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Goodbye, Twilio

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

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Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#301

Post by rajanaccros »

brigandish wrote: post #296
rajanaccros wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can't give credit all the credit to capitalism. Communism destroyed what was the fourth-largest lake in the world, which was so big that it was called a "sea"[0]. The age-old adage that if it is not capitalism, it must be communism. > The age-old adage that anyone opposed to your viewpoint is either stupid or evil. Which one are you? Sure my take was reductionist, but you are using my critique to distract is di…

> Which one are you? I don't think HN is for you.

A flippant dismissal deserves a flippant reply.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#302

Post by kelnos »

I was at Twilio for 10.5 years, and left at the beginning of 2022. It's interesting to read things like this, from someone who joined in 2019, as the change OP is talking about in the company started well before his arrival. We all saw it, with increasing emphasis on enterprise sales (we hired someone from Salesforce as COO specifically for this). Courting individual developers and small startups stopped being a priority, even though those sorts of folks are the ones who formed the backbone of Twilio's mind share.

I'm not saying this was bad thing for the business; Twilio's growth would have slowed well below what would have been acceptable for a VC-backed (and the newly-public) company without this move. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was happy with where the value of my equity went. On top of that, Twilio was life-changing socially: I have many dear friends who have remained dear friends well after we all left the company, something that's never really been that case for me at other companies. As for the work itself, there were many fun and challenging problems to solve over time as the company grew, despite our frustration with the growing pains.

In the end, I left for very similar reasons as OP: the company seemed more focused on helping brands increase engagement than on doing anything novel with communications. Sure, a lot of the older, interesting use cases (the ones that got me stoked about Twilio in the first place) were still running on the platform, but those kinds of things felt like a minuscule percentage of the business.

The change of the billboard to the "How can I reduce my acquisition cost" branding makes me feel sad any time I drive by it. "Ask your developer" was brilliant, but Twilio isn't that company anymore, and hasn't been for a while.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#303

Post by kelnos »

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…

> stock buybacks, or other things that directly enrich investors at the cost of employees

As a former Twilio employee (and current stockholder), I have to disagree with this. Stock buybacks generally raise the stock price (or at least keep it from falling). Up until 2020 or so, Twilio was fairly generous with equity comp (at least for some of us; obviously I can't speak for all employees), so employees do indeed benefit from stock buybacks.

I suppose you could make the argument that, as a company spends cash to buy back stock, base salary raises get worse, since the company has less cash on hand to fund those raises. But I think you'd need evidence to back that up.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#304

Post by kelnos »

ethbr0 wrote: post #197
VirusNewbie wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stock price increase benefits workers quite a bit though.

Assuming workers own stock.

Which they do. Twilio's equity comp was fairly generous, at least for a time, and I believe all employees had equity as some percentage of their compensation. In addition, Twilio offered an ESPP that all employees could take advantage of.

(Full disclosure: former Twilio employee and current Twilio stockholder.)

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#305

Post by Kbelicius »

Daz1 wrote: post #257
rajanaccros wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it the driving force behind everything comfortable? If another system was in place are you saying that we would not have had progress towards human comfort? And it seems you are assuming that I wouldn't give up a comfortable life for a more fair and just system with less market externalities? If your measure for success is comfort, then you are the exact person I am trying to convince that we need something el…

Because capitalism is the only system which incentives continual innovation through market competition, removes non-competitive organisations which fail to meet consumer demand from the market, and empowers consumers to make choices which are in their self-determined best interest.

> Because capitalism is the only system which incentives continual innovation through market competition

Why would a for profit company invest into basic research without a clear goal to monetizing that research while their competitor is spending that money on marketing?

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#306

Post by brigandish »

rajanaccros wrote: post #301
brigandish wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which one are you? I don't think HN is for you.

A flippant dismissal deserves a flippant reply.

Somewhere else, maybe. To think one's opponents are evil or stupid only reveals a lack of self-awareness, arrogance, and over-confidence. Just as the spoon cannot taste the soup, someone displaying those qualities will learn nothing here, and no one will learn anything from them except a bad example, hence why I think HN is not for someone like that.

There's always Reddit.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#307

Post by kelnos »

louwrentius wrote: post #295
eastbound wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state takes 63% of our income here in France, and there are still homeless people. I’d say the capitalists do a better job.

You know that France is a capitalist society right?

Capitalist, yes, but with many more socialist features than the US.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#308

Post by meltedcapacitor »

ryanSrich wrote: post #37
johndhi wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The campaign stuff is related to legal requirements. Ultimately the texting emailing and calling via APIs wild west is being shut down across the world by a hundred different government and regulatory organizations. Twilio surely has huge headaches in this area.

This is extremely frustrating for me. We used to use Send In Blue. If you send a campaign, and some larger percentage (10% or so) do not open within 24 hours, they automatically suspend your campaign. On the surface you might think this is a good idea, but we used this service for sending investor updates. Most of our investors don’t open non-urgent emails within 24 hours. SIB claimed it was some legal requirement. W…

maybe a "click here to continue receiving these updates" link at the end of the first message would have solved this. :o)

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#309

Post by Timon3 »

Daz1 wrote: post #240
rajanaccros wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t think any CEO can be moral if your primary obligation is “shareholder value”. I am really glad I am starting to see a lot more posts here on HN with regard to this fact. Capitalism is literally destroying everything and has proven itself not to be a viable system for long term sustainability and a healthy society and ecosystem. Some of the smartest people on the internet aggregate on HN and some have still…

Capitalism is the driving force behind everything you enjoy about your modern, comfortable life.

Capitalism is definitely not the driving force behind most of the great art I enjoy in my modern life. Capitalism destroys art, and it's hard to imagine just how much great art we've missed out on because the artists had to stay busy with work so they can live.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#310

Post by activitypea »

satvikpendem wrote: post #187
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…

But...Twilio is a public company, VC shareholders have already sold their stock, so most of what you say isn't applicable, unless you mean to imply that a public company also acts similarly to a VC backed one.

What's the difference? You still have to find a way to maximize profit at the cost of pretty much everything else. The only difference is that VCs are more willing to play the long game, whereas the stock market wants better results year over year.
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