2022.03.03 Twilio, 微軟

最近在整理Twilio經營層對生意的看法

Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson對溝通（Communication）生意的理解非常深入，摘要一些2020年分析師日看到的重點

整體架構分別為：市場、生意、客戶

市場

Shipchandler CFO
市場擴張的三個面相，既有產品在在既有客戶的應用方式增加、投資新的產品、許多產業沒有完成數位轉型，Twilio可以轉化出不曾屬於這個市場的客戶

And I think one of the pleasant surprises that we always experience when we work with our customers is that they continue to surprise us with many of the unique ways in which our platform can be used. They're always promulgating new use cases that we oftentimes don't even foresee. And so I think that's one aspect of the TAM expansion.

The second aspect of the TAM expansion is our investment in new product categories. So as I pointed out in my remarks, we've started in programmable messaging and voice and things like that. And since then, we've gotten into areas like e-mail, like marketing. We've gone into the enterprise cloud contact center market with Flex, and that's driven a certain amount of TAM expansion.

And then I think the third dynamic, and this is perhaps illustrated by our relatively early foray into a vertical like health care is that several of these verticals have not even really begun their own digital transformation journeys. And so as we continue to work with customers in some of these newer verticals, we're also seeing TAM expansion in that regard as well. And then obviously, as we look at some of these TAM dynamics beyond our own experience, we look at what some of the external analysts and so forth put together in terms of the way that they're evaluating and analyzing the marketplace, and we use that to inform in part some of our investment decisions.

生意

Jeff Lawson

1.如何定位Twilio：第一幕是我們專注在溝通，第二幕是我們理解到在哪些溝通領域更有價值，且更具策略意義

And so as you think about the story arc of the company, I think Act 1 is communications and Act 2 was realizing how a particular kind of communication is even more valuable and is much more strategic than some other kinds of communications. And we're double-clicking there, and that's where we're layering on Act 2 in the company. And we couldn't be more excited about that. I think our customers are, too if you look at the proof points.

2.我們產品滿足客戶三種需求：digital engagement, software agility and cloud scale.

From the Super Network to our APIs, to products like Flex, our platform provides 3 things that companies need: digital engagement, software agility and cloud scale. Companies across industries and around the world are using our platform to power the next generation of customer engagement solutions.

Twilio's business model starts with the developers. We were founded by 3 software developers. And since day 1, we have been focused on being developer first and making our platform easy and accessible for the developers of the world to embed communications into their applications with very little friction and very low upfront cost. This slide is an illustration of how one customer scaled with Twilio. And we see that with many of our customers, they follow up a similar trajectory.

3.客戶旅程：從工程師開始(Land→Expand→Customers Succeed)

In the first phase, a developer signs up for Twilio with little or no upfront costs and builds a prototype and watches as usage starts to scale. This is how we "land."

Developers start with one application or solve one small problem, and customers quickly increase their usage as they start rolling out more broadly. And then this developer may want to add more capabilities and enable more solutions for their customers. And this is how we "expand."

Our platform enables software developers to easily add a broad suite of communications tools to their existing applications, which are then made available to all of their customers. And as they use more, we earn more revenue. And so as a result, when our customers succeed, we succeed.

And here you see the combination of our new customer additions, the land piece, and our high DBNE (dollar-based net expansion rate) , which is the expand piece. Customers join our platform, stay on the platform and continue to grow. And that trend has continued with the 2020 cohort, which is outpacing all recent years. We get customers on the platform. They stay on the platform and continue to grow as they expand their usage, add new products and add new use cases. But we can't do all of this on our own, and we have built a great partner ecosystem to expand our reach.

4.Twilio的投資政策
專注在Go to market組織，希望能專注讓用戶能低成本、容易的使用我們的產品。為此我們持續投資R&D，我們有200個工程師團隊，專注在四大產品線上（INFRASTRUCTURE, PRODUCTS, GLOBAL SCALE, CUSTOMER TRUST)

We have continued to invest in our go-to-market organization. We have a very efficient go-to-market strategy as our developer-focused model allows for easy, low-cost onboarding for many of our customers. And you can see we're one of the best in the tech industry.

And of course, we have to give those sales reps products and features to sell. So we are continuing to invest in our R&D function. We have over 200 discrete engineering teams across Twilio focused around the 4 key pillars you see on the page. We are building scalable infrastructure, fantastic products that must serve all of our global customers, and trust through fraud and security protection is always the 1st thing we sell. Ultimately, all of this is geared towards building the best customer engagement capabilities in the marketplace.

We also know that we can't always build everything, and acquisitions are a part of our strategy. A preponderance of our acquisitions have been smaller tuck-in deals that added important functionality or brought in important talent. And of course, we've talked about SendGrid and the success we've delivered with that acquisition.

5.併購尋找的是什麼？用戶互動、產品擴張、技術能力、拓展全球市場

When we consider M&A, we'll look for assets around customer engagement, product expansion, technology capabilities or something that will expand our international presence and growth. We always go through a build versus buy versus partner discussion. We've been judicious in our approach to M&A, and we do anticipate M&A will continue to be a part of our strategy going forward.

6.併購策略→客戶告訴我們他們需要解決最大的問題是什麼，我們則從中尋找產品路線，如果有類似的併購機會將會非常吸引我們。
目前看到在幾個領域有這樣的機會：AI&ML、 engagement cloud、Flex

What we tend to look at is where is our product road map taking us, where our -- and that's basically where our customers are pulling us. What are the big problems that customers are telling us and showing us with their actions that they need big problems solved, and therefore, where are we going as a company. And when we see opportunities to accelerate that road map and solving the problems that our customers need solved through inorganic means, those are the types of opportunities that look attractive to us. And we're always running the active game board to look at the variety of companies that could be out there.

And when I think about it, there's the category of things that are in the AI and ML space that can make use of a lot of the data that Twilio has to unlock new outcomes for customers. There is capabilities as we grow internationally. We've done a couple of small tuck-ins to grow our international footprint.

And then there's the engagement cloud. And when we look at the Engagement Cloud, what we see, because of how customers build on top of us, is that there are major problems out there with the status quo and how companies have to stitch together various apps in order to have a coherent customer strategy. And they're looking for a new way of doing that.

And that's the observations that led us to build Flex, to build a more flexible in-the-cloud solution that allows developers to go in and really integrate Flex with other systems and build a much more integrated approach and not be locked in to the features and functionality that were in the box when it got delivered to them, but rather to take that as a baseline and then go innovate on top of that. Because companies who innovate in the eyes of their customers and the things that customers experience, those are the companies that tend to win.

And so when we look at that playbook that we did with Flex, we are seeing opportunities to go serve customers across a wide variety of areas. We have talked about marketing. We see a lot of companies building new marketing solutions on top of Twilio, either on the SendGrid APIs or the Twilio APIs, in order to engage with their customers in the marketing stage. And so we're curious to hear why it is that customers want to go build new solutions, why the legacy marketing clouds may not be cutting it for them.

We also want to hear about other parts. And I think we've started -- one of the things we've talked about in the past is like field service is an area where a lot of companies are building on top of Twilio. And I think Frontline actually starts to get at that problem domain. And so these are just all areas, in the fullness of time, we -- our road map entails that we -- as we hear these problems, we feel an obligation in many ways to our customers to go solve the problems that customers have in the world, and we have this great vantage point to see the areas of customer engagement where every company struggles because they use our platform to go build a better solution on top of it.

And so when we see those opportunities, there may be -- when we see those opportunities to serve our customers, those may be accelerated by some inorganic means. But no specifics, obviously, to share, but we're always running an active game board to ask how can we accelerate.

Shipchandler CFO

1.有什麼問題是你希望投資人問，但卻沒有被問的問題？
我們如何與客戶互動，我們為什麼有能力讓我們的客戶與他們的客戶創造最好的體驗

I mean every day we show up for work, we've got to earn our customers' business. And the fact that they're using our platform more and more every day means that they're getting a great ROI out of the usage of our platform. But whereas perhaps before it might have been geared around specific communications, the reality is, is that we look at the marketplace all through the lens of how do we engage with customers, how do we allow our best customers and all of our customers to engage with their consumers and create the best experiences to be able to do that.

And I think in the big picture, that's really what this whole thing is about.

I think the real story behind the story is customer engagement. And I think that is kind of the transformative thing that's happening. I think that's the secular tailwind that's behind digital transformation. And that's what's going to create stickiness and great relationships with us and our customers.

George COO （現已離職）

1.Twilio是什麼不是什麼
我們正在觸及其他的溝通領域

Well, I think one of the super interesting things about Twilio is that like when I joined the company 3.5 years ago, we're pretty much known for a voice API and an SMS API. And at some level, you could say, well, that means that all the rest of communications is open to use so maybe you could argue there's more opportunity back then.

But I view it very differently. I think that while, theoretically, the whole market may have been out there, what's realistically achievable, like a lot of it was like 3 to 4 to 5 steps away from where we were. It was just too far away to really realistically think about executing it. And now that we have e-mail, now that we have Flex, now that we have Autopilot, I mean, the things that are now like only 1 to 2 to 3 degrees of separation away from where we are today are actually much greater. And so I think that it's much more strategically interesting today than it was even back then because what is -- the art of what's realistically possible for us is exponentially larger now given the surface area of what we have. And still, against the backdrop of a massive untapped market opportunity. So I think there's never been a more interesting and wide open time for the product possibilities here at Twilio.

2.與客戶最大的兩個接觸點：Message, email，其次是Flex, Video

I would say that for historical pattern has largely been messaging as the Trojan horse -- like the #1 Trojan horse, entry point for Twilio. And with the acquisition of SendGrid, I think it added another material entry point, which is e-mail. And those 2 are -- I just count of company, by far, the 2 largest entry points for us. I would say that Flex by count of company maybe has not been large entry point, but it is bringing us into a new set of companies and decision makers, ones that have not been thinking about a messaging solution per se, but a contact center solution.

And for 2020, video has been an interesting entry point.

3.與Salesforce差異:在API等核心能力上，Salesforce仍然在非常早期，且我們並不專注在特定競爭者上，我們關注的是大市場機會以及我們如何達到那裡，比任何人都更滿足客戶的需求

I was at Salesforce, as many of you know, for 13 years, and we had -- we launched plenty of products. And there's plenty of pure-play companies that all did very, very well despite that. And I think the reality is that while we respect every company out there, we know that we are more focused on this space than anyone else, and we are putting all our energy into this like no other company in the market is. And you see that in the breadth of our vision, the investments we're making, the platform and the developer momentum. And I think that you can -- it's kind of a little bit of a shame we're on a virtual conference versus a physical conference this year. I think you'd feel it even more how much energy there really is around this company right now.

So over the long term, I think we're going to win by basically being against any particular company out there by being more focused in really the things that we do really well, APIs, cloud, developer, breadth of vision, complete platform and the quality of our people and the teams and ecosystem we bring to that. I think those are all the core competitive areas we're going to win on.

In the short term, I think right now, our understanding is they're pretty early days. And I think there's not a lot of comparison right now. But we're focused on the long term, and we're not honestly focused on any particular competitor. We're focused on just a huge market opportunity in front of us and how we're going to execute and meet customer needs better than anyone else.

客戶

Jeff Lawson

1.競爭-這是一個巨大的市場、Twilio專注在這個領域且做出差異化、我們不在意競爭者，在意客戶

I'll give you the same answer that I've given over the many years whenever a competitor enters the market. Like when Amazon started building communications products several years ago, and Google did, when Facebook did, even when -- I remember when Blackberry dropped a press release on the morning of, I think, it was our first public earnings call that they were going to go take down Twilio. And so it's sort of the same answer.

First of all, it's a huge market. So of course, there's going to be competition. And that doesn't worry us because, second, we're no stranger to competition. And the reason we continue to grow so quickly despite various kinds of competitors we've had over the years is our differentiation and our focus. It's in the breadth and the depth of the complete product suite we have. It's in our relentless developer focus. It's in our super network, in building that flywheel, which continues to grow, which you've seen, by the way, has been on fire lately, fueling that acceleration of growth, especially in messaging.

And last, I'll close with we really don't focus on competitors. Like, yes, we're smart. We're aware of the competition, sure. But we focus on customers because they guide the way. And I think a mistake a lot of companies make because is they focus too much on competitors as opposed to focus on customers. And so we focus on customers. That's what we're doing, and we're going to keep building. And it's a big market. And so I don't really particularly worry about any one company entering this space, just like I don't particularly worry about any of those others who have been in this space over the many years.

George COO （現已離職）

1.全球2000公司的持續滲透最關鍵的點是什麼：Capacity，專業的行業團隊、法遵及資安

Q:what are the keys to driving deeper penetration over the next several years in the G2K?

I mean I think the most fundamental thing you need is you need capacity. I mean you need distribution capacity, you need people that are willing to go and go talk to customers. I think that's a lot of still -- even if we're not traveling, it still takes time to build relationships and go through all of the process it takes just to get into an enterprise.

To support that does take a different set of resources. Some of those are external to the company, like the GSIs, as we talked about already on this call. But also, we've brought in a set of things like vertical specialists on things like health care and financial services. We've complemented that on the product side with investments and things like HIPAA and other types of compliance and security and enterprise technologies or features.

So yes, it is a different investment model to penetrate the enterprise. The return from that obviously comes from bigger transaction sizes. And also, I think that the enterprise is the most fertile ground for us to sell our highest value, stickiest, most interesting products, especially around the application services area.

So long term, I think the enterprise is the place that we're not just going to be able to get to 7, 8 figure-type annual relationships, but also ones that have like a really, really good mix of the types of higher level, higher-margin services and products that we get more and more excited about in the company. So I think that's a long-term payout for making that investment today.

2.我們的生意是B2C Focus嗎？

I think that we've got a long way to go in terms of in terms of business-to-consumer, business-to-consumer communications, business-to-consumer engagement. I think that is where our value proposition plays best because where we are -- where our approach, where our model shines is when you need developers because you want to do something that's unique and different and differentiated.

Now, look, if our customers say to us -- all say to us at the end of SIGNAL, this is all great, but what I really need is a new way to actually facilitate employee-to-employee communication, then maybe we'll go have that conversation. I do think that Frontline could open an interesting door there for us, but certainly, that's not the focus for the company right now.

- 如何對應低價同業的競爭

我們知道我們在市場上的價格具有Premium,但客戶仍然沒有離開我們的主要原因為我們API的品質、應用的品質以及整體的體驗。我們的工作是擴展他們的應用，隨著我們關係的深入，我們可以提供Flex, Authy或是其他產品，這個關係會越來越深，越來越具有黏性，這是我們的工作。

我們的客戶對與我們互動的經驗非常正面。透過提供好的客戶體驗，給我們非常大的長期客戶留存。

I would say this, like, by and large, the vast majority of customers that we talk to understand that, look, like everything else in life, at higher volumes, generally, people get different price points. I mean, I think that's true for us. It's true for every -- it's true for all software. It's true for the company I came from.

And the -- but the exciting thing is that when I talk to customers, by and large, they say that their strong preference is to stay with Twilio, right, all things being equal. And so our job is -- our job is to listen to our customers and make sure that we are with them. And for the core products they're using today, making sure we're recognizing it when they do have growth with us and making sure that gets factored in. I do see us get consistently a premium in the market because people value the breadth of our platform, the quality of our delivery, the quality of the APIs, the quality of application, the whole experience. And then our job is to expand the usage over time. And as we expand our relationship, as we sell them Flex and/or Authy or other technologies out there, it's like anything else in life, the relationship gets deeper and stickier and all the kind of things you would expect. So that's our job.

But by and large, customers -- people really are positive on the experience they have with us. And so by delivering that great customer experience, I think that gives us a huge edge in long-term customer retention. And you see it in our churn number and you see it in our DBNE numbers. It's -- we couldn't get those numbers if we weren't able to retain our customers and grow those relationships.

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