5 ms·

I don't know much about what happened here, but I did meet the early Twilio team (not Jeff, unfortunately) back in 2009 and knew they were something special. J

I don't know much about what happened here, but I did meet the early Twilio team (not Jeff, unfortunately) back in 2009 and knew they were something special. Jeff (and team) deserve a ton of credit for two massive things: First, changing how people think about devtools. I know Stripe gets a lot of credit, but Twilio was 3 years earlier and really defined how we look at building, marketing and monetizing tools meant for devs. They were early (if not first) to the devrel space, and Jeff's live coding (paired with a phone literally vibrating) was something I had never seen before. Second, I know a lot of people have lots of opinions about San Francisco, but I have a lot of respect to Jeff for always standing up and fighting for the city that enabled him to build his company. He seems to be a really good person, and is one of the few CEOs I find myself eager to emulate. Good luck to Jeff, Twilio, and everyone else involved. Jeff built something really special in the early years. And jeffiel, now that you have a bit more time on your hands, hopefully we can finally cross paths!

CamelCaseName 3y ago
> and knew they were something special Can you share more insights on how you knew they were special?
- haswell 3y ago
  Not OP, but their approach to devrel was by itself a huge differentiator early on. We’ve become so accustomed to developer-oriented marketing and programs that it’s easy to forget that Twilio was really at the cutting edge of this movement and should be credited (or at least acknowledged) for the easy on-ramps most developer programs now provide. Twilio also pushed the envelope in terms of what it means to talk to their developer community. Greg Baugues’ talk titled “Devs and Depression” reached a lot of people who were struggling, and was one of the reasons I personally sought out therapy, and my life is much better for it. Early Twilio was a very human-oriented company, and I think many developers and developer programs are better for it.
  - gregorymichael 3y ago
    Hi. Greg here. :heart: Good job taking the steps to get help!
    - haswell 3y ago
      Hey Greg! Thanks again for the work you were doing. It made a difference.
    - rprospero 3y ago
      Congratulations, Greg! You've come a long way from Mr. Shadiow's CS class
      - gregorymichael 3y ago
        WHOA!!! Callback! Who's this!?!
        rprospero 3y ago
        I'm Adam Washington. I was a couple of years behind you, but we bumped into each other socially a few times over the years. As a refresher, I was also the sophomore with the glasses in Shadiow's class that accidentally kicked over the trash can while trying to explain how graphs work. Back in high school, I thought you were the brightest and chillest guy on the planet. My first Linux install was because I overheard you talking about it in class and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Anyway, it's been a treat seeing you pop up again after all these years and discovering that my nostalgia lenses were right - you really are that smart and cool.
        gregorymichael 3y ago
        You are very kind Adam. This just made my day. Drop me an email -- would love to catch up. Edit: I shared this story with three guys my year who were also in that class. You'll be happy to know: 1. They all remember you. 2. No one remembers the trash can.
- gkoberger 3y ago
  I was an intern at GigaOM in 2009 (a popular tech blog that ran conferences), and my first memory of Twilio was going to the sales people and trying to convince them to give Twilio a discounted booth because I thought the product was so great. I remember the salesperson laughing and saying "this booth costs more money than they have in their bank account", but there was some extra inventory and we got them the booth. The early people all just had this vibe of technical-but-not-complicated. It's common now, but at the time it was such a breath of fresh air. They were one of the first companies to pitch "easy of use" (compared to "look at how amazingly complex we are!"). I know this is super obvious now, but back then I had never felt anything like that. All the people I met (I specifically remember Danielle) were friendly and excited... not in a sales-y way, but in a "I just love what we're doing and want you to, too" way. And again, I know this doesn't feel unique now, but that's because Twilio helped shape how we think about all of this. I loved their attitude, such as this talk from John Sheehan (https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/runscope-ceo-and-twilio-dev-evangelist-on-hero-making https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/runscope-ceo-and-twil...) about how they look at customers. I remember him saying they would fly to any little city that would have them and buy pizza and just hang out. They caught on early that there were so many tech people out there around the country who would become lifelong supporters because of little gestures like this. Overall, a lot of what I can say about Twilio is super obvious now. But it's kinda like how people watch Friends for the first time in 2023 and say "meh it's a pretty generic sitcom". It's because they created the whole genre and shifted how everything thinks.
  - johns 3y ago
    <3
  - rurp 3y ago
    > Overall, a lot of what I can say about Twilio is super obvious now. But it's kinda like how people watch Friends for the first time in 2023 and say "meh it's a pretty generic sitcom". It's because they created the whole genre and shifted how everything thinks. I feel this way about most classic media. Famous movies and books almost always feel underwhelming to me because the notable ideas have been reused and referenced so many times that the original ends up feeling like a retread decades later. Interesting connection to tie this phenomenon to tech marketing and dev relations.
pylua 3y ago
The stock price has been lackluster unfortunately. I’m not sure as to why.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  One issue might be that Microsoft (as ever) launched a milquetoast competitor that sounds the same to a purchasing department in 2020[0]. [0] https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/09/25/microsoft-declares-war-twilio-new-cloud-service https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/09/25/microsoft-declares...
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    > One issue might be that Microsoft (as ever) launched a milquetoast competitor that sounds the same to a purchasing department in 2020. AWS (and presumably Google) also provides a suite of telephony services with Chime, SNS, Connect, etc. I assume the strategy now is to sell to/merge with a smaller CSP to provide a competitive portfolio of services.
- nine_zeros 3y ago
  > The stock price has been lackluster unfortunately. I’m not sure as to why. Stagnant revenue and declining free cash flow means that the company doesn't have many tools in the toolbox to be valued higher.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Stock price isn’t a great indicator of product quality though. Stock price requires endless growth which is unsustainable.
  - bwilliams18 3y ago
    But it is ultimately what will result in a CEO departure.
  - maerF0x0 3y ago
    No. Stock price requires higher per share values. One can continuously grow a stock if they reduce the shares outstanding. That being said iirc buy backs have notoriously all gone to executives. Essentially they buy back, and then award themselves options to re-dilute, but cannot readily find a source for that. So maybe incorrect.
carimura 3y ago
When we started Iron.io in 2010, there were basically 3 companies at every developer event driving the API-first message: Heroku, Sendgrid, and Twilio. Back then, most thought Heroku (as the Platform) was going to be the one ending up in the public markets. Then they got taken out and Twilio bought Sendgrid. Congrats to Twilio and team for the years of success!
- mtnGoat 3y ago
  I used iron.io for years. Sad story there I think but I don’t know the details. Seemed like Great service for years then it kind of fell off, the service still worked thankfully. But no new features, and support would take days.
  - carimura 3y ago
    Thanks for using us! We ended up selling the service to private equity, hence the slowdown in features and support. Was an awesome and fun business to build but running a 24/7/365 service just as all the cloud providers were adding similar products was a slog.
pastor_bob 3y ago
They laid off all of those early Dev Relations people, from what I understand.
nativeit 3y ago
I’m personally not a dev, maybe amateur dev, but I am a professional I.T. consultant and sysadmin, and I have used and thoroughly enjoyed Twilio’s tools for years. They are accessible enough for even low-skill amateur devs like me to be able to spin up test programs and functions that do really cool things. I am heartened to hear that my longtime support has gone to a company whose culture and leadership have been worthy. Hoping for the best to everyone involved.
- Solvency 3y ago
  Out of curiosity what cool test programs does a sysadmin make with Twilio? Custom system alerts over SMS?
  - eszed 3y ago
    > Custom system alerts over SMS? Can't speak for the guy you asked, but I'm approximately his skill-set, and that's what I've used it for. Long time ago, though; I can't speak to the developer experience now. $20 and contact customer support... What? It used to be easy. Like, create an account and ten minutes later your in business, easy. I used them for a number of (free-tier, I think) personal and (paid-tier) professional projects, and was a very satisfied customer.

CamelCaseName 3y ago

> and knew they were something special Can you share more insights on how you knew they were special?

haswell 3y ago
Not OP, but their approach to devrel was by itself a huge differentiator early on. We’ve become so accustomed to developer-oriented marketing and programs that it’s easy to forget that Twilio was really at the cutting edge of this movement and should be credited (or at least acknowledged) for the easy on-ramps most developer programs now provide. Twilio also pushed the envelope in terms of what it means to talk to their developer community. Greg Baugues’ talk titled “Devs and Depression” reached a lot of people who were struggling, and was one of the reasons I personally sought out therapy, and my life is much better for it. Early Twilio was a very human-oriented company, and I think many developers and developer programs are better for it.
- gregorymichael 3y ago
  Hi. Greg here. :heart: Good job taking the steps to get help!
  - haswell 3y ago
    Hey Greg! Thanks again for the work you were doing. It made a difference.
  - rprospero 3y ago
    Congratulations, Greg! You've come a long way from Mr. Shadiow's CS class
    - gregorymichael 3y ago
      WHOA!!! Callback! Who's this!?!
      - rprospero 3y ago
        I'm Adam Washington. I was a couple of years behind you, but we bumped into each other socially a few times over the years. As a refresher, I was also the sophomore with the glasses in Shadiow's class that accidentally kicked over the trash can while trying to explain how graphs work. Back in high school, I thought you were the brightest and chillest guy on the planet. My first Linux install was because I overheard you talking about it in class and I wanted to see what the fuss was about. Anyway, it's been a treat seeing you pop up again after all these years and discovering that my nostalgia lenses were right - you really are that smart and cool.
        gregorymichael 3y ago
        You are very kind Adam. This just made my day. Drop me an email -- would love to catch up. Edit: I shared this story with three guys my year who were also in that class. You'll be happy to know: 1. They all remember you. 2. No one remembers the trash can.
gkoberger 3y ago
I was an intern at GigaOM in 2009 (a popular tech blog that ran conferences), and my first memory of Twilio was going to the sales people and trying to convince them to give Twilio a discounted booth because I thought the product was so great. I remember the salesperson laughing and saying "this booth costs more money than they have in their bank account", but there was some extra inventory and we got them the booth. The early people all just had this vibe of technical-but-not-complicated. It's common now, but at the time it was such a breath of fresh air. They were one of the first companies to pitch "easy of use" (compared to "look at how amazingly complex we are!"). I know this is super obvious now, but back then I had never felt anything like that. All the people I met (I specifically remember Danielle) were friendly and excited... not in a sales-y way, but in a "I just love what we're doing and want you to, too" way. And again, I know this doesn't feel unique now, but that's because Twilio helped shape how we think about all of this. I loved their attitude, such as this talk from John Sheehan (https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/runscope-ceo-and-twilio-dev-evangelist-on-hero-making https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/runscope-ceo-and-twil...) about how they look at customers. I remember him saying they would fly to any little city that would have them and buy pizza and just hang out. They caught on early that there were so many tech people out there around the country who would become lifelong supporters because of little gestures like this. Overall, a lot of what I can say about Twilio is super obvious now. But it's kinda like how people watch Friends for the first time in 2023 and say "meh it's a pretty generic sitcom". It's because they created the whole genre and shifted how everything thinks.
- johns 3y ago
  <3
- rurp 3y ago
  > Overall, a lot of what I can say about Twilio is super obvious now. But it's kinda like how people watch Friends for the first time in 2023 and say "meh it's a pretty generic sitcom". It's because they created the whole genre and shifted how everything thinks. I feel this way about most classic media. Famous movies and books almost always feel underwhelming to me because the notable ideas have been reused and referenced so many times that the original ends up feeling like a retread decades later. Interesting connection to tie this phenomenon to tech marketing and dev relations.

pylua 3y ago

The stock price has been lackluster unfortunately. I’m not sure as to why.

robertlagrant 3y ago
One issue might be that Microsoft (as ever) launched a milquetoast competitor that sounds the same to a purchasing department in 2020[0]. [0] https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/09/25/microsoft-declares-war-twilio-new-cloud-service https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/09/25/microsoft-declares...
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > One issue might be that Microsoft (as ever) launched a milquetoast competitor that sounds the same to a purchasing department in 2020. AWS (and presumably Google) also provides a suite of telephony services with Chime, SNS, Connect, etc. I assume the strategy now is to sell to/merge with a smaller CSP to provide a competitive portfolio of services.
nine_zeros 3y ago
> The stock price has been lackluster unfortunately. I’m not sure as to why. Stagnant revenue and declining free cash flow means that the company doesn't have many tools in the toolbox to be valued higher.
Nextgrid 3y ago
Stock price isn’t a great indicator of product quality though. Stock price requires endless growth which is unsustainable.
- bwilliams18 3y ago
  But it is ultimately what will result in a CEO departure.
- maerF0x0 3y ago
  No. Stock price requires higher per share values. One can continuously grow a stock if they reduce the shares outstanding. That being said iirc buy backs have notoriously all gone to executives. Essentially they buy back, and then award themselves options to re-dilute, but cannot readily find a source for that. So maybe incorrect.

carimura 3y ago

When we started Iron.io in 2010, there were basically 3 companies at every developer event driving the API-first message: Heroku, Sendgrid, and Twilio. Back then, most thought Heroku (as the Platform) was going to be the one ending up in the public markets. Then they got taken out and Twilio bought Sendgrid. Congrats to Twilio and team for the years of success!

mtnGoat 3y ago
I used iron.io for years. Sad story there I think but I don’t know the details. Seemed like Great service for years then it kind of fell off, the service still worked thankfully. But no new features, and support would take days.
- carimura 3y ago
  Thanks for using us! We ended up selling the service to private equity, hence the slowdown in features and support. Was an awesome and fun business to build but running a 24/7/365 service just as all the cloud providers were adding similar products was a slog.

pastor_bob 3y ago

They laid off all of those early Dev Relations people, from what I understand.

nativeit 3y ago

I’m personally not a dev, maybe amateur dev, but I am a professional I.T. consultant and sysadmin, and I have used and thoroughly enjoyed Twilio’s tools for years. They are accessible enough for even low-skill amateur devs like me to be able to spin up test programs and functions that do really cool things. I am heartened to hear that my longtime support has gone to a company whose culture and leadership have been worthy. Hoping for the best to everyone involved.

Solvency 3y ago
Out of curiosity what cool test programs does a sysadmin make with Twilio? Custom system alerts over SMS?
- eszed 3y ago
  > Custom system alerts over SMS? Can't speak for the guy you asked, but I'm approximately his skill-set, and that's what I've used it for. Long time ago, though; I can't speak to the developer experience now. $20 and contact customer support... What? It used to be easy. Like, create an account and ten minutes later your in business, easy. I used them for a number of (free-tier, I think) personal and (paid-tier) professional projects, and was a very satisfied customer.