Twilio

The private credit market has grown enormously fast in recent years — so much so that by some estimates it's now bigger than the market for junk-rated corporate bonds. So what's driven all that growth? What impact has private credit had on other types of corporate debt? And why are there so many concerns around the space right now? In this episode, we speak with John Sheehan and Craig Manchuck, two veteran portfolio managers for the strategic income fund at Osterweis Capital Management. We talk about the history of private credit before and after 2008, private credit's links with private equity and insurance, the prospect of higher defaults, and what to watch for right now. Subscribe to the Odd Lots Newsletter Join the conversation: discord.gg/oddlots See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Sheehan

Portfolio Manager

Osterweis Capital ManagementTwilio

Craig Manchuck

Portfolio Manager

Osterweis Capital Management

The Stack Overflow Developer Survey is an annual survey conducted by Stack Overflow that gathers comprehensive insights from developers around the world. It offers a valuable snapshot of the global developer community, covering a wide range of topics such as preferred programming languages, tools, and technologies. Jody Bailey is the Chief Product and Technology Officer at Stack Overflow and Erin Yepis is a Research Manager at Stack Overflow. They join the show with Sean Falconer to talk about the results of the 2025 Developer Survey, which was recently released. Sean’s been an academic, startup founder, and Googler. He has published works covering a wide range of topics from AI to quantum computing. Currently, Sean is an AI Entrepreneur in Residence at Confluent where he works on AI strategy and thought leadership. You can connect with Sean on LinkedIn. Please click here to see the transcript of this episode. Sponsorship inquiries: sponsor@softwareengineeringdaily.com The post The 2025 Stack Overflow Developer Survey with Jody Bailey and Erin Yepis appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Jody Bailey

Chief Product and Technology Officer

Stack OverflowTwilio

Erin Yepis

Research Manager

Stack Overflow

Last year, after pressure from activist investors, Jeff Lawson stepped down from his perch as CEO from Twilio, the cloud communications company he co-founded. But he didn’t spend any time twiddling his thumbs — that same spring, he bought the satirical news organization The Onion, and by the end of the year, they’d tried to buy Alex Jones’ Infowars at a bankruptcy auction.  Jeff also stayed busy on the political front, continuing his work on DemocracyFirst, a political action committee he co-founded, in 2022, to support candidates committed to democracy.  So there was plenty to chew on when Kara interviewed Jeff last week at Democracy’s Information Dilemma, a symposium hosted by the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. They discuss the tech founder mindset; how Jeff is remaking The Onion; why political satire is more necessary than ever; why DEI — which Jeff championed as a CEO — can sometimes do more harm than good; and how to fight for democracy during Trump 2.0. Questions? Comments? Email us at on@voxmedia.com or find us on Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

Twilio, a communication platform as a service (CPaaS), allows developers to build voice, video, and messaging capabilities into their apps. Devs can get started with their docs. Find Inbal on LinkedIn. Kudos to Stack Overflow user Wesos de Queso for explaining how to Prevent a toggle group from not having a toggle selected - Java FX. AI, Twilio, Inbal Shani, machine learning, LLM, developer productivity, responsible AI, tech stack, customer engagement, conversational AI See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Inbal Shani

Chief Product Officer

GitHubTwilio

SaaStr 761: How to Build Pipeline and GTM Alignment with Datadog's CMO Sara Varni Sara Varni, Datadog's CMO, shares how to build pipeline and create alignment across sales and marketing. The CMO role at Datadog covers the usual aspects of marketing, including product marketing, corporate communications, events, partnership marketing, and solutions marketing. While these insights seem like pipeline 101, they aren't always implemented. Let's look at some quick facts about Sara's experience. She spent a decade at Salesforce before moving on to Twilio as CMO when they were at about $400M ARR with 30 sales reps. They had a healthy self-service motion, but growth was flattening. About four years later, she joined Attentive as CMO, a late-stage startup in the SMS marketing space. Now, she's the CMO at Datadog. Each of these companies had different GTM motions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hey everybody - thanks to the 10,000 of you who came out to SaaStr Annual. We had a blast and big news -- we'll be back in MAY of 2025. That's right, the SaaStr Annual will be a bit earlier next year, May 13-15 2025. We'll still be back in the same venue, in the SF bay area at the 40+ acre sprawling san mateo county events center. Grab your tickets at saastrannual.com with code jason50 for an extra discount on our very best pricing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is sponsored by: remote.com When the right person for the job is a world away, Remote Talent brings the world to you. As the top job board for remote-first companies, we give you powerful tools to post your listings and reach the world's top candidates and remote professionals. Start building your dream team from anywhere—visit Remote.com/jobs today. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This episode is sponsored by: Anrok A question for SaaS finance leaders, do you know where your customers are? Anrok tracks where your sales are creating exposure, and automates tax calculation and filing worldwide. Built for high-growth software companies, Anrok protects your revenue and saves you time. Visit anrok.com/saastr to learn more.

Sara Varni

CMO

DatadogAttentiveTwilio

Inbal Shani is the chief product officer at GitHub, where she leads core product management, along with product strategy, marketing, open source, and communities, including the development of GitHub Copilot. Prior to joining GitHub, she led engineering and product teams at Amazon and Microsoft. In today’s conversation, we discuss: • What Inbal believes is overhyped and underhyped in the rapidly changing field of AI • How AI-driven code generation is changing software development • Her take on whether AI will replace developers • How software development looks in 3 to 5 years • How product teams operate at GitHub • GitHub’s Next team, and other ways the company fosters a culture of innovation • The success metrics and philosophy behind GitHub’s Copilot — Brought to you by Jira Product Discovery—Atlassian’s new prioritization and roadmapping tool built for product teams | Sanity—The most customizable content layer to power your growth engine | HelpBar by Chameleon—The free in-app universal search solution built for SaaS — Find the transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-future-of-ai-in-software-development-inbal-shani-cpo-of-github/#transcript — Where to find Inbal Shani: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/inbalshani/ — Where to find Lenny: • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Inbal’s background (04:17) Why generative AI is not going to replace developers in the near future  (05:54) Why AI-driven testing is underhyped (07:48) What the next 3 to 5 years will look like (10:13) Stats around the use of GitHub Copilot  (12:07) How Copilot enables engineers to work more efficiently (13:38) Common mistakes when adopting AI into your workflows (16:42) How GitHub operationalizes “dogfooding” (18:46) The philosophy behind Copilot (20:24) Copilot’s success metrics (24:54) How Copilot encourages collaboration (26:37) What we lose when AI writes code for us (29:35) A retrospective on the generative AI space (30:47) Inbal’s thoughts on the future of AI (32:35) How to make space for innovative product ideas (34:37) How GitHub stays on the cutting edge of innovation (36:44) The GitHub Next team (39:20) Advice for early product managers (42:17) Inbal’s “biggest learning” from her career (45:34) Inbal’s closing thoughts (46:19) Lightning round — Referenced: • How to measure and improve developer productivity | Nicole Forsgren (Microsoft Research, GitHub, Google): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-measure-and-improve-developer-productivity-nicole-forsgren-microsoft-research-github-goo/ • DORA: https://dora.dev/ • The role of AI in product development | Ryan J. Salva (VP of Product at GitHub, Copilot): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-role-of-ai-in-new-product-development-ryan-j-salva-vp-of-product-at-github-copilot/ • GitHub Universe 2023 day 2 keynote: The productivity platform for all developers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_o9kFPVeiw • Satya Nadella on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyanadella/ • TomTom: https://www.tomtom.com/ • Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success: https://www.amazon.com/Failing-Forward-Turning-Mistakes-Stepping/dp/0785288570/ • Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0066620996 • Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great: https://www.amazon.com/Turning-Flywheel-Monograph-Accompany-Great/dp/0062933795 • Dare to Lead Like a Girl: How to Survive and Thrive in the Corporate Jungle: https://www.amazon.com/Dare-Lead-Like-Girl-Corporate/dp/1538163527 • All the Light We Cannot See on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81083008 • The Wheel of Time on Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Wheel-Time-Season-1/dp/B09F59CZ7R — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. — Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

Inbal Shani

Chief Product Officer

GitHubTwilio

Kevin Niparko is the VP of Product @ Twilio. Kevin joined Twilio through the acquisition of Segment where he spent an incredible 8 years in numerous different roles including as Head of Product. Before entering the world of product, Kevin was a Management Associate at the world-renowned, Bridgewater Associates. In Today's Episode with Kevin Niparko We Discuss: 1. From Bridgewater to Head of Product: How Kevin made his way from the world of asset management and analytics to leading product teams? What are 1-2 of Kevin's biggest takeaways from his time at Bridgewater with Ray Dalio? How did the 8 year journey with Segment leading to their $3BN acquisition impact his approach to product? 2. What Makes a Great Product Person: Does Kevin believe that product is more art or science? If he were to put a number on it? What would it be out of 100? Why does Kevin believe that all product people should learn to write? Why does Kevin believe that the best product people are generalists and not specialists? Why does Kevin think that analytics is an insanely good start for product people? 3. How to Hire the Best Product People: How does Kevin approach the hiring process for product hires today? What are the non-obvious traits of hires he looks for? How does he test for them? Does Kevin use case studies? Where do many fall down? What do the best do? 4. Product Reviews: Good vs Great: How often does Kevin do product reviews? Who is invited? How have product reviews changed in a world where the company is now fully remote? What is the difference between good and great product reviews? What is the single best product decision Kevin has made? What did he learn? What is the worst product decision Kevin made? How did that change his approach?

Kevin Niparko

VP of Product

TwilioSegment

Twilio is a customer engagement platform whose communication APIs for voice, text, chat, email, and video are used by millions of developers. See what’s happening on their blog, dig into their docs, or check out their Stack Overflow Collective. This summer, Twilio announced CustomerAI, which applies the power of LLMs to the rich troves of customer data that flows through Twilio’s platform. Learn more here. ICYMI: From the stage of WeAreDevelopers, Stack Overflow announced a roadmap for integrating GenAI into our public platform and paid offerings. Check out Stack Overflow Labs to see what we’re working on. Also ICYMI: Listen to our conversation with Jody about his path from physics to sales to programming and what drew him to working at Stack Overflow. Register for SIGNAL 2023, Twilio’s customer and developer conference, happening virtually and for free on August 23, 2023. Attendees can expect a deep dive into AI and how it’s revolutionizing customer experience technology. Connect with Kathryn on LinkedIn or the social network formerly known as Twitter. Connect with Jody on LinkedIn.  Three cheers for Lifeboat badge winner blackgreen, who swooped in to save How can I write a generic function that accepts any numerical type? from the howling void of ignorance. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jody Bailey

Chief Product and Technology Officer

Stack OverflowTwilio

Summary Every business has customers, and a critical element of success is understanding who they are and how they are using the companies products or services. The challenge is that most companies have a multitude of systems that contain fragments of the customer's interactions and stitching that together is complex and time consuming. Segment created the Unify product to reduce the burden of building a comprehensive view of customers and synchronizing it to all of the systems that need it. In this episode Kevin Niparko and Hanhan Wang share the details of how it is implemented and how you can use it to build and maintain rich customer profiles. Announcements Hello and welcome to the Data Engineering Podcast, the show about modern data management RudderStack helps you build a customer data platform on your warehouse or data lake. Instead of trapping data in a black box, they enable you to easily collect customer data from the entire stack and build an identity graph on your warehouse, giving you full visibility and control. Their SDKs make event streaming from any app or website easy, and their extensive library of integrations enable you to automatically send data to hundreds of downstream tools. Sign up free at dataengineeringpodcast.com/rudderstack Your host is Tobias Macey and today I'm interviewing Kevin Niparko and Hanhan Wang about Segment's new Unify product for building and syncing comprehensive customer profiles across your data systems Interview Introduction How did you get involved in the area of data management? Can you describe what Segment Unify is and the story behind it? What are the net-new capabilities that it brings to the Segment product suite? What are some of the categories of attributes that need to be managed in a prototypical customer profile? What are the different use cases that are enabled/simplified by the availability of a comprehensive customer profile? What is the potential impact of more detailed customer profiles on LTV? How do you manage permissions/auditability of updating or amending profile data? Can you describe how the Unify product is implemented? What are the technical challenges that you had to address while developing/launching this product? What is the workflow for a team who is adopting the Unify product? What are the other Segment products that need to be in use to take advantage of Unify? What are some of the most complex edge cases to address in identity resolution? How does reverse ETL factor into the enrichment process for profile data? What are some of the issues that you have to account for in synchronizing profiles across platforms/products? How do you mititgate the impact of "regression to the mean" for systems that don't support all of the attributes that you want to maintain in a profile record? What are some of the data modeling considerations that you have had to account for to support e.g. historical changes (e.g. slowly changing dimensions)? What are the most interesting, innovative, or unexpected ways that you have seen Segment Unify used? What are the most interesting, unexpected, or challenging lessons that you have learned while working on Segment Unify? When is Segment Unify the wrong choice? What do you have planned for the future of Segment Unify? Contact Info Kevin LinkedIn Blog Hanhan LinkedIn Parting Question From your perspective, what is the biggest gap in the tooling or technology for data management today? Closing Announcements Thank you for listening! Don't forget to check out our other shows. Podcast.__init__ covers the Python language, its community, and the innovative ways it is being used. The Machine Learning Podcast helps you go from idea to production with machine learning. Visit the site to subscribe to the show, sign up for the mailing list, and read the show notes. If you've learned something or tried out a project from the show then tell us about it! Email hosts@dataengineeringpodcast.com) with your story. To help other people find the show please leave a review on Apple Podcasts and tell your friends and co-workers Links Segment Unify Segment Podcast Episode Customer Data Platform (CDP) Golden Profile Reverse ETL MarTech Landscape The intro and outro music is from The Hug by The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA Sponsored By: Rudderstack:  RudderStack provides all your customer data pipelines in one platform. You can collect, transform, and route data across your entire stack with its event streaming, ETL, and reverse ETL pipelines. RudderStack’s warehouse-first approach means it does not store sensitive information, and it allows you to leverage your existing data warehouse/data lake infrastructure to build a single source of truth for every team. RudderStack also supports real-time use cases. You can Implement RudderStack SDKs once, then automatically send events to your warehouse and 150+ business tools, and you’ll never have to worry about API changes again. Visit [dataengineeringpodcast.com/rudderstack](https://www.dataengineeringpodcast.com/rudderstack) to sign up for free today, and snag a free T-Shirt just for being a Data Engineering Podcast listener. Support Data Engineering Podcast

Kevin Niparko

VP of Product

TwilioSegment

Hanhan Wang

Segment

When Jeff Lawson co-founded Twilio in 2008, he had already been through a series of start-ups. Some succeeded, others fizzled out—but each provided insights that led him to build one of the most extensive communication platforms in business. Fueled by his frustration juggling customer calls while trying to run a surf and skate store in LA, Lawson realized he could use his coding skills and knowledge of cloud computing to help companies connect with customers. Twilio’s early communications technology quickly gained traction with developers at other start-ups like Uber, which used it to text riders that their car had arrived. Despite early skepticism from investors, Twilio eventually grew into a $4 billion business, with customers like Nike, Toyota, OpenAI, and Airbnb. This episode was produced by Kira Wakeam, with music by Ramtin Arablouei Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Sam Paulson. You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

The last few years have certainly tested marketers, but 2022 serves up a brand new array of challenges. Uncharted territory stretches ahead, but the unknown can also present opportunities for growth and greatness. At Mutiny's The Second Lever digital conference, SaaStr Founder Jason Lemkin hosted a star-studded CMO panel featuring Salesforce President & CMO Sarah Franklin, Box CMO Chris Koehler, and Attentive CMO Sara Varni. In the eye-opening session, these marketing leaders discuss the market pulse, impactful branding, and strategies for the future. Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Sarah Franklin

President and CMO

SalesforceLattice

Chris Koehler

Chief Marketing Officer

Box

Sara Varni

CMO

DatadogAttentiveTwilio

Episode notes Before joining Stack, Jody spent time at Pluralsight and AWS Training, two roles that helped him to understand the growing market for online educational self-taught developers. We interviewed his former colleagues at AWS training in this episode. Enjoy the frustration of debugging your own code. Maybe you it brings you eustress? Ben does not experience this, nor does he like the classic video game Myst. But it takes all kinds. Interested in learning more about the changing trends in Developer education? Check out data from our latest Dev Survey and research from the teams at Skillsoft, another member of the Prosus Ed-tech portfolio. Today’s lifeboat badge goes to Anton VBR for explaining: What's the function of dedent() in Python? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Jody Bailey

Chief Product and Technology Officer

Stack OverflowTwilio

Every sales leader struggles to retain their talent - especially in today's employee market. In this session, Alice Katwan, Twilio's SVP and GM of North America Sales, will reveal her strategies for building a high-performing sales team that sticks around for the long haul. If you are spending too many cycles recruiting, onboarding, and worrying about retaining your top sales reps — this session is for you. Full video: https://youtu.be/iKhWflFcU-U Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-build-a-super-high-retention-sales-team-with-twilio-svp-gm-of-north-america-sales-alice-katwan/ Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Alice Katwan

SVP & GM of North America Sales

Twilio

B2B marketing powerhouse, Sara Varni joins this episode on her final day at Twilio to discuss her journey and what lies ahead as she steps into her new role as Chief Marketing Officer at Attentive. Sara demonstrates a stellar track record of marketing know-how and creativity and has a refreshing take on the ever-changing marketing landscape. In this episode, Sara shares insight on what it means to speak to your audience and uses an example from her Twitter to show how products can market themselves. She reflects on her time at Salesforce and Twilio, discusses why it’s important for marketers to recharge, and explores how her disciplined mindset contributes to her success. Sara and Joubin also discuss their shared love of bowling and Sara shares her thoughts on joining Attentive at the beginning of its next phase of growth. In this episode, we cover: “The full slice of life at the bowling alley”: Sara and Joubin connect over their love for bowling. (04:26) How Sara learned from her father’s disciplined mentality - and what it means to create a home for her children. (07:17) Sara follows up on her tweet about product marketing - and she shares why her 10 years at Salesforce was “the best marketing training.” (15:14) A look back at the marketing structural changes at Salesforce and Sara’s role as CMO - and a conversation about writing memorable copy and earning “the right to speak to your audience.” (26:14) Sara’s insight on why managers play a key role in cultivating a motivated team - and her take on the balancing act of working remotely. (35:39) Why it’s important for marketers to recharge and how that mindset led Sara from Salesforce to Twilio. (39:53) Twilio’s aggressive customer-centric values and go-to-market approach - how Sara navigated her son’s autism diagnosis during that stressful time of her career and what gives her peace of mind. (48:31) Advice Sara received from her career coach and the benefits of a consistent feedback loop for people at any stage in their career. (56:16) Reflecting on Sara’s last day at Twilio and why she loves being a CMO. (01:02:49) Links: Connect with SaraLinkedIn Twitter Attentive Connect with JoubinTwitter LinkedIn Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Sara Varni

CMO

DatadogAttentiveTwilio

It was great to have Jeff back on the pod! But first, Producer Rachel gives some updates on TWIST Founder Meetups (01:54) and Jason talks a bit about Oculus (14:12). Then, Jeff Lawson from Twilio joins (24:42) to discuss their new mission to build the leading customer engagement platform, the launch of their new product Twilio Engage, lessons from scaling & their big acquisitions, San Francisco and more!

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

About Sean Sean Kilgore is an Architect at Twilio, where he draws boxes, lighthouses and soapboxes. In Sean’s spare time, he enjoys reading, walking, gaming, and a well-made drink. Links: Twilio: https://www.twilio.com/ Silvia Botros's Twitter: https://twitter.com/dbsmasher Sean's Twitter: https://twitter.com/log1kal

Sean Kilgore

Architect

Twilio

Jeff Lawson is the Founder & CEO @ Twilio, the company that allows you to unite communications and strengthen customer relationships across your business. Prior to their incredibly successful IPO in 2016 Jeff raised funding from some of the best including Bessemer, Union Square Ventures, Redpoint, Salesforce and Founders Fund to name a few. Before founding Twilio, Jeff was co-founder & CTO of NineStar, founding CTO of Stubhub.com, co-founder, CEO & CTO of Versity, and one of the first product managers for Amazon Web Services. In Today's Episode with Jeff Lawson You Will Learn: 1.) How Jeff made his way into the world of tech and startups and what that founding a-ha moment was for Jeff with Twilio? When explaining new ideas to people, what signals to Jeff that the idea is resonating? Are there clear indicators an idea is not resonating? 2.) Leadership: What does great leadership mean to Jeff today? How has Jeff's leadership style changed and evolved over the years? What does Jeff believe is the key to great storytelling? How has the leadership style required, changed in a COVID world? What have been the biggest inflection points in his leadership? 3.) Culture: What does Jeff believe are the 3 key ingredients to company culture? How can leaders create a tribe that people associate with? What are the biggest lessons we can take from sport and religion when it comes to culture building? At what points has Jeff been concerned about the Twilio culture? What did he do to rectify it? Why are "values nice but principles better"? 4.) Decision-Making: How has Jeff created a culture of decentralised decision-making? What has Jeff done to ensure the best ideas rise to the top? In what ways can leaders ensure people feel safe to be bold and go big, without the fear of failure? How does Jeff determine when to give or remove resources from new ideas? How does Jeff think about the importance of "focus"? 5.) Diversity: Frank Slootman previously said, "diversity should not override merit". What are the core problems that Jeff has with this statement? How do Twilio construct their recruitment pipelines to ensure diversity? Why does Jeff believe the secret to human assessment is one of "miles travelled"? What are the signals of this? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Jeff Lawson Jeff's Favourite Book: Made to Stick: Why some ideas take hold and others come unstuck As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

Jeff Lawson, Twilio CEO and the author of "Ask Your Developer: How to Harness the Power of Software Developers and Win in the 21st Century," shares secrets on bridging the gap between your technical team and leadership team to maximize success. This episode is an excerpt of Jason and Jeff's session from SaaStr Build. You can watch the full video here: https://youtu.be/WPvjG-44zJ4

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

You can find Michelle on Twitter here. You can learn more about building apps with Twilio here. Our lifeboat badge of the week goes to TryingToLearn for explaining the error that pops up in Python when: you can't assign to literal. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Michelle Grover

CIO

Twilio

At his core, Jeff Lawson is a software developer first, and a CEO second. He knows both sides of the executive & engineering equation intimately. He gets what goes on in a developer's brain and the detailed process of building software, but he understands that businesses are motivated to move quickly. And in turn, developers need to adapt. An all-time SaaStr fan-favorite, Jeff recently chatted with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin to discuss his thoughts on collaborating, managing, and working with developers. Video and blog post: https://www.saastr.com/how-to-collaborate-manage-and-work-with-developers-featuring-jeff-lawson-twilio/

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

Marc Boroditisky brings a unique perspective to the table as CRO of Twilio, as a founder and builder who has led several companies.  In this episode of Go to Market, Joubin and Marc discuss his unique background and journey that led him to Twilio, and how his experience and passions — like his love of startups and discovering product-market fit — have shaped his revenue leadership strategy. Joubin and Marc also discuss Twilio’s go to market motion, and their approach to customer service. In this episode of Go to Market Grit, we cover:  Marc’s winding career path, which has largely centered around authentication and identity/ access — and how that helped him land at Twilio. Marc’s pay it forward mindset in business, and why he likes to give back and help other organizations grow. Marc also explains why he loves working with smaller companies.  Marc’s thoughts on Oracle’s acquisition of PassLogix, and why the experience was a positive one for him. Marc’s 15 year run at PassLogix, and what it was like running a company independently for that long — including how they made it through the .com bubble burst, the mortgage meltdown, and intense contraction. A key lesson that Marc and his team at PassLogix learned during the mortgage crisis, which was discovering the place that they filled in the market. Marc explains how this lesson has shaped his outlook on business today. The key factors that led Twilio to buy Authy. What Twilio does, and some common use cases.  The functions that roll up to Marc as CRO of Twilio. What it’s like going to market with a product like Twilio, that’s relatively simple and lacks an extreme focus. The strategy of having specialization across different product lines. Marc explains how Twilio uses specialization. How Marc enabled Twilio to sell to large enterprise accounts.  The biggest challenge that Marc has faced since joining Twilio four years ago. Why Twilio prioritizes hiring the best and brightest talent in the industry. Marc also talks about why the company is looking for people with grit, how he defines grit, and why grit is necessary for building a strong customer-centric culture. Links:  Connect with Marc BoroditskyLinkedIn Connect with JoubinTwitter LinkedIn Email: gtmg@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Marc Boroditsky

CRO

Twilio

My guest this week is Jeff Lawson, the Founder, and CEO of Twilio. Twilio is a 15-billion-dollar company offering a cloud communications platform to its customers.  Twilio is used by customers like Lyft, Twitch, and Yelp to make communications in their products easy.  Jeff and I talk about why it pays to be a platform, how to be a platform, and how to sculpt a company culture. This is a must-listen for anyone building a business whether it’s a tech business or not. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 1:18 – (First Question) –  Company vowels and draw the owl 5:26 – Significance of API’s 12:14 – How non-software businesses can transition into the space          17:50 - Agile way of working at ING Belgium (video) 18:38 – How they strategize their product build 23:27 – The idea of asking your developer and why it’s so important to them 33:02 – How they codified their business culture 45:12 – Parting advice for people building platforms 48:13 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Jeff  Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

Today we deep dive into what startups can learn from the large SaaS incumbents of today. Sara Varni: CMO @ Twilio on her biggest takeaways from her time at Salesforce. Erica Schultz: President of Field Operations @ Confluent on her biggest takeaways from her time at Oracle. Whitney Bouck: COO @ Hellosign on her biggest takeaways from her time at Box. Leyla Seka: Partner @ Operator Collective on her biggest takeaways from her time at Salesforce. Ryan Bonnici: CMO @ G2 on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce. Ryan Barretto: SVP @ Sprout Social on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce Tien Tzuo: Founder & CEO @ Zuora on his biggest takeaways from his time at Salesforce. Paul Albright: Board member @ Clarizen on his biggest takeaways from his time at SuccessFactors. Jaleh Rezaei: Founder & CEO @ Mutiny on her biggest takeaways from her time at Gusto. Eugenio Pace: Founder & CEO @ Auth0 on his biggest takeaways from his time at Microsoft. Liat Bycel: VP @ Airtable on her biggest takeaways from her time at Twitter. Mark Goldberg: Partner @ Index on his biggest takeaways from his time at Dropbox. Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr

Sara Varni

CMO

DatadogAttentiveTwilio

Erica Schultz

President of Field Operations

ConfluentNew Relic

Whitney Bouck

COO

HelloSign

Leyla Seka

Partner

Operator CollectiveSalesforceIronclad

Ryan Bonnici

Chief Marketing Officer

WherebyG2

Ryan Barretto

SVP

Sprout Social

Tien Tzuo

Founder & CEO

Zuora

Sara Varni is the CMO @ Twilio, the company building the future of communications allowing you to engage customers like never before on voice, SMS, WhatsApp or Video. Prior to their IPO in 2016, Twilio had raised over $250m in VC funding from some of the best in venture including USV, Bessemer, Salesforce and Techstars just to name a few. As for Sara, prior to Twilio she spent 10 years with Salesforce in numerous roles including SVP of Marketing for Salesforce's Sales Cloud and CMO @ Desk.com, among other roles. If that wasn't enough, Sara is also an advisor @ Anthos Capital. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How did Sara made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the industry's leading CMOs with Twilio today? What were Sara's biggest takeaways from her 10 years at Salesforce seeing the incredible hyper-growth first hand? What does Sara mean when she says, "you have to have a creative plan to get your message to market"? Does Sara really believe that there is a playbook when it comes to marketing? How does Sara determine when to throw the playbook out of the window? What resounding question do you always have to ask yourself when thinking messaging? Messaging is very dependent on the customer being targeted, how does the messaging need to be different when targeting SMB vs enterprise? How does the creative plan to get the message to the target customer change dependent on SMB vs enterprise? Where does Sara see most people go wrong here? Why does Sara so strongly believe in the power of customer stories? What makes the very best customer stories? What would Sara's advice be to someone who is wanting to start creating them? Where does Sara see so many people go wrong? What are Sara's tips for creating this alignment between the marketing team that make the stories and the sales team that sell them? Where are there often points of tension? What does the very commonly used term, "enablement", really mean to Sara? Does it mean you can hire lower quality candidates and upgrade them? How does Sara distinguish between a stretch VP and a stretch too far? What questions does Sara find most revealing in the interview process? 60 Second SaaStr: What does Sara know now that she wishes she had known at the beginning? Who is crushing it in the world of SaaS marketing today? What is the most common reason for the breakdown of an efficient funnel? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Sara Varni

Sara Varni

CMO

DatadogAttentiveTwilio

Join Glitch CEO Anil Dash and Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson for a discussion about the ethical implications of technology in today's society. Jeff and Anil discuss how social media and AI are changing the way we think about the impact of technology on society as well as the responsibility of tech leaders for this impact. Missed the session? Here's what Jeff talks about: How taking no stance as a business leader today, is taking a stance How to set concrete numbers for diversity goals The impact of corporate culture on employee happiness If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin SaaStr Jeff Lawson Anil Dash

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

Anil Dash

CEO and Blogger

FastlyGlitchFog Creek Software

Jeff Lawson is the Founder & CEO @ Twilio, the company building the future of communications allowing you to engage customers like never before on voice, SMS, WhatsApp or Video. Prior to their IPO in 2016, Twilio had raised over $250m in VC funding from some of the best in venture including USV, Bessemer, Salesforce and Techstars just to name a few. As for Jeff, prior to founding Twilio, Jeff was the Founder & CTO @ Nine Star Inc and enjoyed a spell at Amazon as a Technical Product Manager. Sameer Dholakia is the CEO @ SendGrid, the category leader in email delivery, reaching half of the world's digital users every 3 months. Last year Twilio acquired SendGrid bringing email into one seamless customer engagement platform. As for Sameer, prior to joining SendGrid, he spent 4 years at Citrix, where he drove the company's product strategy for cloud infrastructure and server virtualization. Sameer joined the company in 2010, when Citrix acquired VMLogix, where he served as CEO and doubled revenues during each year of his tenure. Before that, he worked for 12 years at Trilogy, where he held key leadership roles helping the company grow from a start-up to a $300 million business. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Jeff came to found Twilio and what was that a-ha moment for him? How did Sameer enter the world of SaaS and come to be CEO @ SendGrid? How did Jeff and Sameer assess the culture fit between the 2 companies when deciding whether or not to join forces? How did they formulate and approach creating a new set of values with the 2 companies coming together? How do they distinguish between culture and values? How can leaders both be authoritative and vulnerable simultaneously? What does Jeff mean when he says, "the developer first approach is a maturation of the supply chain of software"? How has Jeff seen his original thesis for "developer first" evolve and change with time? What does truly special customer experience look like in the developer first model? In terms of product strategy, how do Jeff and Sameer approach when is the right time to release a second product? What does Jeff mean when he says, "you have to maximise the number of at bat opportunities you have"? Why does Sameer think that SendGrid waited too long to release additional product lines? What were his core learnings from that? How do Jeff and Sameer think about what what truly special leadership looks like today? How do they approach speaking so that people will remember? What are some of their biggest tips to aspiring entrepreneurs with regards to that and team empowerment? Why do both Jeff and Sameer believe that so much of the management wisdom today is outdated? 60 Second SaaStr: What do Jeff and Sameer know now that they wish they had known at the beginning? The book they have gifted most often and why? What does it take to truly be a great board member? What do the next 5 years look like for Twilio? How big could it get? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Jeff Lawson Sameer Dholakia

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

Sameer Dholakia

Partner

Bessemer Venture PartnersPagerDutySendGrid

This episode features two talks on mental health that explore two very different sides of this important topic. Michelle’s talk is a technical showcase of how her research project uses open source tools to better diagnose depression. Greg shares his personal struggles with ADHD and bipolar disorder, and how important it is for us to openly talk about mental health. Show Links Partner with Dev & CodeNewbie! (sponsor) 718-312-8335 (Greg's mental health resource number) ZocDoc Automatic Speech Recognition Feature Extraction Machine Learning Natural Language Processing IBM Watson Speech to Text OpenMM OpenFace Covarep DAIC-WOZ Database Audio/Visual Emotion and Depression Recognition dataset Tom Insel's TED talk on depression CUNY Graduate Center CodeNewbie YouTube channel Codeland, CodeNewbie's conference - April 21 and 22 in NYC Codeland Conf Codeland 2019 Michelle Morales Michelle is a Ph.D. Candidate in Computational Linguistics at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also a researcher and web developer at the Futures Initiative. Her main research interests are Natural Language Processing for mental health applications and open source technologies. Greg Baugues Greg serves on the Developer Community team at Twilio and lives in Brooklyn with his wife, daughter, and dog. He occasionally sneaks out during lunch to play chess in the park.

Michelle Morales

Researcher

Greg Baugues

Developer Evangelist

Twilio

See the full show notes for this episode on the website at talkpython.fm/48

Miguel Grinberg

Software Engineer & Author

Twilio

The old constraint when it came to technology was hardware -- how many CPUs can I get my hands on. Today, spinning up compute can be done from any smartphone with an AWS account or something similar. The current constraint is software. And since software is written and operated by people, tackling that constraint comes down to making people as informed, enabled, and efficient as possible. Three CEOs and co-founders of three companies that serve software developers -- Chris Wanstrath from GitHub, Jeff Lawson from Twilio, and Ben Uretsky of Digital Ocean -- take part in a conversation with a16z’s Peter Levine about the needs of software developers. What are the emerging platforms, ecosystems, and tools that help developers succeed at what is increasingly the most important job in any company – writing and running software. The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information. Stay Updated: Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Chris Wanstrath

Co-founder and Former CEO

GitHubLadybird Browser Initiative

Jeff Lawson

CEO and Co-founder

TwilioThe Onion

Ben Uretsky

CEO and Co-founder

DigitalOcean

Stack Exchange Podcast - Episode #19 w/ John Sheehan by The Stack Overflow Podcast See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

John Sheehan

Portfolio Manager

Osterweis Capital ManagementTwilio