Article #3 for me.
Technically TTD is now my largest position thanks to the 30% gain but I started this article before that.
Love both companies don’t have a favorite that’s like picking your favorite kid.
Would love your feedback.
https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/27/why-twilio-is-my-t…
Q4 2018 Q4 2017 Q4 2016
Active Customer Accounts 64,286 48,979 36,606
Revenue Growth 77% 40% 73%
Gross Margin 54% 53% 59%
Dollar-Based Net Expansion Rate 147% 118% 155%
Heck of a chart! Thanks, Austin.
Bear
Well Done!
But dang Austin: your making me reconsider my investment plan for tomorrow to add to ESTC
and AYX. Guess I better think about it and consider adding to TWLO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vet6AHmq3_s
Thinking is hard!
All The Best
All props to Aretha Franklin, but I’m so happy you other men on this board pointed me toward TTD, tradedesk, last week, when it fell 10+ percent, so I bought in, and the next day enjoyed a 31 percent increase. I thank Saul, Bear, and a dentist from Odessa, Texas, that turned me on to you guys. So grateful!
Leiberman: My feedback is keep writing, keep sharing, keep thinking about great investment opportunities and great companies. I’ve been adding to both TWLO and TTD over the last few months. Keep writing.
OT: TTD was my pick in a ‘one and done’ pick 'em contest for 2019. It’s a bunch of fantasy football guys, what do they know? As a marketing professional I know the power of media, the outsized influence of GOOG and FB over the last few years in targeted advertising. Green / TTD is disrupting that industry just as Hastings / NFLX is disrupting video entertainment. NFLX may be too big to consider on this board, but the stock has provided +90% since the beginning of 2018, +21% this calendar year. Y’all know how TTD has done.
Carpe Diem.
Would love your feedback.
Hi Austin,
I like your article. Good work.
One thing that I really like about TWLO is that they have 140,000 customers who are employing developers to build new apps for new use cases. This gives TWLO a view of what their customers and the world needs to improve digital communications. This is how Flex came to be. I think that a very important reason for owning TWLO is that TWLO, through the TWLO developer community and through their customers, will be able to identify opportunities/needs that can be developed and made generally available to all customers. Flex is one example. How many more of these “Flexes” will be developed by TWLO in the coming years. I think a lot (or even a few home runs), and that these will help drive business growth in various segments of the massive communications market as TWLO helps to enable conversion from analog to digital.
Chris
Thanks everyone for your kind words.
Chris, I agree with you completely. Twilio created the “engagement cloud” which millions of developers have used for a couple years to build Application Programmable Interfaces (APIs) and basically create contact center functionality.
Twilio constantly watches what developers are creating on the engagement cloud to figure out what customer pain points are and what is in demand, then develops their next product to answer those problems.
That is exactly how the identified the Opportunity for Flex.
Like you said, Flex was just the first of these opportunities that was identified. There will be many, many more. Especially adding Sendgrid customers into the mix.
Tangent, but I view TTD’s “Next Wave” series of products as a very similar platform as the engagement cloud. TTD will definitely use all that data to inform their next products.
Anyways, here’s background on what an API is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7wmiS2mSXY
And here’s a link to Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson discussing their strategy to appeal to developers (instead of CIOs or CTOs) and how they’re mining opportunities from what people are developing on their engagement cloud.
https://event.webcasts.com/viewer/event.jsp?ei=1220768&t…
Wow…just notived TWLO spoke at a conference on the 25th and 26th of feb too. Link: https://investors.twilio.com/events-and-presentations/defaul…
Application Programmable Interfaces
That would be “Programming”, not “Programmable”. I sure hope that was a typo.
-IGU-