[HN Gopher] Twilio's Dutch rival MessageBird plans an IPO
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Twilio's Dutch rival MessageBird plans an IPO
Author : whatami
Score : 80 points
Date : 2020-06-24 06:49 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bloomberg.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bloomberg.com)
| raidicy wrote:
| this probably a dumb question; how do you participate in an ipo?
| stevetodd wrote:
| Aside: Annoying new trend in news sites used here is to inject
| their homepage in the browser history to make it so that the back
| button goes to their homepage instead of back to where you were.
| edoceo wrote:
| Back buttons worked as expected here, Android, Chrome
| wrkronmiller wrote:
| Didn't happen on Safari Version 14.0. What browser you using?
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| Hm? The back button seems to work as expected on this site.
| thijsvandien wrote:
| I've been a happy customer for years. Their services work well.
| Unfortunately, the same cannot be said (anymore) about their
| dashboard. Slow, unreliable, buggy... I got really close to
| trying Twilio this time. It concerns me when companies want to
| grow faster when it seems they are having problems with having
| grown too fast already.
| pg4 wrote:
| I've had a similar experience. I've used their api to send SMS
| for multiple projects and have no complaints in terms of
| delivery.
|
| Their web UI is pretty buggy. Certain parts of their control
| panel sometimes causes my browser tab to freeze. Recently I
| found that pressing tab caused the page reload when filling out
| verification info for buying a new number.
| dsincl12 wrote:
| I've had the exact opposite experience.
|
| I don't know how many 200 OK I've received but the message was
| never delivered (and soooo many times during vital demos). I
| had several support cases with them and they simply ignored me.
| My product is built around SMS so I could have been easy money
| for them if it actually worked reliably.
|
| I ditched them for Twilio, never had any issues since then. A
| couple of months later someone from sales at MessageBird
| reached out to me on LinkedIn and asked if I wanted to try
| their service. Spilled my guts to him and he wasn't
| surprised...
|
| How certain are you that your messages are delivered? When I
| started digging, it was scary how often it failed successfully.
| pg4 wrote:
| Was it not a matter of leaving out a country code or
| something? I was getting 200 OKs and not receiving messages,
| until I realized that my number without a +1 in front is a
| valid Peruvian number.
| dsincl12 wrote:
| Nope, unfortunately not. Really liked their API so it's sad
| I had to jump ship.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Is there a Twilio competitor for which per-minute rates to
| Belarus aren't ~ $0.50 USD? I remember purchasing "calling cards"
| in the 90s at convenience stores with better rates.
| 7863949364 wrote:
| Congrats on a successful SV pump and dump! The feeling of joy
| from cashing out on retail investors is hard to beat.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| YC company, but not your usual startup
| throw03172019 wrote:
| Why not a usual startup?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Special terms. They already did a few million rev.
| tyre wrote:
| I don't know anything about the terms or whatever, but we
| were in the same batch. It was really funny with the whole
| batch practicing for Demo Day giving revenue numbers,
| growth rate, etc. We had in tens of thousands of dollars
| per month in MRR, which was on the higher end.
|
| MessageBird, as you said, came to the US already with a
| _well_ established business. Obviously they weren't
| competing for the same investors/checks as most of the rest
| of the batch, but it was still hilarious to hear them pitch
| next to everyone else.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Plivo is another Twilio competitor for voice and sms.
|
| Been using it for a while for mostly US sms, works fine:
|
| https://www.plivo.com/
| rsync wrote:
| Which, if any, of these Twilio competitors will allow me to CC:
| a SMS to an email address _without involving third party
| providers_ ?
|
| I have begged Twilio engineers in person at multiple Signal and
| over email/support channels _as well as_ the CEO and here in
| this very forum: For the Love Of God will you please add an
| 'email' twiml verb ?
|
| If you want to CC: a SMS to email currently, within Twilio, you
| need to build functions, sign up for a Sendgrid account,
| authenticate in sendgrid with _real names and physical
| addresses_ ...
|
| It's a no-brainer use-case and it is _nothing but pain_ to
| implement.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| > It's a no-brainer
|
| Actually it's not:
|
| First, email and sms are different transport mechanisms.
|
| Second, email requires a To (envelope) address.
|
| Third, some mgmt. like bounce and DKIM/SPF is needed.
|
| You could write a subroutine to hide some of that, but I'm
| not sure there's a clear general solution.
| rsync wrote:
| A few things ...
|
| When I say that it is a no-brainer, I mean that it is a no-
| brainer _feature_ ... that is, something that everyone
| would have a very ready use-case for.
|
| Second, I think we're all well aware of the vast gulf
| between email service and the mobile phone network. That's
| the point of a service like Twilio: they have _both_
| systems (email and SMS) terminating inside of their own
| cloud environment. This means that "forwarding" an SMS to
| an email address, which would be rocket science for me, is
| easy for them.
|
| In fact, it's so easy that we can readily describe exactly
| how to implement it: _just give us an email verb in twiml_.
| objektif wrote:
| There are many Twilio competitors and there have been for a while
| now. However, Twilio has been really resilient in terms of
| keeping their high growth year over year. What is the reason for
| that?
| ihumanable wrote:
| As a former Twilio engineer, whose opinion in no way represents
| the company's, I know that a large part of my job was
| reliability.
|
| Reliability in the telecom space is a difficult problem, it's a
| large ecosystem of providers, aggregators, regulators, and lots
| and lots of hidden complexity. Then there's actually running
| the service, keeping the REST API up 24/7/365, making sure the
| TwiML processors are processing, keeping everything humming
| along smoothly for billions of requests a week.
|
| When I was there, we would see "Twilio Killers" launch once or
| twice a year, normally competing around price. Their launches
| would almost always have the same 53 countries that they could
| deliver messages to, which we knew from operating in the space
| meant that they had just white-labeled Bandwidth's offering.
| They would be relying on a single aggregator and have the same
| reliability, resiliency, and reach as that one network.
|
| There's a lot of reasons that people choose Twilio, network
| effects can't be denied, a lot of effort was expended on
| keeping it top of mind in developers heads. But that only
| scratches the surface.
|
| We focused a ton on being reliable, being easy-to-use, and on
| backwards compatibility. There's a lot of unmaintained
| WordPress plugins that were written 9 years ago, abandoned 8
| years ago, and still work fine because API compatibility was a
| top priority. There's something to be said about being able to
| just build an integration and then mostly ignore it and it just
| hums along sending SMS out reliably. A developer spending a day
| debugging a less reliable service can obliterate the savings in
| price, sometimes, depending on volume and use case.
|
| Ease-of-use and network effects shouldn't be discounted. Most
| mainstream languages have a reasonably good library, Twilio
| officially maintained 6 of them while I was there. Our
| Developer Education team spent a ton of time and efforts
| creating tutorials, quickstarts, blog posts, and presentations.
| The Developer Evangelism team could be found at nearly every
| Hackathon, Conference, and Meet Up, spreading the word about
| Twilio, with well-polished live coding demos that would spark a
| lot of "Wow moments."
|
| Even knowing exactly how every part of it worked, there's
| something magical about a presenter having everyone in the room
| text a number, then having a 3 line ruby program hit the API,
| pull down all the messages, and display them in the terminal.
| Then with two or three more lines of code, text everyone that
| texted in a message. That kind of demo takes maybe 10 minutes
| to do, but people would practice and polish it until it was
| seamless. You could look around the rooms at some of the events
| and see the wheels turning in people's heads as they started
| thinking about how they could integrate this functionality into
| their product.
|
| First-mover, network-effects, reliable, resilient, easy-to-use,
| and in the beginning there were a number of highly promoted
| price drops to keep the momentum up.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| It's good to see more Dutch (or European in general) software
| companies succeed. I hope VC will be easier to come by in Europe,
| I think it's the main set back European founders face.
| asciimo wrote:
| I remember when MessageBird was giving away free tacos across the
| street from Twilio's Signal conference. Left me feeling that
| their brand is tacky and desperate. On the other hand, I learned
| that there was an alternative to Twilio. And got free tacos.
| holler wrote:
| never turn down a free taco!
| novok wrote:
| Free food is a surprisingly effective & cheap way to get people
| to interact with you at conferences.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| At one of the early TwilioCons (second, I think?) we had a
| competitor set up in front giving away coffee and donuts. It
| was amusing and showed how desperate they were.
|
| If you're targeting competitors' customers _after_ they 've
| spent the time, money, and effort to come to a conference,
| they're probably not a good prospect. They're deep and unlikely
| to switch easily or quickly. There are much better targets
| elsewhere.
|
| * Early Twilio evangelist here, circa 2011-2013
| tyre wrote:
| That's not desperation, that's literally sales.
|
| Twilio and MessageBird have the same customer. Someone who is
| using Twilio could reasonably convert faster than someone who
| doesn't use any api-based telephony integration. You skip the
| step of convincing internal teams that you should do this in
| the first place.
|
| At ZenPayroll we didn't just ignore people on ADP, Paychex,
| Intuit, etc. That would be nuts!
|
| If you're trying to reach "people who integrate with
| telephony APIs" the Twilio conference is...the perfect place
| to find them!
|
| re: spending time/money/effort to come to conferences:
|
| 1) They are networking events.
|
| 2) They are paid for by companies so employees aren't by
| default that invested.
|
| 3) It's not a lot of effort. Employees like going to
| conferences. You meet people. It's paid for. You don't really
| have to do anything. It's a workation for most.
|
| As for retention, much of Twilio is mostly a commodity.
| MessageBird came to the US and started a price war, which is
| really what you're competing on. Switching SMS APIs isn't the
| same as, say, switching off of SalesForce.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| A few good points but the market stage was wildly
| different.
|
| In payroll processing, there are a handful of major
| entrenched providers. Going (almost) directly at them is
| the only approach. Yes, you have to differentiate yourself
| but odds are there's a rip & replace coming.
|
| In 2012, outside of SMS aggregators, sending and receiving
| text messages was still novel. Add in automated calling and
| there were some options with Asterisk (worked on that many
| times) but still novel. Going after that tiny market may
| have been cheap but probably not effective.
|
| If MessageBird started a price war, that's a weak value
| prop by itself but could work so followups:
|
| - How much have they driven down pricing across the space
| since they've come to the US?
|
| - If that value prop is the main motivator, how much share
| have they taken?
|
| - Are you going in on their IPO?
|
| (I don't care either way, I don't own any Twilio shares
| anymore.)
| daneel_w wrote:
| Messagebird user here, on enterprise level: we're happy with
| their services, both in terms of delivery and reliability. The
| fact that they (just like almost all other SMS/SIP providers to
| be fair) asks lower prices than Twilio certainly does not hurt.
| [deleted]
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Seems like an inoffensive way to get your name out to devs
| and/or decision makers who largely think Twilio is the only
| option.
|
| Twilio resells commodity product (SIP/SMS) at Saas margins by
| offering good developer experience and - by this point - major
| brand recognition. It's not a defensible business long term,
| they just had a huge head start, and they still compete
| terribly for service outside North America.
|
| This is why they are building on top of the underlying
| commodity and moving upmarket into things like call center
| automation products, which start to compete directly with many
| of their customers.
|
| You can easily negotiate down your SIP/SMS Twilio prices the
| second you realize they have plenty of competitors.
|
| If a smaller competitor gets their name out there by doing some
| basic guerrilla marketing against a behemoth public company
| with tons of money, it seems pretty benign. Everyone wins but
| the overpriced incumbent.
| Kye wrote:
| They found themselves in the same place as Dropbox. A company
| built on being a wrapper around a commodity has a way of
| becoming a more robust company's feature. They always try to
| add more stuff on to differentiate, but it doesn't always
| work.
| minot wrote:
| > Dropbox
|
| I have so much respect for Dropbox. I remember laughing
| when Dropbox gave away 2GB for free back in 2009(?) and I
| never really thought they had a valid business plan. I read
| Drew Houston talked to Steve Jobs and I still don't
| understand why he wouldn't sell. But then I'm poor.
| Anything that puts more than USD 20M in my pocket would be
| life changing for me.
|
| > What Houston does is Dropbox, the digital storage service
| that has surged to 50 million users, with another joining
| every second. Jobs presciently saw this sapling as a
| strategic asset for Apple. Houston cut Jobs' pitch short:
| He was determined to build a big company, he said, and
| wasn't selling, no matter the status of the bidder (Houston
| considered Jobs his hero) or the prospects of a nine-digit
| price (he and Ferdowsi drove to the meeting in a Zipcar
| Prius).
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20200520184823/https://www.forb
| e...
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Great insight and thoughts on Houston and Dropbox.
| Dropbox would have floundered at Apple. Even a loose
| competitor, Box, where Aaron, the co-founder, owned
| around 5.5% (after all exercised stocks) post IPO, that
| still was over $100M while he got to continue running the
| company through now. Apple buying Dropbox for $800M back
| in 2009-2010 would've given Houston $300M or so I am
| assuming? I'm sure even if he eventually came out with
| much less, even less than Aaron, continuing to run the
| company for over a decade more is far more fulfilling.
|
| And of course Houston is a billionare from Dropbox since
| it went public a little over two years ago in 2018.
|
| --
|
| I remember thinking Snapchat, namely, Spiegel and Murphy
| co-founders __as being a bit crazy to not sell Snapchat
| to Facebook in late 2013 for $3B when Instagram was
| bought for $1B 1.5 years earlier.
|
| However the two remaining founders had taken $10M a piece
| in the previous 2013 funding round. So like you said
| about $20M being insane as it would be for me. A lot
| easier to turn that down with all the possibly upsides
| and millions in your bank account.
|
| Even with Snapchat not exploding the way it was thought
| it would later on: - a year after rebuffing FB, they
| raised almost $500M at a $10B+ valuation in late 2014. -
| 2.5 years later, in early-ish 2017, they went public at
| $30B+, raising $3.5B. - Tencent became the next big
| company to have a large stake in Snapchat. After being a
| previous small investor. Gathering 12-18% of the company
| by late 2017/early 2018 when Snap stock was doing pretty
| badly. - Today, the co-founders still have super voting
| rights and Snap stock is back to being above $30B while
| seemingly everyone copies them.
|
| __They unethically (IMO) kicked out the third co-founder
| for a while by then, like Twitter did before them, but
| less ruthlessly in the end since Snap's 3rd guy, Brown,
| still made out very well.
|
| Twitter's Noah Glass on the other hand...it's just too
| sad. No less seeing the worst Twitter guy of them all,
| Dorsey, getting all this praise for his recent big
| donations with almost no mentions of how he began his
| lies and consolidation of power [at Twitter]
| icedchai wrote:
| SignalWire is also a Twilio competitor. Their SMS pricing is
| much, much cheaper and they have cloned the Twilio APIs. I am
| not affiliated with them, other than as a customer of both
| Twilio and SignalWire at different times (small dev
| accounts.)
|
| https://signalwire.com/pricing/messaging
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Off top I know of
|
| Messagebird, Plivo, Nexmo (part of Vonage), Telnyx,
| Voxbone, Signalwire
| [deleted]
| ponker wrote:
| Well you're right on all counts. The marketing was tacky,
| desperate, and effective, as much of "growth hacking" is.
| fenwick67 wrote:
| Most marketing is tacky and desperate. At least in this case
| you get free food out of it.
| perennate wrote:
| Would consider using them but Taiwan is not a province of China
| (https://messagebird.com/en/numbers/). If a company has has many
| factual errors on their website like this, then I cannot trust
| their service to be reliable.
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