely watch) the CEOs of these companies. I did reword my comment though, because I don't agree Jeff is a "celebrity" as much as a "public" CEO.
I work in tech and had never heard of Jeff or George. I could name every CEO of Twitter or Google, or the founding CEOs of companies like Stripe, AirBnB, Uber, Coinbase, etc. Companies like Twilio and Unity don't really register.
Twilio is more of a "how the sausage gets made" type of company, I do t really think its the type that benefits from a celebrity CEO
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#156The new CEO: > Shipchandler has over 25 years of experience growing businesses and driving financial performance across global, public organizations. Prior to Twilio, Khozema spent over two decades at GE where he drove operating excellence in GE’s high tech aviation division, plus accelerated growth in the Middle East region. I wouldn't be too enthused about him running a software-focused company. His experience yell…
As an Indian-American, I'm weirdly elated that Indian-Americans can now be thought of as "generic businessmen" (at least in tech).
Google/Sundar is seen as the template, not necessarily as a positive one. Doing the needful, to the grave.
MSFT/Satya is the outlier, should be what others aspire to.
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only if you pretend that the CEOs job is purely for raising money. Nominally, CEOs are supposed to run the company and help brew the culture that makes that company productive. We've grown a bunch of celebrity CEOs because people stopped caring about how companies worked over the last 10 years of low interest rates. But now that it's harder to raise money, it's time to see these guys run the companies they built.
Everything you said here is true, but I don't think it applies to Twilio or Jeff. I don't think you can accuse Jeff of not caring about company culture. He built one of the defining dev cultures out there. Yes, this have changed as they've grown, but I've always found the people and offices of Twilio to be warm, productive and smart. And Twilio was forged in the hardest time to raise money ever... 2008. If anyone kno…
Memories are short, but Twilio was built when doing what seemed obvious - add an API to telecom services - was really hard. It's what Stripe is (doing, not done) to banking & payment, what countless companies have failed to do with Healthcare... I met Jeff in the early days and the fact that he (a) managed to stay the CEO through this growth & timeline, and (b) gave few enough sh!ts to maintain a hacker dev mentality makes him a notable standout. I'm not surprised that lots of people with legitimate viewpoints and perspectives DO/DID NOT like him or his approach. To me, that's a feature; we need less CEOs and senior executives who try to be all things to all people.
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't. But could most people name Jeff, even in tech? I bet people in finance certainly know (and closely watch) the CEOs of these companies. I did reword my comment though, because I don't agree Jeff is a "celebrity" as much as a "public" CEO.
I work in tech and had never heard of Jeff or George. I could name every CEO of Twitter or Google, or the founding CEOs of companies like Stripe, AirBnB, Uber, Coinbase, etc. Companies like Twilio and Unity don't really register.
I've worked on some of the foss tech (infra and ptsn) that twilio has used for almost a decade. Know all about what the company does. Have applied there (to which they never replied). Known plenty that work there.
Ironically my previous partner works there and she didn't know anything about the company prior to taking the job so me not even getting a reply to my application was a jab. I've always seen twilio in a positive light they do some really interesting work.
I live in the city of their HQ. I have no clue who the people mentioned in this thread are either but it makes sense that they'd see the CEOs in a positive light with how much positive I hear(d) about the place.
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For a public company, the CEO has to be a celebrity CEO. Is it? From the DJIA: can you even name the CEO of 3M? Cisco? Amex? Visa? I don't think celebrity is a pre-req for being a CEO. And as OP suggests, it could even be a detriment.
It's also a double edged sword where greater visibility leads to greater scrutiny. Galen Weston Jr stepped into the public eye much more during the pandemic as the face of Loblaws (Canadian grocery chain), and although it originally was welcome, he ended up outing himself as just another entitled, out of touch zillionaire, and at least in my social circles becoming kind of as punchline.
>> just another entitled, out of touch zillionaire,
You can level a lot of criticism at Jeff but I don't think this one applies.
Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't. But could most people name Jeff, even in tech? I bet people in finance certainly know (and closely watch) the CEOs of these companies. I did reword my comment though, because I don't agree Jeff is a "celebrity" as much as a "public" CEO.
I work in tech and had never heard of Jeff or George. I could name every CEO of Twitter or Google, or the founding CEOs of companies like Stripe, AirBnB, Uber, Coinbase, etc. Companies like Twilio and Unity don't really register.
Being able to keep track of the craziness that is the leadership history at X/Twitter is kind of impressive.