The conversation

LewisVerstappenHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

Interesting

Interesting. I tried to create a Twilio account 2 weeks ago and it was the worse developer experience I've ever had by far . Like seriously. They first make you deposit $20 to get started. THEN, they tell you to talk to customer support to activate your account (customer support took forever to reply). Oh and then I had to fill out like 3 applications and my text messages are still randomly getting blocked - I have no idea why. To be clear, this is literally just me using Twilio to text myself to test out the API. I'm not some spammer or something. It was impossible to get started.

Original discussionJeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio270 source comments · at import
2

What was this responding to?

Parent context · original excerpt

SH
shakesHN

I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it's hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close. He created an environment where (at our best) we could have fun doing work that had a real impact, and we could it with people we enjoyed doing the work with. He pushed us to be creative to authentically empower and inspire developers. Wanna build a video game that teaches developers how to code and use Twilio? Let's try it! Wanna build an AI application with Tony Hawk and have Tony Hawk debug the code live on stage? Sure! And Jeff would always be spending time with developer tools and Twilio's products himself, to the point that he could live code at the drop of a hat to show off what we'd been working on. This meant his own understanding of developers and their problems never ceased to amaze me. But more than all of that, he was a rare CEO that led wi…

Full original

Community replies 0

No community replies yet. Add your perspective.

Replies from the source 2

Direct replies available in this import. Original-language excerpts.

EU
EugeneOZHN

They had really nice APIs but they had not enough protection from spammers. But APIs were really sweet...

Full original
IT
itinerantwarbleHN

This is industry self-regulation. See A2P 10DLC. Dealing with it at scale has sucked. If you want to send SMS, it's the price of admission everywhere--not just at Twilio. I know you said you wanted to send yourself an SMS, but you can test without sending using test credentials and magic numbers: https://www.twilio.com/docs/messaging/tutorials/automate-tes...

Full original
Continue on Hacker News

Respect different perspectives. Share concrete experiences.

Sign in to post, reply, repost, and quote.