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MessageBird raises $60M Series A

blog.messagebird.com

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Re: MessageBird raises $60M Series A

#41

Post by jsjohnst »

epicide wrote: post #29
jsjohnst wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on needs. If great documentation and easy to use APIs are important, then I’d recommend a different provider over one for price / reliability. Also depends what world markets you are focused on too. One other major variance is if you need MMS or short code support.

So which would you recommend for documentation and which would you recommend for price?

Documentation / tooling would probably be Twilio.

Provider based on price depends on how heavily you use US vs World, and if it's SMS (and/or MMS needed) or Voice or both and what volume you are operating at. For pure SMS with a balanced mix of domestic and international, I would probably suggest AWS Pinpoint at this point. Their international rates compared to Twilio are fantastic for all the locations I spot checked.

Re: MessageBird raises $60M Series A

#42

Post by init-as »

Isn't this kind of something that might be phased out in the next few years. I'd imagine there would be some kind of web tool doing authentication like this at some point just because of how obsolete sms seems these days. Correct me if I am wrong though.

Re: MessageBird raises $60M Series A

#43

Post by tlogan »

skrebbel wrote: post #3

Cool stuff, and as a Dutch chauvinist I like that a fellow Dutch startup does well. That said, I've looked at MessageBird a bunch of times but I still don't get it. What makes them different from all the other SMS gateways out there? It's the same product everywhere: you invoke some REST API, an SMS is sent to a number and you get billed.

Good question - but all these gateways have tendency to drop messages, report weird errors, messages are sometimes delayed by hours, their MMS support if quirky, etc.

I.e., if you ever worked with Twilio you will learn about "30008 Unknown error" - Twilio support tries but because "Carrier Network" problems these problems cannot be fixed.

In short, reliable delivery of SMS messages internationally is still not solved.

Re: MessageBird raises $60M Series A

#46

Post by stanleydrew »

mathattack wrote: post #30
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #22

I see a lot of "Congrats" type sentiments in this thread. Maybe I should just say congrats too, but I can't help but wonder: Isn't it a terrible idea to raise $60M as a series A? That means you'll either need to be bought for ~$100M just to break even, or IPO, which seems very rare nowadays. Could anyone help me understand what the calculus looks like for these decisions? It's a series A too, not even a series B or C…

Don't dwell on the letter of the round. Some companies raise 10M in Series E because they don't require as much capital. Others raise more in Series A because they do. Telecom is a capital intensive industry, which is why startups need to raise such large amounts of money. This is also why Twilio needed so much money (>$200mm) though they did take it in later rounds. Venture and Growth Investors are only looking for…

> Telecom is a capital intensive industry

These companies aren't really telecom companies though. Twilio owns no physical switches or telecom equipment, or at least they didn't when I worked there and I would be very surprised if they do now. There is no physical capital required to implement the business model of Twilio or MessageBird.

Note that there are still good reasons to take on large amounts of venture capital despite not needing to spend it on traditional telecom equipment.

Re: MessageBird raises $60M Series A

#47

Post by stanleydrew »

init-as wrote: post #42

Isn't this kind of something that might be phased out in the next few years. I'd imagine there would be some kind of web tool doing authentication like this at some point just because of how obsolete sms seems these days. Correct me if I am wrong though.

The products offered are not simply for SMS-based authentication. That is merely one use-case out of many that you can build on a platform like MessageBird or Twilio.

Re: MessageBird raises $60M Series A

#48

Post by dboreham »

Wondering why the VCs are so keen on companies that seem to be re-doing something that's been done many times (almost commodity in the case of this company) and has essentially no proprietary technology and no network effect?

Re: MessageBird raises $60M Series A

#49

Post by dirkdk »

dboreham wrote: post #48

Wondering why the VCs are so keen on companies that seem to be re-doing something that's been done many times (almost commodity in the case of this company) and has essentially no proprietary technology and no network effect?

$100 million revenue per year will do that, I guess they do something better than the competition https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/03/messagebird/
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