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Goodbye, Twilio

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

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Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#321

Post by JDEW »

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…

Following of the “Uber for x” trend of the 10s, we really need an “X but without VC pressure” trend for the 20s…

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#322

Post by Kbelicius »

Daz1 wrote: post #314
Kbelicius wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

What is the implication of your question?

Implication is that the claim: "Because capitalism is the only system which incentives continual innovation" has no basis in reality. By the lack of answer to the posed question I'm guessing you are starting to agree?

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#323

Post by briandear »

pikelet wrote: post #270
Daz1 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Meanwhile, just last year people living a couple of blocks from me were removing sludge a metre high from the floors of their homes due to river flooding levels we've never seen before. Very comfortable indeed.

You’re blaming capitalism for flooding? If that’s the direction we are going, then I could find dozens of famines, dozens more environmental disasters that can be blamed squarely on socialism and communism.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#324

Post by briandear »

Timon3 wrote: post #309
Daz1 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If people aren’t willing to pay for it, is it “great?”

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#325

Post by jmacd »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #320
dheera wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they were saying that a investor-backed company only has a pathway to either (a) acquisition, likely by a public company, or (b) going public. Investors need (a) or (b) to get a payout, that's their business model, that's the reason they invest in your company. If you avoid the venture investor route, you can avoid both outcomes (a) and (b), keep the company privately owned, just stay awesome and customer-fri…

All the perfectly-successful, privately-owned companies seem to have a price at which they eventually sell out to a soulless conglomerate, q.v. StackOverflow and GitHub.

Yes, every business needs to be recapitalized at some point. There is an entire industry that focuses on finding the non-public companies that OP mentions. It's called Private Equity and they buy these companies when they have come to the end of their natural cash flowing life.

The owners have either (at great pain) developed a sufficient capital base and succession plan to provide continuity (which would require significant ongoing investment in R&D out of cash flow in order to develop competitive products), or they must find a plan for the business. Going public solves this problem for them, so does selling privately. Neither option really eliminates the requirement to remain competitive.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#326

Post by rospaya »

personperson wrote: post #35

I feel like this isn’t the “betrayal” that it’s made out to be. Twilio won at their niche. People often talk about “if we just get 1% of the market…” — is there a modern engineer on earth who hasn’t used Twilio’s API at least once? They’re moving towards doing the same thing with other parts of tech companies, in this case it’s marketing. It’s not like their APIs change because of it, these are additional products th…

> is there a modern engineer on earth who hasn’t used Twilio’s API at least once?

Reading this thread makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Twilio is huge and is the leader, but they hold less than 40% market share in CPaaS and makes something like 60-70% of their revenue in the US. There are a lot of competitors and a lot of reasons to never use Twilio.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#327

Post by liftsh »

Hmm...is this really surprising to anyone? Yes, I'd like the purpose of a tech company to be to "make developers heroes," but in a capitalist society, companies exist to make money. I'm not saying I like it, but that's just the way it is.

I think developers have been treated extremely well--justifiably, I might add, given the profit some of these tech companies are making--but at the same time developers expect things from their companies that no one else would. Could you imagine your local barista complaining that Starbucks isn't giving them a free gym, free meals, transportation expense reimbursements, and making them heroes?

Again, I'm not saying I like it.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#328

Post by xwdv »

sethammons wrote: post #126
aprilnya wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think Cloudflare only does DNS, you don’t know what Cloudflare is They do way more than just DNS

For any of the following Cloudflare products, are any as complex as SMS or Email? None of these are adversarial and covered by legal constraints to my knowledge (except ddos which is a resource game). I'm unfamiliar with their "china network" - probably some legalities there. Cloudflare Services: Advanced Certificate Manager Advanced DDoS Always Online™ Analytics Anycast Network API Apps Marketplace Audit Logs Argo S…

I don’t think you understand Cloudflare’s capability to build new services. Especially that now Twilio has left this vacuum in the market. If my app needs robust SMS delivery, who can provide it now?

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#329

Post by joshstrange »

kypro wrote: post #130

I'll try to add some perspective to help people understand Twilio's side here. Twilio is has always been a very unprofitable company. Unlike their SaaS counterparts Twilio's PaaS model has significant costs in the form of fees which they pay to network providers. They're also loved by bad actors who can leverage their service for fraud (search "toll fraud" if you're interested) and the ongoing effort and investment n…

> They're also loved by bad actors who can leverage their service for fraud (search "toll fraud" if you're interested) and the ongoing effort and investment needed to counter this growing fraud problem is significant.

And Twilio is wholly incompetent when it comes to battling this. Not only are they unable to keep bad actors off, they punish good actors. They require "approval" of what text messages you are going to send (never mind if part of it needs to be dynamic) and limit your sending ability to arbitrarily low levels. The company I work for just switched off them after high rejection rates and them randomly blocking us or limiting our send volume. They also bungled the whole number verification thing that recently went into effect, or at least dropped the ball on the communications side. Very glad to be off them and kind of sad, I remember when Twilio first hit the scene and it was truly amazing and so cool to work with.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#330

Post by VikingCoder »

johngladtj wrote: post #289
VikingCoder wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's tension over who gets profits. Should capital or labor? It's a totally valid debate.

It's not a valid debate at all. If workers want to take on the risks of the business they can become investors

It's completely valid.

If capital wants to take on the risks of being suddenly fired and losing access to healthcare, injured on the job, sued for non-compete, being forced to relocate to keep benefits, lack the freedom of vacations, sick leave, parental and bereavement leave, being forced to commute to and work in an office with other people during a deadly global pandemic, deal with stress and potentially harassment and discrimination, sometimes be forced to surrender their work life balance to handle completely predictable emergencies, be forced to work on days off because of shortages and scheduling screw ups, be forced to travel to keep their job, they can roll up their sleeves and Get A Job.

It's ridiculous to pretend this isn't a valid negotiation.

If you own a lawnmower (capital), and you want to hire someone to mow your yard (labor), it's clearly and obviously a negotiation for appropriate wages. Why would it be ANY different if you're paying them to mow your neighbor's yard, and you pocket the profit???

Oh I forgot, you went to the HOA and pulled a regulatory capture coup d'etat and convinced them that only Certified lawn companies should be able to charge to mow in the subdivision, and there's a prohibitive fee and delays and inspections, making it practically impossible for the guy to save up and buy his own lawn mower to compete with you and "take on the risks" of business ownership you worried about.

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