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Goodbye, Twilio

blog.miguelgrinberg.com

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Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#341

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

jmacd wrote: post #325
TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sig…

Story after story involving a business getting bought by private ends with the PE 1) buying an ENORMOUS amount of debt based on the goodwill of the history of the company, 2) giving themselves ENORMOUS bonuses, and then 3) filing bankruptcy and liquidating. This is an entire AREA of business that should just not exist. It would seem that "investors" selling debt to these PE parasites would learn their lessons, but I expect that the even-bigger lesson is that they're all in on the grift together, and they're ALL making money somehow.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#342

Post by ryanSrich »

meltedcapacitor wrote: post #308
ryanSrich wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

This wouldn’t solve the issue as it’s not retroactive as far as I know. Meaning this is the chain of events

- emails get sent

- some percentage of people do not open within 24 hours

- provider suspends the campaign

- receiver clicks a link like you suggested

- the campaign remains suspended and I can no longer email those contacts unless I delete, and re-add them

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#343

Post by blobbers »

blobbers wrote: post #156

I'm curious why this got upvoted on hackernews. Isn't this some rando- employee (no offense Miguel Grinberg) that joined an established medium sized software company and then is moving on after spending a fairly short time there. Did this particular engineer move the needle on their product somehow? How is this in any way "news" worthy.

(thanks for the downvotes but I stand by what I said)

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#344

Post by Prickle »

andsoitis wrote: post #277
Prickle wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "why don't you do it?" type of argument is probably the most common straw-man response to this topic. The whole point, is to point out that some people have enough money to uplift hundreds of thousands out of poverty. Some have greater personal wealth than the GDP of an entire country, and that those people should either: Give up some part of their wealth for the greater good. Never be allowed to accumulate that…

> Give up some part of their wealth for the greater good. And you think they don’t?

Governments have to give them tax breaks / tax write-offs in order to convince them to part with a small amount of their wealth.

So no. And especially so for the corporations they own.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#345

Post by joeythedolphin »

freedomben wrote: post #76
joeythedolphin wrote: post #58

The developer only exists to serve the product and customer. I do not know why the developer should be the center of any company, none the less why they should be on a billboard. Buyers don't care, they want a great product. Great products are built by companies that love their developers. They don't need to tell that on billboards, they need to tell that privately to each engineer they employ. It is not appropriate…

> The developer only exists to serve the product and customer. I do not know why the developer should be the center of any company, none the less why they should be on a billboard. Buyers don't care, they want a great product. I think the point is that developers are (or were ) the customers. Twilio got adopted because they targeted and excited developers. Now they don't care about targeting the developers, they're t…

This is helpful! Thanks. Sometimes I come off intense, it's just an authentic invitation to spar.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#346

Post by djvdq »

JDEW wrote: post #321
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…

There already are such companies, but they aren't that visible, because they don't have VC money to burn in order to grow, so they have to do it organically, which usually means slower.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#347

Post by Daz1 »

Kbelicius wrote: post #322
Daz1 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Of course I don't agree, your question is worthless.

"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?"

The only form of R&D spend that cannot be monetised is that which fails to better meet consumer demand, which is a purposeless waste of money.

Rephrase your question so it make sense.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#348

Post by louwrentius »

andsoitis wrote: post #332
pikelet wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because to make a significant difference to that person's life you'd have to give them an astounding amount of money (and probably other forms of support), and personally speaking I'm still desperately saving just for a chance at having a place of my own myself. Nobody claimed to be 'virtuous', but caring is a good first step. I donate some of my time and a small amount per month to a local multicultural group. Small…

The accusation and tone was that billionaires have incredible wealth that they horde while people around them suffer. But that is a very uncharitable framing of their philanthropy.

They should pay their fair share of taxes, they aren’t some emperor who decides over us.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#349

Post by ademup »

1270018080 wrote: post #53
rsync wrote: post #47

I built an entire personal telco for myself using twilio apis and twiml bins, etc. This was encouraged by helpful “hacker” blog posts and official howtos detailing integrations with alert systems and home automation, etc. Twilio sold itself as useful infrastructure . All of this falls apart next month when A2P (or whatever it is) begins. Twilio polluted its own environment so completely that nobody can exist there an…

Why is A2P bad and why does it make your personal telco fall apart? https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-us/articles/223133807-What-...

I'm experiencing the same massive pain point from Twilio. Our business sends survey links to about 300 people a day who have all opted in. We've been doing this for 7 years. Our undelivered rate had been under 5% for years. It's now at 33% and is threatening our business.

Twilio's support has been absolutely dismal. They say things like "Your number is not attached to your campaign" and show a screen shot from their admin screen, but when I point out it is all connected in the console: they respond with the generic Twilio links about A2P implementation.

Has anyone figured out a solution? ... I'm happy to switch to another company at this point.

Re: Goodbye, Twilio

#350

Post by cvalka »

cjcampbell wrote: post #69
cvalka wrote: post #31

What's a good twilio alternative? Voximplant, plivio, bandwith are not very good.

Would you be willing to share more about your experience with these companies? I have a client evaluating Twilio alternatives due to skyrocketing costs, and some of these companies are on the list.

The companies I mentioned are substantially inferior in terms of engineering compared to twilio. Plus twilio is more transparent and trustworthy f.e. with porting out numbers. Voxbone is a Russian cheaper twilio clone. Plivo is an Indian cheaper twilio clone. Bandwith is a disaster. You just need to get a single look at their control panel which they won't show to you unless you're a paying customer.
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