6 ms·

Genius move for Twilio, honestly. Segment can supply the central hub to tie in all channel spokes Twilio already powers (especially after the SendGrid acquisiti

Genius move for Twilio, honestly. Segment can supply the central hub to tie in all channel spokes Twilio already powers (especially after the SendGrid acquisition from a couple years ago). I can't help thinking Segment had much more room to run though...everyone I know who uses them loves them, and they were still only just scratching the surface of the addressable market.

raiyu 6y ago
With how frothy the public market is for SaaS companies with growth looks like their growth may have stalled out. Usually board will look to make changes, replace founder CEO and if that doesn’t work then push for a sale. Very smart acquisition for Twilio though.
- rasen58 6y ago
  > With how frothy the public market is for SaaS companies with growth looks like their growth may have stalled out. Can you explain what this means. Why does the first part of the sentence imply the second?
  - cheriot 6y ago
    If they could show strong growth continuing they'd have made more money with an IPO than an acquisition. At least that's what the comment is suggesting.
- brogrammernot 6y ago
  The other case is they didn’t want to deal with going through an IPO, got a great offer for their business and a major liquidity event for their employees. Going public, despite profits made, really sucks the soul out of a company. Twilio and Segment’s visions align pretty well so I think that played a role as well. Outside of golden handcuffs, a large portion of their employees are liquid immediately as opposed to an IPO with a 6-12 month lockup for employees plus the rise/fall of a stock price during that time. All in all, I think they made the right choice to sell instead of going for an IPO.
peter_mcrae 6y ago
Agreed really good fit. I bet a large % of Segment's customers were using Twilio endpoints. Really nice combination of a data hub / last mile across multiple channels...fully expect they will continue moving up the stack towards a CRM / Marketing automation solution.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- rubyfan 6y ago
  Who’s a likely candidate for CRM acquisition? Seems like the space is a bit crowded and Salesforce is the big dog and lots of second tier but who’s a good fit for Twilio?
  - brandnewlow 6y ago
    Intercom
    - runako 6y ago
      +1 fits perfectly with the contact center features in Twilio (in addition to messaging etc.).
    - dd36 6y ago
      Intercom needs SMS integration badly.
  - danpalmer 6y ago
    Intercom already mentioned may be a bit big. There’s also Vero and Iterable that I’ve used. Iterable was pretty terrible and we ended up replacing it with in house tooling, Vero has been really great and we’re investing more in our Vero setup.
    - tomnipotent 6y ago
      While Intercom offers a great messaging feature set, it's far from being a complete CRM. Many other potential targets with more complete offerings.

raiyu 6y ago

With how frothy the public market is for SaaS companies with growth looks like their growth may have stalled out. Usually board will look to make changes, replace founder CEO and if that doesn’t work then push for a sale. Very smart acquisition for Twilio though.

rasen58 6y ago
> With how frothy the public market is for SaaS companies with growth looks like their growth may have stalled out. Can you explain what this means. Why does the first part of the sentence imply the second?
- cheriot 6y ago
  If they could show strong growth continuing they'd have made more money with an IPO than an acquisition. At least that's what the comment is suggesting.
brogrammernot 6y ago
The other case is they didn’t want to deal with going through an IPO, got a great offer for their business and a major liquidity event for their employees. Going public, despite profits made, really sucks the soul out of a company. Twilio and Segment’s visions align pretty well so I think that played a role as well. Outside of golden handcuffs, a large portion of their employees are liquid immediately as opposed to an IPO with a 6-12 month lockup for employees plus the rise/fall of a stock price during that time. All in all, I think they made the right choice to sell instead of going for an IPO.

peter_mcrae 6y ago

Agreed really good fit. I bet a large % of Segment's customers were using Twilio endpoints. Really nice combination of a data hub / last mile across multiple channels...fully expect they will continue moving up the stack towards a CRM / Marketing automation solution.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rubyfan 6y ago
Who’s a likely candidate for CRM acquisition? Seems like the space is a bit crowded and Salesforce is the big dog and lots of second tier but who’s a good fit for Twilio?
- brandnewlow 6y ago
  Intercom
  - runako 6y ago
    +1 fits perfectly with the contact center features in Twilio (in addition to messaging etc.).
  - dd36 6y ago
    Intercom needs SMS integration badly.
- danpalmer 6y ago
  Intercom already mentioned may be a bit big. There’s also Vero and Iterable that I’ve used. Iterable was pretty terrible and we ended up replacing it with in house tooling, Vero has been really great and we’re investing more in our Vero setup.
  - tomnipotent 6y ago
    While Intercom offers a great messaging feature set, it's far from being a complete CRM. Many other potential targets with more complete offerings.