Invest Like The Best
Episode 158 How to Build a Platform
Invest Like The Best

Episode 158: How to Build a Platform

Invest Like The Best

Episode 158

How to Build a Platform

Jeff is the Founder and CEO of Twilio. We cover why it pays to be a platform, the power of APIs, and how to sculpt a company culture.

[00:01:18] – (First Question) – Company vowels and draw the owl

[00:05:26] – Significance of API’s

[00:12:14] – How non-software businesses can transition into the space

[00:18:38] – How they strategize their product build

[00:23:27] – The idea of asking your developer and why it’s so important to them

[00:33:02] – How they codified their business culture

[00:45:12] – Parting advice for people building platforms

[00:48:13] – Kindest thing anyone has done for Jeff

How to Build a Platform

Introduction

Patrick
My guest this week is Jeff Lawson. The founder and CEO of Twilio. Twilio is a $15 billion company offering a cloud communications platform to its customers. Twilio is used by customers 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 build a platform and how to sculpt a company's culture. This is a must listen for anyone building a business, whether it's a tech business or not. Please enjoy our conversation.

Jeff, it's a random story how this conversation came to be, which was, I was trying to figure out who to study, what companies to study when it came to learning about APIs and a friend mentioned that Twilio should be the first company, I go read all the financials. I found you on Twitter and on Twitter you have a number that you can text. I texted that number and sure enough, it works. It got to you and I invited you and here we are. A great example of the company technology itself leading to a really interesting conversation. I thought a fun place to start would be... We're surrounded by some interesting, what look like company values and there's one that stood out and you see owls all over your office, which is draw the owl. I have to start there because it's the one that I can't figure out what it means. I'm very curious. Can you describe what draw the owl means?

Access the full transcript
Sign in or register to view episode transcripts.

Contact

Get in touch at help@joincolossus.com