Lawson: Developers are a market entry strategy, not the end market
Jeff Lawson · Twilio: The Inside Story with Jeff Lawson, CEO/Co-Founder · Jul 10, 2017 · at 4:06
Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson explains to Jason Lemkin how developer-led bottom-up adoption functions as an efficient distribution vector into enterprise markets.
0:00 / 0:07exact quote · 7.5s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I don't think of developers as the market, per se. I think of developers as the strategy to get into the market for whatever you're doing.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Jeff Lawson
Lawson: Tech strategy shifted from 'build versus buy' to 'build versus die'
“It used to be in the old world of IT, you had these classic build versus buy decisions. Are we going to build something? Are we going to buy it? Right? And now it's become build versus die. Because if you aren't building software that answers your customers ne…”
Lawson: Relying on 10x engineers is not a viable corporate strategy
“It's not a strategy to say, I'm only going to hire these like, you know, top one percent, you know, 10 X developers, and that's how I'm going to build my company. The strategy is how do I take a wide variety of engineers and make them work together as a team t…”
Lawson: Billboards provide enterprise air cover for developer-led adoption
“You know, I think what it does is it provides air cover. So that let's say, you know, a developer builds a thing and they're in some meeting where they're saying, oh, how did you build this? Yeah. And they say Twilio, if you have name recognition, even though …”
Lawson: Companies should give developers problems to solve, not spec sheets
“You should share problems, not solutions with developers.”
Lawson: Distributed teams should stay within three time zones for workday overlap
“My recommendation, keep them within three time zones of each other. So you've got a maximum amount of overlap in the workday so that they can collaborate effectively.”
Lawson: Developer-led adoption replaces competitive RFP bidding with pre-built prototypes
“It's not a hero sale. You're not like, hey, let's just do an RFP with, You know, five of our competitors. It's a, Hey, the thing's already built. The executives may have even touched it and said, Oh, this is awesome. Let's get it shipped. Right. And now we're …”