<story><title>Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/08/twilio-ceo-lawson-steps-down-after-bruising-activist-battles.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fnordpiglet</author><text>In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate. It’s when you ceded leadership to the accountants and shifted gears to maintenance mode that companies stopped growing. You never did these things for fun, you did these things because they had some knock on effect that made it potentially worth it, and in a portfolio of many small bets some would blow up into your next big product. Even the ones that seem far left field they created an environment where people felt allowed to dream at all, and their knock on effect was in creation of a risk taking culture.&lt;p&gt;Blaming low interest rates on taking risk and doing highly speculative things, and investing in  a culture that values that by funding off the wall stuff puts too much emphasis on the capital markets.  If the company was a steel producer, fine. If it’s a company that essentially captures the stuff of dreams and produces a service that executes thought stuff in machines, you have to decouple your R&amp;amp;D from capital management to the extent your free cash flow can accept it.&lt;p&gt;Note of course low interest rates and other capital market looseness will create &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; opportunity for this behavior, and not every company doing these things is doing some is a well managed way. But they don’t have to - that’s the magic of capitalism. Through a Darwinian process only those who strike magic win and survive and the others recycle and try again. This feels like a feature not a flaw of zero interest rates - it creates enormous value by virtue of incentivizing taking risk at a time of high innovation. There are times in history where innovation rates were very low, and zero interest rates would just incentivize broken behavior. But at a time when almost all growth is coming from innovation, maybe loose credit is smart. ml</text></item><item><author>acchow</author><text>&amp;gt;  Wanna build a video game that teaches developers how to code and use Twilio? Let&amp;#x27;s try it! Wanna build an AI application with Tony Hawk and have Tony Hawk debug the code live on stage? Sure!&lt;p&gt;These are the strange effects of ZIRP and infinite QE. Many companies never had to care at all about profit and could just do things &amp;quot;for fun&amp;quot;, and still see valuations skyrocket as long as they hired more people. What a time.</text></item><item><author>shakes</author><text>I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it&amp;#x27;s hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s try it! Wanna build an AI application with Tony Hawk and have Tony Hawk debug the code live on stage? Sure!&lt;p&gt;And Jeff would always be spending time with developer tools and Twilio&amp;#x27;s products himself, to the point that he could live code at the drop of a hat to show off what we&amp;#x27;d been working on. This meant his own understanding of developers and their problems never ceased to amaze me.&lt;p&gt;But more than all of that, he was a rare CEO that led with empathy, humility and care.&lt;p&gt;Thank you, jeffiel. We can&amp;#x27;t wait to see what you build next.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ctvo</author><text>&amp;gt; In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate.&lt;p&gt;Agreed. Creative, high performing people don&amp;#x27;t do well in a work environment that&amp;#x27;s structured like a regional bank.&lt;p&gt;Valve Software -- incredibly profitable, high performing and private company, did fun things like hire economists (and then later Greek prime minister) to study and simulate virtual, in-game economies [0].&lt;p&gt;Blizzard Entertainment had giant statues of orcs made and fan conventions before their downfall, ya know, in the ZIRP macro economic environment.&lt;p&gt;Google allowed their engineers 20% time. Before ZIRP.&lt;p&gt;0 - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Yanis_Varoufakis#Academic_career#Academic_career&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Yanis_Varoufakis#Academic_care...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Jeff Lawson steps down as CEO of Twilio</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/08/twilio-ceo-lawson-steps-down-after-bruising-activist-battles.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fnordpiglet</author><text>In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate. It’s when you ceded leadership to the accountants and shifted gears to maintenance mode that companies stopped growing. You never did these things for fun, you did these things because they had some knock on effect that made it potentially worth it, and in a portfolio of many small bets some would blow up into your next big product. Even the ones that seem far left field they created an environment where people felt allowed to dream at all, and their knock on effect was in creation of a risk taking culture.&lt;p&gt;Blaming low interest rates on taking risk and doing highly speculative things, and investing in  a culture that values that by funding off the wall stuff puts too much emphasis on the capital markets.  If the company was a steel producer, fine. If it’s a company that essentially captures the stuff of dreams and produces a service that executes thought stuff in machines, you have to decouple your R&amp;amp;D from capital management to the extent your free cash flow can accept it.&lt;p&gt;Note of course low interest rates and other capital market looseness will create &lt;i&gt;more&lt;/i&gt; opportunity for this behavior, and not every company doing these things is doing some is a well managed way. But they don’t have to - that’s the magic of capitalism. Through a Darwinian process only those who strike magic win and survive and the others recycle and try again. This feels like a feature not a flaw of zero interest rates - it creates enormous value by virtue of incentivizing taking risk at a time of high innovation. There are times in history where innovation rates were very low, and zero interest rates would just incentivize broken behavior. But at a time when almost all growth is coming from innovation, maybe loose credit is smart. ml</text></item><item><author>acchow</author><text>&amp;gt;  Wanna build a video game that teaches developers how to code and use Twilio? Let&amp;#x27;s try it! Wanna build an AI application with Tony Hawk and have Tony Hawk debug the code live on stage? Sure!&lt;p&gt;These are the strange effects of ZIRP and infinite QE. Many companies never had to care at all about profit and could just do things &amp;quot;for fun&amp;quot;, and still see valuations skyrocket as long as they hired more people. What a time.</text></item><item><author>shakes</author><text>I worked at Twilio for nearly 10 years and it&amp;#x27;s hard to overstate what a gift it was to work there and see Jeff operate as CEO up-close.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s try it! Wanna build an AI application with Tony Hawk and have Tony Hawk debug the code live on stage? Sure!&lt;p&gt;And Jeff would always be spending time with developer tools and Twilio&amp;#x27;s products himself, to the point that he could live code at the drop of a hat to show off what we&amp;#x27;d been working on. This meant his own understanding of developers and their problems never ceased to amaze me.&lt;p&gt;But more than all of that, he was a rare CEO that led with empathy, humility and care.&lt;p&gt;Thank you, jeffiel. We can&amp;#x27;t wait to see what you build next.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Aurornis</author><text>&amp;gt; In my 32 years in the industry the best performing companies always did these things regardless of the macroeconomic climate.&lt;p&gt;My anecdote, FWIW, is that some of the worst performing startups do these tricks too.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s something about flashy events and boondoggles that sound good on LinkedIn that draws bad founders into spending waaay too much on parties and fun activities.&lt;p&gt;Stripe obviously isn&amp;#x27;t in that category, but never assume that because a company spends a lot on parties and events that they&amp;#x27;re doing well.</text></comment>