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Twilio S-1

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Re: Twilio S-1

#221

Post by prostoalex »

jon-wood wrote: post #217
prostoalex wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twilio has few, if any moats, that can't be crossed by large competitors like Google or Amazon Here's one moat - with GOOG's annual revenue of $75 billion or AMZN's $107 billion how likely are either to chase an opportunity that, assuming perfect execution, complete market share grab and ultimate destruction of Twilio, will add $167 million of annual revenue to their balance sheet? From the corporate politics stand…

This feels very much like something Amazon might pursue, although probably in a more piecemeal manner. AWS already has a lot of the components that would be needed for a Twilio competitor in the form of SQS, SNS, and Lambda - all they really need is the ability to receive incoming text messages and voice support to be competitive. A lot of people would jump on that just stay within AWS rather than add another provide…

I agree there are some fundamental building blocks they might pursue. There's already a parallel story to follow - SES and Mailchimp/Mailgun/Sendgrid. Competitive at the basic level, with Amazon actually validating the market and sending the clients off when they're ready to go beyond "simple".

Re: Twilio S-1

#222

Post by hencq »

corobo wrote: post #218
alain94040 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I'll stick to a rule I found very valuable with the first dot-com bubble: don't touch a stock until the company has had 4 quarters of profitability. Simple rule. Amazing how companies these days never pass that filter.

So you don't touch any growing company until they plateau? Doesn't that defeat the whole point of buying stock?

What makes you think that a company would plateau after 1 year of profitability?

Re: Twilio S-1

#223

Post by bcoyle73 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #98
runako wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great comment because it is almost verbatim what was said about Amazon. Actually, this is still frequently said about Amazon's retail operations. I remember talk that eBay was a better business than Amazon because they had network effects and were thus more defensible. Oops. Also worth noting: Amazon wasn't the 800lb gorilla when they filed their S-1 (valuation: $438mm).

Want to make a long bet? I bet you Twilio doesn't turn into that gorilla. AWS is a far cry different than Twilio.

I am taking that long bet. I am a Twilio system integrator and have been a super fan for almost 5 years. I believe they will become that gorilla. In their growth strategy from the S1 their goal is to expand focus on the enterprise which from where I sit is going to be the way they turn into that gorilla.

As they move into that enterprise market their competition is not the telcom API providers https://www.quora.com/Who-are-Twilios-competitors It will be the large monolithic (on prem or in cloud) products like Genesys, Aspect, Avaya, Cisco, etc which represents a huge market.

If you believe the logical market trends they lay out, and I do, that: - agility in the way software is developed and deployed (the move towards continuous integration) drives innovation - the availability of services like Twilio that provide easy to integrate building blocks of functionality make it easier to build - building rather than buying can allow enterprises to differentiate service

Then you can see how Twilio will start eating into that $45B market while staying way out in front of those other telcom API providers who may see the same trends. Going public with all the scrutiny that comes with it I am sure is part of that strategy. Even if the big guys start buying the smaller API providers as Cisco did with Tropo they are not going to cannibalize their existing monolithic communication business.

So I believe if Twilio can help drive those trends specifically in the communication software space then I believe they will win big. Just like AWS started selling a means to provision and scale servers out quickly but today sell a whole suite of tools to transform the way infrastructure is managed and software is deployed Twilio will go from automating calls and sms to transforming how enterprise build and deploy software to communicate with customers.

Re: Twilio S-1

#224

Post by nilved »

breaker05 wrote: post #3

Good for them! I love their service and use it on GoatAttack.com

My friend has been getting spam texts ever since I goat attacked them. Are you selling phone numbers or leaking them?

Re: Twilio S-1

#229

Post by oneloop »

runako wrote: post #104
toomuchtodo wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to make a long bet? I bet you Twilio doesn't turn into that gorilla. AWS is a far cry different than Twilio.

1) AWS != Amazon. Amazon went public 10+ years before AWS launched. AWS is a tiny part of Amazon's revenue today. You moved the goal posts! We were discussing a money-losing Internet retail pure-play; you're comparing to a heavily-subsidized (via start-up capital etc.) tech services pure-play. 2) Which is another key point: the prospects of the company at IPO are very different from the company today. A bet on AMZN t…

"A bet on AMZN today is largely a bet on AWS"

Haha you gotta be joking. It's just the opposite. AWS is a business at scale with fat margins. Amazon retail isn't at scale, not even close.

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