I am bummed to be missing Twilio’s annual Signal Conference this year. Not just because Jeff does a fantastic keynote, but because Twilio always announces a truckload of amazing new goodness. Here are just two great things from yesterday: first, a marketplace for add-ons which lets third parties connect with Twilio’s 1 million developers (a milestone also announced yesterday) and second, programmable Twilio-powered SIM cards for IoT applications (in conjunction with T-Mobile).
While the announcements themselves are exciting, what’s really impressive is what makes them possible: a deep commitment to innovation. This has been part of Twilio’s culture from early on. The company was founded in June 2008 and launched its voice service in November of that year. By February 2010 they launched their second product, the now widely used SMS Service. I can’t recall a time since the, when the Twilio team wasn’t hard at work on many new products. Twilio powers communication; Twilio is powered by innovation.
Now this seems to be going against the grain of much startup advice which is to focus, focus, and focus. Isn’t a second product (and the many others launched since) a distraction? Aren’t you spreading yourself too thin? Shouldn’t you focus on making your initial product the best that it can be and see how much you can grow that?
I think Twilio’s example shows quite clearly that if you want to build a big business then the answer to these questions is no. You can only build a company of Twilio’s scale if you invest heavily in innovation and you need to make that part of the company’s culture from early on. And that’s not just true for a company such as Twilio. Think about Amazon (launched in 1995) going past books in 1998. Or Facebook (launched in 2004) adding the news feed in 2006.
So congratulations to the team at Twilio on another year of innovation and the resulting advances for all of Twilio’s current and future customers!
