Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 292 posts

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#191

Post by Solvency »

nativeit wrote: post #56
gkoberger wrote: post #7

I don't know much about what happened here, but I did meet the early Twilio team (not Jeff, unfortunately) back in 2009 and knew they were something special. Jeff (and team) deserve a ton of credit for two massive things: First, changing how people think about devtools. I know Stripe gets a lot of credit, but Twilio was 3 years earlier and really defined how we look at building, marketing and monetizing tools meant f…

I’m personally not a dev, maybe amateur dev, but I am a professional I.T. consultant and sysadmin, and I have used and thoroughly enjoyed Twilio’s tools for years. They are accessible enough for even low-skill amateur devs like me to be able to spin up test programs and functions that do really cool things. I am heartened to hear that my longtime support has gone to a company whose culture and leadership have been wo…

Out of curiosity what cool test programs does a sysadmin make with Twilio? Custom system alerts over SMS?

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#192

Post by sokoloff »

Solvency wrote: post #184
Aurornis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate. My anecdote, FWIW, is that some of the worst performing startups do these tricks too. There's something about flashy events and boondoggles that sound good on LinkedIn that draws bad founders into spending waaay too much on parties and fun activities. Stripe obviously isn't in that category,…

Seriously. Half of the Silicon Valley show was lampooning this corporate excess of frivolous indulgence.

My wife is not in tech (and so enjoyed Silicon Valley quite a bit less than I did when we watched it together).

Every so often, she'd express frustration about the "over the top writing" in Silicon Valley. Way over half the time, I could tie whatever it was she was complaining about to some concrete story from our industry.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#193

Post by dang »

mdp wrote: post #12
7ewis wrote: post #5

Bloomberg said: "Twilio Inc. Chief Executive Officer Jeff Lawson is stepping down from leading the software company he co-founded amid slowing sales growth and pressure from activist investors." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-08/twilio-ce...

Here’s another source - https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/08/twilio-ceo-lawson-steps-down... “The move is not likely to stave off the activists at Anson Funds and Legion Partners. Both are pushing for the company to sell itself or completely divest its data & applications business, CNBC previously reported.”

Thanks! I've changed the URL from https://investors.twilio.com/news/news-details/2024/Twilio-A... to that article, which gives more background (and isn't a corporate press release).

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#194

Post by DiggyJohnson »

internet101010 wrote: post #148
gkoberger wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few other things that could contribute to a slowing growth rate: 1. People build software differently now. There's not as much reliance on text messages (fewer phone apps build built, 2fa via phone is considered dangerous, etc) 2. Gig economy is stabilizing. There was a huge increase in new companies for years, but at this point it feels like we've stalled on new innovations in that space (while a lot of VC-subsidi…

Semi-related to your third point, I do not trust a text message from a company that does not use the shortened phone number system that was popularized by Twilio. It's the easiest way to detect phishing attempts because scammers don't use those.

Wait, you trust shortened numbers more than un-shortened ones? That hadn't occurred to me before.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#195

Post by JeremyNT »

Aurornis wrote: post #180
fnordpiglet wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate. It’s when you ceded leadership to the accountants and shifted gears to maintenance mode that companies stopped growing. You never did these things for fun, you did these things because they had some knock on effect that made it potentially worth it, and in a portfolio of many small bets some w…

> In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate. My anecdote, FWIW, is that some of the worst performing startups do these tricks too. There's something about flashy events and boondoggles that sound good on LinkedIn that draws bad founders into spending waaay too much on parties and fun activities. Stripe obviously isn't in that category,…

> My anecdote, FWIW, is that some of the worst performing startups do these tricks too.

I absolutely agree with this. Monkey see, monkey do.

I think the big winners who make it "fun" are the exceptions that prove the rule. Whatever they really have that leads to success (be it simply luck, timing, connections, market fit, whathaveyou) is a lot less visible and harder to replicate than the lazy, obvious stuff like "make the workplace fun for developers" which any wannabe can emulate.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#196

Post by sokoloff »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #189
fnordpiglet wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate. It’s when you ceded leadership to the accountants and shifted gears to maintenance mode that companies stopped growing. You never did these things for fun, you did these things because they had some knock on effect that made it potentially worth it, and in a portfolio of many small bets some w…

Great comment. ZIRP is endless stock buybacks and $boomer_rock_band or $expensive_celebrity speaking at your conference. Those are capital owner and executive benefits and don't drive the product or curate new customers. Tony Hawk at this event is just a marketing stunt and his celebrity can be beneficial to drive engagement, impress potential customers, keep existing customers happy, help with recruiting, etc. Those…

Share buybacks are a capital return to investors. This is a sensible and desirable thing to do in a lot of macro environments. ZIRP may increase the instances of borrowing money to do share buybacks, just like it would increase the propensity to borrow money to do any other valid corporate activity. There were share buybacks in the 80s and 90s when interest rates were quite a bit higher than today.

Adjusted for inflation, there were more buybacks in 2000 than in 2015 and interest rates were quite a bit higher in 2000 than in 2015.

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#197

Post by shawabawa3 »

idopmstuff wrote: post #186
ctz wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the OP, but agree with their assessment and stayed 3.5 years despite that. For me, the reason was the vesting schedule: 4 years with a 1 year cliff.

But why would you want to vest a bunch of options/shares that you think will decline substantially in value over your tenure there?

Hypothetical scenario:

You join and are granted 400000 options at $10 strike and stock is worth $10

2 years in and the stock price is now $110

You think the company is terribly run and the stock with crash at this point. However if you quit, you lose the 200000 unvested options worth $2M on paper

Even if the stock crashes to $20 they are worth $200k

Hard to find a better paying job in that situation until the options are fully vested

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#198

Post by Solvency »

movingmove wrote: post #81

I had the "pleasure" working for Twilio for over 4 years. I cannot tell how much this showed me how you can fake it til you make it in SF. Twilio tried to expand into Europe and failed miserably. Customers (especially German ones) wanted exact locations of data, exact routes of packet transportation, wanted features Twilio promised on Slides but never delivered. I was part of at least 4 customer meetings (the biggest…

So: What big brain moves did you think Twilio should have made during your 4 year tenure there that they failed to do?

Re: Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio

#199

Post by hackitup7 »

tschellenbach wrote: post #154

not 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)

I believe that Twilio owns Authy fwiw
Post reply on HN