Twilio is a renowned platform as a service, providing cloud communication services to its worldwide customers. The company is situated in San Francisco, California, U.S., and is mainly known for its web service APIs that allow web developers to add Twilio’s voice and communication service to their software.
Twilio makes use of the Amazon Web Services to run its communication system, such that establishes a connection between HTTP and the public switched telephone network (PSTN) using its APIs. The company is one of the biggest promoters of the open-source community and has made a few open-source software for developers, including OpenVBX.
Jeff Lawson, along with Evan Cooke and John Wolthuis, founded Twilio in 2008. Jeff Lawson is the CEO and the main brains behind the founding of Twilio. He used to work at Amazon Web Services and founded his passion in cloud computing. His passion became the basis of Twilio, and today Twilio is not just an idea but a company worth $63 Billion market capital.
Back Story Of Twilio
Jeff Lawson, Evan Cooke, and John Wolthuis founded Twilio in 2008, keeping the customer experience in mind. While working at multiple software companies, the three founders had realized that they could achieve anything through coding and the customer experience has to be the basis of their company.
The founders went to multiple investors with the proposal to build the company that would develop APIs for communication, many liked the idea, but looking at the risk, they refused to pay the money. In the end, the three of them collected their savings and started the company. They did not even take their salaries for a few months. In fact, Lawson and his wife sold all their wedding gifts to raise the money for their startup.
The startup started from two locations initially, i.e. from Seattle, Washington, and San Francisco, California. Twilio made its first software for rickrolling, an American prank platform. The software brought a lot of press attention to Twilio. Later, the company launched a cloud-based calling and messaging API, named Twilio Voice in November 2008. The API was the first of its kind. Later in 2010, the company also brought a text messaging API followed by the launch of SMS shortcodes ( in public beta) in July 2017.
In 2009, Company raised a sum of $250,000 in its seed funding, Mitch Kapor, The Founders Fund, and Dave McClure being a few of the major investors. In its first round of funding, the company raised $3.7 million, where Union Square led the funding. In its round B of Funding, Twilio managed to raise around $12 million, followed by $17 million in a Series C round in 2011. Bessemer Venture Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Fidelity, T Rowe Price, Altimeter Capital Management, Arrowpoint Partners have been some of the leading investors in Twilio.
The Growth
Twilio went public in 2016 on New York Stock Exchange, with a 92% increase on the first day of its trading. In September 2010, Twilio started the Fund to encourage startups and provide them seed money. In the last decade, the company has also made some major acquisitions, including Authy (2015), Tikal Technologies (2016), Beepsend (2017), Ytica (2018), SendGrid (2018), Core Network Dynamics GmbH (2018), Electric Imp (2020), Segment (2020), and Zipwhip (2021), etc.
The company today employs around 4,500 people worldwide. As per the 2020 records, Company made profits worth US$1.76 billion. The company started from voice API and today develops products including SMS, MMS, SIP Trunking, WebRTC, 2FA, Call Center, etc. SendGrid is one of its subsidiaries.
About the Founder
Jeff Lawson is a famous entrepreneur and software developer, well known for founding and leading Twilio. Apart from Twilio, he founded Nine Star Inc, Stubhub.com, and Versity.com Inc. Lawson joined the University of Michigan to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science but dropped out to concentrate on a business, which he started while studying at the university. Before founding Twilio, he also worked at Amazon (AWS) as the Technical Product Manager. Lawson has also written a book named Ask Your Developer.
Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.