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Twilio S-1

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Re: Twilio S-1

#161

Post by bcruddy »

shostack wrote: post #154
bcruddy wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We got pretty big about a year ago when we posted it to /r/internetisbeautiful (mods took it down after about an hour since it requires a phone number and that's "personal info"). From there, @thepacketrat from Arstechnica picked it up and ran a story and it just sort of exploded from there for a couple days. At the peak of it's popularity we were on Ars, Business Insider, the front page of Mashable, and a handful of…

That's crazy. If you don't mind my asking, does it actually make a decent amount of money? I always wonder whether things like this with very tiny transaction amounts, and (I'm assuming) a low avg. orders/person. Also curious how hard it was to code something like this. I can think of a few less funny things like this that I'd find pretty useful for my own projects and wondering if I have enough skills to make someth…

It makes a bit of money but not enough to quit a day job. Writing it was super simple. Both Braintree and Twilio have excellent NuGet packages for managing both APIs. I've used Twilio with node as well and same thing, very easy to use module on npm for dealing with their API. If you're thinking about doing something with Twilio stop thinking about it and just go do it. You can send yourself a text message in literally 2 lines of javascript using their npm module, 3 if you include a callback (https://gist.github.com/bcruddy/2a5bb8ac0ee538519a45fc2b3925..., got it down to 2 with a callback).

Re: Twilio S-1

#162

Post by a_small_island »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #148
Animats wrote: post #75

There's a lot there not to like: Revenue: $166,919,000 Net Loss: $38,896,000 So they're still not profitable. This is surprising, since they don't have any big capital investments. They're not doing anything that takes a lot of R&D. The thing runs on Amazon AWS. They've been operating for years and should be profitable by now. Yes, they're growing fast, but the costs don't rise in advance of the growth. You don't hav…

I don't think Google is much of a threat, they seem to hate Gvoice internally having had several opportunities to make it a platform and passing (yes they used to have voice APIs on code.google.com). Bottom line, I don't think Google gets it (kind of like Facebook and web search) And since the Unicorn Feeding stations have all been shut down :-) unprofitable companies of this size have three choices, IPO, die quickly…

>if they did a big reverse split prior to the S-1 its possible the employees will have underwater options at the IPO

Any past examples of this?

Re: Twilio S-1

#163

Post by ben_jones »

andyfleming wrote: post #132

I'm surprised all of these comments are so negative. Yeah, maybe there are some things that don't quite add up yet, but they have great developer engagement, solid services, and are actually innovating in the space. Twilio is a winner. When or how much is another question.

They also have competitors [1].

[1]: https://www.quora.com/Who-are-Twilios-competitors

Re: Twilio S-1

#165

Post by ben_jones »

shaqbert wrote: post #107
Animats wrote: post #75

There's a lot there not to like: Revenue: $166,919,000 Net Loss: $38,896,000 So they're still not profitable. This is surprising, since they don't have any big capital investments. They're not doing anything that takes a lot of R&D. The thing runs on Amazon AWS. They've been operating for years and should be profitable by now. Yes, they're growing fast, but the costs don't rise in advance of the growth. You don't hav…

Net loss: Don't think that is a biggie. They expanded their cost base both in R&D, sales & marketing, and general and admin. With a little bit of cost discipline for one year, they are going to be profitable. Voting rights: that is indeed yucky. Competitive threat: Not really. The inertia for existing customers is high, especially since the average revenue per active account is about $580/month. For a big company, th…

A list of their competitors: https://www.quora.com/Who-are-Twilios-competitors.

As a Twilio customer that spends maybe ~$500 /mo i'll look at any alternative that allows me to send meta data or allows some process to have a foreign key allowing me to persist conversations in a sane manner (and I'm currently researching just that).

Twilio also does not have their own network, so competitors like Bandwidth that have their own network will be able to compete on price. That said current Twilio pricing is not prohibitive in our market and thus isn't a factor for us researching alternatives currently.

Re: Twilio S-1

#166

Post by cloudjacker »

robbiemitchell wrote: post #141
jedberg wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook owns Whatsapp. Anything that happens on Facebook will be in conjunction with Whatsapp.

Right, I'm suggesting FB wants people to end up on Messenger.

Messenger = US, WhatsApp = Rest of the world

Viber = when WhatsApp voice is down during the world cup

Re: Twilio S-1

#167

Post by shostack »

bcruddy wrote: post #161
shostack wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's crazy. If you don't mind my asking, does it actually make a decent amount of money? I always wonder whether things like this with very tiny transaction amounts, and (I'm assuming) a low avg. orders/person. Also curious how hard it was to code something like this. I can think of a few less funny things like this that I'd find pretty useful for my own projects and wondering if I have enough skills to make someth…

It makes a bit of money but not enough to quit a day job. Writing it was super simple. Both Braintree and Twilio have excellent NuGet packages for managing both APIs. I've used Twilio with node as well and same thing, very easy to use module on npm for dealing with their API. If you're thinking about doing something with Twilio stop thinking about it and just go do it. You can send yourself a text message in literall…

Thanks for the info, much appreciated! I did the Codecademy Twilio tutorial ages ago and wanted to try it again recently but it appears to be down unfortunately.

I'll have to give it another go and it looks like they have a Ruby gem up on their repo I'll dig into.

Re: Twilio S-1

#168

Post by robbiemitchell »

cloudjacker wrote: post #166
robbiemitchell wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I'm suggesting FB wants people to end up on Messenger.

Messenger = US, WhatsApp = Rest of the world Viber = when WhatsApp voice is down during the world cup

Sort of. WeChat in China, LINE in Japan.

And again, if you look at what WeChat has done with embedded services, and believe that will spread, then you wonder whether it will happen on WhatsApp vs. something else. And I don't see Facebook putting the energy into the automation/interaction platform on WhatsApp that it is going to do on Facebook.

Re: Twilio S-1

#169

Post by ben_jones »

shostack wrote: post #150
ChuckMcM wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Google is much of a threat, they seem to hate Gvoice internally having had several opportunities to make it a platform and passing (yes they used to have voice APIs on code.google.com). Bottom line, I don't think Google gets it (kind of like Facebook and web search) And since the Unicorn Feeding stations have all been shut down :-) unprofitable companies of this size have three choices, IPO, die quickly…

Given the way you laid out those scenarios, would you agree then that the goal then of IPO is finding a greater fool on Main Street and passing the buck while they can? Is there anything here that indicates that the cash infusion from an IPO would get them on the track to profitability?

I have no experience with IPOs but as a Twilio customer they've been pushed a revamp of documentation, client libraries, their user interfaces, as well as several new products in the past ~6 months. My guess is an IPO would enable them to continue that. That or they just did it for a little hockey stick in revenue before the IPO.

Re: Twilio S-1

#170

Post by ben_jones »

sulam wrote: post #94
pbreit wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telecom/communication services like Twilio's are =extremely= sticky.

Not by most standards of stickiness. They don't have my data. They don't have a monopoly. There aren't any network effects that I can think of (they've worked the one angle here as well as they can -- developer mind share). I'm not saying they aren't a good business, but I wouldn't call them particularly sticky, any more than Rackspace is sticky. Infrastructure is a hard business to be in.

I would argue that the stickiness is derived from enterprise. If you get Twilio in as a core dependency on a legacy application that check is never ever gonna stop coming in the mail.
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