Jeff Lawson, co-founder and CEO of Twilio

Jeff Lawson is the co-founder and CEO of Twilio, founded in 2008. Twilio allows software developers to programmatically make and receive phone calls, send and receive text messages. As a customer, anytime you call or text your Uber driver, you are using Twilio! Today Byron will talk with Jeff about his career leading up to founding Twilio, how they built the company and the challenges along the way to their IPO.

Insights and key takeaways from Jeff Lawson

• Internet connection can be the source of invention and inspiration in college: “I arrived at school in 1995. And so, many people arrived at college and the thing they were most excited about was alcohol or other girls or boys or whoever it was, and the freedom of leaving home. And for me, I arrived in the dorm and I was like, “Oh my God, there’s a 10 megabit ethernet jack in this,” remembered Jeff. “That was the thing that was most exciting to me. That was the most life-changing part about going to college. Not the alcohol or the parties or anything. And it was ‘95, so it was right after the Netscape IPO, and I remember one of the first things I did after I said goodbye to my parents was I FTPed down a copy of Netscape Navigator 1.0, and suddenly was able to start browsing this brand new thing called the web.”
• When Jeff was working on a startup he realized the importance of following your passion: “Why am I grinding out code with these skate kids all around me breaking my flow, when really I belong in tech?” asked Jeff. “I realized I had made that same mistake again, of not following my passion. I was pouring all my blood sweat and tears into a company where it was a good business opportunity, but wasn’t where my heart was.”
• Twilio was started because Jeff always believed that software is a super power: “Developers can build software quickly and iteratively to serve customers,” said Jeff. “Your work is never done because you can always hear the next problem or the next improvement, and put your mind to work and build a better version of your product.”
• Experimentation is the prerequisite to innovation. “If you can help a developer and help companies run more experiments for what their customers need, then you’re going to get more innovation. If you ruthlessly remove the friction, the barriers to experimentation, that is what you need to enable innovation. That was the guiding principle that we started the company with,” said Jeff.
• In the cloud your number one value proposition you’re selling is trust. “No matter what you do. If you’re a communications API, if you’re infrastructure as a service, or if you’re a SaaS product. What you’re fundamentally telling your customer is, “Trust me to run this part of your business for you.”