Twilio’s APIs are behind some of the essential features of Australia’s most popular apps. Increasingly, when a developer wants to add SMS functionality (like when an Uber driver messages that they are waiting outside) or the ability to voice call (like with Airtasker) into…
Twilio’s APIs are behind some of the essential features of Australia’s most popular apps. The ability for an Uber driver to text their next passenger, the voice call functionality of Airtasker and everything useful about Whatsapp was built with the company’s building blocks.
The cloud platform removes the slog of provisioning infrastructure and negotiating carrier contracts, giving developers the ability to embed messaging, voice and video to reach ‘nearly every phone on the planet’ with relative ease.
Digital-first, start-ups-done-good such as AirBnb, Freelancer, Deputy, Hulu, Lyft and Box formed a significant portion of the company’s revenue last year (WhatsApp accounted for around 9 per cent of sales and Uber more than 10 per cent). But after listing in June last year Twilio is now looking to break the bigger, and more stable market of established enterprise brands.
CEO Jeff Lawson said last year , he wants Twilio to be thought of as “AWS for telecom”. The appointment of George Hu to the role of chief operating officer earlier this month — Hu is a former Salesforce COO — is telling of the company’s direction.
To succeed Twilio needs to woo developers working at big corporates – and their bosses too.
Twilio’s head of product marketing and developer relations, Manav Khurana, puts it this way: “Help the developer realise what they can do, then help the leadership team that has developers realise what a developer can do.
