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Twilio always seems like a hack to me. Once VoiceXML/CCML was hot market with many startups competing, with biggest exit being Tellme acquired by Microsoft for

Twilio always seems like a hack to me. Once VoiceXML/CCML was hot market with many startups competing, with biggest exit being Tellme acquired by Microsoft for $800M (same people who founded Zappos). So what's new Twilio can offer here? I have no idea why USV invested in them...

ra 16y ago
I kind of agree. Although I think the underlying assumption is that it's an infrastructure as a service play, and so Twilio et al are creating value. Obviously their target market is the web app developer crowd. To do it yourself you need to line up your outbound SIP providers, inbound DID providers (not one and the same once you dig into the details), then you need to operate a bunch of Freeswitch / Asterisk / whatever SIP servers, and learn how to program them, and learn how keep them running smooth (Not particularly difficult, but in terms of learning requirements - it's akin to meeting a database + web server for the first time). Due to the real-time nature of telcos (and I mean that in the traditional clock-synch'd sense of the word) there are additional complications if you want to use a virtualised OS.
- jdee 16y ago
  I get your point, but feel you are overplaying the difficulty. You can code in plain ol javascript on freeswitch to create complex inbound and outbound comms apps in a couple of hours. Plug it into a sip provider ( i use sipgate ) and there is nothing more complex to it. Far far cheaper too. You dont need a bunch of servers either. If you are doing more than 200 simultaneous calls ( freeswitch easily achieves this on 1 box ) you shouldnt be looking at these entry level systems; Voxeo, Tropo's parent company has an incredibly powerful platform.
  - abhiyerra 16y ago
    Unfortunately, you can't get SMS when you do it yourself using SIP/FreeSwitch. These companies have made the deals with the individual telecom providers to do that for each of their DID numbers.
    - akalsey 16y ago
      Well, you could it's just not easy. A GSM modem attached to the server would do the trick. Apache's free and hardware's cheap. Yet Rackspace still manages to run a huge web hosting business. For some people and some uses, building a web server and hosting it on your home or office network is acceptable. But those that don't count "web hosting" as their core business and want the reliability, security, and stability that comes from having a professional do it tend to hire a company to do it for them. Like most other things in technology, it's a simple build-vs-buy question. Is it more cost effective and better suited to my needs to build it myself or to buy from someone who's an expert? Freeswitch and Asterisk are great. I was the emcee at the Freeswitch developer conference last year and we financially support Adhearsion, an Asterisk development framwork. They fill a great niche for DIY telephony. For everyone else, there's hosted services.
  - jsgoecke 16y ago
    One box? One box is never a good idea for an application that is relied upon. You need to have redundancy (geographic even better), load-balancing, etc. Sure, you may roll your own anything, but you are better off outsourcing much of that to cloud providers today. Freeing you to focus on your application that provides value to your users, not worrying about how to properly architect and scale telephony solutions.
progrium 16y ago
I bet in 1997 people were asking the same about Apple.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
patio11 16y ago
So what's new Twilio can offer here? Twilio lets a modestly competent web developer program a telecommunications company from their kitchen table in about, oh, six weeks or so. Alternatively, Twlio lets a modestly competent web developer take an existing app and add voice/SMS features to it in about a day. (Have a social site? Want to do SMS notifications when something important happens? You can implement that in four hours.)
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  I implemented "text me when someone orders" in about 25 minutes of time, from clicking "sign up" to "cap deploy." Super awesome.
- mahmud 16y ago
  I am far from being modestly competent as a web developer[1] and I was able to hack a voice menu in 30 minutes, in Lisp, before I knew XML. -- [1] infrastructure jockey != web developer.
- akalsey 16y ago
  With Tropo, you can implement that in less than four minutes - it's two lines of code. Ruby: message "something important happened", {:to => '14155551212', :network => 'SMS'} And then one line of code to hit our session API over http and run the code.
  - stanleydrew 16y ago
    This is pretty disingenuous. It's the same exact two lines of code to do this in Twilio. Yes if you know ahead of time what those two lines are then you can type them in less than four minutes. Same goes for Twilio. I think what patio11 is referring to is the amount of time it would take for a new developer who's never seen the Twilio API before to get up and running. This includes things like the time to understand the API and documentation. The actual writing of the code is always the easiest part of implementing something.
    - 16y ago
catch23 16y ago
FYI, the people who founded Zappos did not create Tellme. You're probably thinking of Alfred Lin who actually joined Zappos as the CFO much later (after Tony), and happened to be a VP at Tellme. At least according to Tony's book, he was a PhD student before he joined Zappos. The founder of Zappos is actually Nick Swinmurn even though many people still think it was Tony. Tony probably owns a lot more of Zappos than Nick, but neither of them had anything to do with Tellme. Mike McCue was the founder of Tellme who most recently departed from Microsoft, and before Tellme he worked at Netscape.
nivertech 16y ago
What I meant is that both Tellme and Zappos got investments from Venture Frogs http://www.vfrogs.com/investments.html http://www.vfrogs.com/investments.html

ra 16y ago

I kind of agree. Although I think the underlying assumption is that it's an infrastructure as a service play, and so Twilio et al are creating value. Obviously their target market is the web app developer crowd. To do it yourself you need to line up your outbound SIP providers, inbound DID providers (not one and the same once you dig into the details), then you need to operate a bunch of Freeswitch / Asterisk / whatever SIP servers, and learn how to program them, and learn how keep them running smooth (Not particularly difficult, but in terms of learning requirements - it's akin to meeting a database + web server for the first time). Due to the real-time nature of telcos (and I mean that in the traditional clock-synch'd sense of the word) there are additional complications if you want to use a virtualised OS.

jdee 16y ago
I get your point, but feel you are overplaying the difficulty. You can code in plain ol javascript on freeswitch to create complex inbound and outbound comms apps in a couple of hours. Plug it into a sip provider ( i use sipgate ) and there is nothing more complex to it. Far far cheaper too. You dont need a bunch of servers either. If you are doing more than 200 simultaneous calls ( freeswitch easily achieves this on 1 box ) you shouldnt be looking at these entry level systems; Voxeo, Tropo's parent company has an incredibly powerful platform.
- abhiyerra 16y ago
  Unfortunately, you can't get SMS when you do it yourself using SIP/FreeSwitch. These companies have made the deals with the individual telecom providers to do that for each of their DID numbers.
  - akalsey 16y ago
    Well, you could it's just not easy. A GSM modem attached to the server would do the trick. Apache's free and hardware's cheap. Yet Rackspace still manages to run a huge web hosting business. For some people and some uses, building a web server and hosting it on your home or office network is acceptable. But those that don't count "web hosting" as their core business and want the reliability, security, and stability that comes from having a professional do it tend to hire a company to do it for them. Like most other things in technology, it's a simple build-vs-buy question. Is it more cost effective and better suited to my needs to build it myself or to buy from someone who's an expert? Freeswitch and Asterisk are great. I was the emcee at the Freeswitch developer conference last year and we financially support Adhearsion, an Asterisk development framwork. They fill a great niche for DIY telephony. For everyone else, there's hosted services.
- jsgoecke 16y ago
  One box? One box is never a good idea for an application that is relied upon. You need to have redundancy (geographic even better), load-balancing, etc. Sure, you may roll your own anything, but you are better off outsourcing much of that to cloud providers today. Freeing you to focus on your application that provides value to your users, not worrying about how to properly architect and scale telephony solutions.

progrium 16y ago

I bet in 1997 people were asking the same about Apple.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

patio11 16y ago

So what's new Twilio can offer here? Twilio lets a modestly competent web developer program a telecommunications company from their kitchen table in about, oh, six weeks or so. Alternatively, Twlio lets a modestly competent web developer take an existing app and add voice/SMS features to it in about a day. (Have a social site? Want to do SMS notifications when something important happens? You can implement that in four hours.)

steveklabnik 16y ago
I implemented "text me when someone orders" in about 25 minutes of time, from clicking "sign up" to "cap deploy." Super awesome.
mahmud 16y ago
I am far from being modestly competent as a web developer[1] and I was able to hack a voice menu in 30 minutes, in Lisp, before I knew XML. -- [1] infrastructure jockey != web developer.
akalsey 16y ago
With Tropo, you can implement that in less than four minutes - it's two lines of code. Ruby: message "something important happened", {:to => '14155551212', :network => 'SMS'} And then one line of code to hit our session API over http and run the code.
- stanleydrew 16y ago
  This is pretty disingenuous. It's the same exact two lines of code to do this in Twilio. Yes if you know ahead of time what those two lines are then you can type them in less than four minutes. Same goes for Twilio. I think what patio11 is referring to is the amount of time it would take for a new developer who's never seen the Twilio API before to get up and running. This includes things like the time to understand the API and documentation. The actual writing of the code is always the easiest part of implementing something.
  - 16y ago

catch23 16y ago

FYI, the people who founded Zappos did not create Tellme. You're probably thinking of Alfred Lin who actually joined Zappos as the CFO much later (after Tony), and happened to be a VP at Tellme. At least according to Tony's book, he was a PhD student before he joined Zappos. The founder of Zappos is actually Nick Swinmurn even though many people still think it was Tony. Tony probably owns a lot more of Zappos than Nick, but neither of them had anything to do with Tellme. Mike McCue was the founder of Tellme who most recently departed from Microsoft, and before Tellme he worked at Netscape.

nivertech 16y ago

What I meant is that both Tellme and Zappos got investments from Venture Frogs http://www.vfrogs.com/investments.html http://www.vfrogs.com/investments.html