Assertion certainty 4/5 debate potential 2/5

Telecom carriers shut down competing developer API platforms within a year

Jeff Lawson · Twilio: Jeff Lawson · Apr 3, 2023 · at 56:41

Twilio founder Jeff Lawson discusses why incumbent telecom carriers failed to sustain developer platforms in competition with Twilio.

0:00 / 0:17exact quote · 17.4s
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“Almost every carrier in the world that I can think of in that era, in those early days, like, Built an API on top of their services and launched with great fanfare, their developer platform. And every one of those carriers within 12 months had shut it down.”

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