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Goodbye, Twilio

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

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141–150 of 353 posts

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#141

Post by louwrentius »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #103

There’s nothing surprising here. This is a typical cycle for a venture backed technology business. There’s just nothing else to say here other than this is 100% expected outcome if you decide to build a product on venture capital money, which requires an exit and an increasingly large exit to the point where you IPO. Unless you avoid this structural pathway, you will be 100% guaranteed to do this. I am unaware of a v…

It’s funny to me that I’m reading this while listening to “Abolish Silicon Valley” by Wendy Liu.

I don’t think any CEO can be moral if your primary obligation is “shareholder value”. Or in plain language: making other people more rich at the cost of others.

I’m just happy the guy got out when the company didn’t align with his values anymore and he has the means to afford himself a conscience.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#142

Post by moneywoes »

swyx wrote: post #125
jeffiel wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this phase we have to talk both to the business and to developers. Only talking to developers isn’t savvy or smart. AWS etc do the same thing. We can have good APIs and make a compelling case to the business why they should pay for it. I agree that sometimes our engagement messaging isn’t quite right for developers. As a developer, I prefer more technical and matter of fact marketing of products. But interestingly…

definitely. my most quoted dev marketing tweet is about me constantly having to relearn “"Talk benefits, not features" doesn't work!” in the early stage devtool startup playpen i operate in, but at your stage you have multiple equally impt constituencies. whenever i’m caught between a thesis and an antithesis i try to look for a synthesis to break through the apparent conflict. perhaps TWLO can find messaging that do…

Link to tweet?

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#143

Post by fallat »

jeffiel wrote: post #36

Thank you Miguel for all of your contributions to Twilio over the past four years, and I hope your next gig is just as rewarding! For all those interested in why we acquired Segment, and are focused on the integration of data and communications -- several years ago, we came to the conclusion that the world doesn't need more communications, it needs better communications. More relevant. More effective. As a developer,…

This person businesses.

And to others reading: Miguel didn't say anything bad about Twilio really, just that the alignments for them aren't there - and that's ok. Maybe it back fires and Twilio adjusts back to its dev-focused strategy. Businesses just evolve as they need to. If Twilio ends up being "bad" it just means there's now a spot for someone else to form "The Good Twilio" :) See: the many Google competitors, the many smartphone competitors, the many VPN competitors, etc...

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#144

Post by unusualmonkey »

rewmie wrote: post #108
paxys wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can say the same for engineers, and really anyone else.

A startup lives and dies by the engineers. Without them there is no product. This very case documents how engineers created value only to get new arrivals whose net contribution is non-positive, to the point they effectively drive out the talent that made everything possible.

I'm sorry, but that's kinda of nonsense.

You can build a fairly successful startup with little to no engineering.

Sure, engineers are usually pretty important (they're great at automating tasks to improve efficeincy)... but so are many other roles.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#145

Post by paxys »

eightysixfour wrote: post #118
rewmie wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A startup lives and dies by the engineers. Without them there is no product. This very case documents how engineers created value only to get new arrivals whose net contribution is non-positive, to the point they effectively drive out the talent that made everything possible.

No, a startup lives and dies by revenue or fundraising. Engineers are a means of achieving revenue for many startups, but that does not mean they live and die by their engineers. There are plenty of large companies that got there without engineering excellence.

And conversely there are plenty of startups (the majority even) that had excellent engineering but failed due to a myriad of other reasons. "Engineering = success" is a very naive view of the industry and the world.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#147

Post by [deleted] »

tapoxi wrote: post #46
tlogan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I continue to receive an overwhelming amount of scam text messages and calls. These messages do not seem to originate from Twilio (probably because its high cost deterring scammers and spammers). So all these the legal requirements intended to curb spam and scams, are clearly ineffective. Even my Twilio phone number wasn't immune to incoming spam, and Twilio itself couldn't block it. I had to create a studio workflow…

These requirements (not legal, they are by the telcos) are "soft" now and become "hard" this summer. There is a huge push for all campaigns and businesses using A2P SMS to be registered by July.

[deleted]

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#148

Post by el_nahual »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #103

There’s nothing surprising here. This is a typical cycle for a venture backed technology business. There’s just nothing else to say here other than this is 100% expected outcome if you decide to build a product on venture capital money, which requires an exit and an increasingly large exit to the point where you IPO. Unless you avoid this structural pathway, you will be 100% guaranteed to do this. I am unaware of a v…

How do stock buybacks enrich investors at the cost of employees?

They are (almost identical) to a dividend, which yes, enriches shareholders but

a) that's kind of the point of a business

b) especially in startups employees are often shareholders as well, and meaningfully so

c) even if they weren't, how do they hurt employees?

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#149

Post by reaperman »

el_nahual wrote: post #148
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #103

There’s nothing surprising here. This is a typical cycle for a venture backed technology business. There’s just nothing else to say here other than this is 100% expected outcome if you decide to build a product on venture capital money, which requires an exit and an increasingly large exit to the point where you IPO. Unless you avoid this structural pathway, you will be 100% guaranteed to do this. I am unaware of a v…

How do stock buybacks enrich investors at the cost of employees ? They are (almost identical) to a dividend, which yes, enriches shareholders but a) that's kind of the point of a business b) especially in startups employees are often shareholders as well, and meaningfully so c) even if they weren't, how do they hurt employees?

Stock buybacks represent excess profits which otherwise could be used for employee bonuses or salary raises. There's a lot of room for argument here, because it's not clear if in the absence of stock buybacks, that excess profits wouldn't go more directly into the pockets of the owners via direct capital withdrawal.

But it's not an entirely invalid viewpoint. There really is a lot of room for reasonable minds to disagree.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#150

Post by karussell »

wilg wrote: post #42

1. I could not tell you what that billboard means, despite also looking through the related blog post. Perhaps it is something only marketing teams understand, which would be an interesting failure mode. 2. I tried to sign up for Twilio Sendgrid the other day to send some emails from a Heroku app but I couldn't complete the sign up because I never received the activation email. Classic!

Re 2: had the exact same experience. And the big problem was that in order to contact support I needed an activated account :). But at some point I found a support Email and with that I got an activated account.

Still all this was too slow and left a bad taste. And I already finished integrating a different and IMO simpler (and probably less powerful) solution. And as the pricing was ok it was just the Twilio brand that I missed...

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