“Increasingly, our customers are asking us to solve all of their strategic communications challenges – regardless of channel. Email is a vital communications channel for companies around the world, and so it was important to us to include this capability in our platform,” said Jeff Lawson, Twilio’s co-founder and chief executive officer. “The two companies share the same vision, the same model, and the same values. We believe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring together the two leading developer-focused communications platforms to create the unquestioned platform of choice for all companies looking to transform their customer engagement.”
I’ve used SendGrid in the past for various email-related projects, and it’s an effective product, don’t get me wrong. There’s just something a bit unwieldy about a single company having so much control over email and SMS mass-marketing tech (this quickly). My skepticism is outweighed by optimism. Even despite their all-stock transaction, which if you ask me is a total miser move. Seeing as it’s 100% not taxable, not a cool move. But I get it, you gotta save money, to raise money, to pay back the VC’s, and make shareholders happy. I’m by no means justifying the move either, it’s just another disappointing tax-dodge. *sighs*
On the other hand, this could end up being a very positive investment for Twilio in the long-run of things. Twilio is already essentially a Mailchimp for SMS company. SendGrid is fantastic email-product and their API’s are rock solid. I suppose this acquisition is pretty telling. Twilio just wants to be the de facto omni-channel solution provider. Let’s see how this plays out 👌