(I'm omitting the many, many, astroturf posts - "Why X is Better than Twilio", "Why I'm Ditching Twilio for X" - and comments from employees at competitors between 2010 and 2014.)

Twilio Raises $12m Series B

"Can something like Twilio really become a $100m+ company? I hope so but my ignorance blinkers me to how this could happen.."

Twilio Launches UK SMS

"I'm not sure what the big deal is. (Competitor) has much better international coverage and costs less."

Twilio Launches in Europe

"Great when it will have SMS support."

Twilio Raises $17m Series C

"When are they going to get SMS enabled numbers in Canada?"

"Their move to the UK was very half-assed, still no SMS support for the UK... :( I hope they fix that with this new funding before they expand elsewhere."

"It's a good service, but unless they bring prices way down, some big provider (Cough Amazon..) is going to come in and eat their lunch. Granted they probably wouldn't offer the level of detailed APIs that Twillio does. We started using them for SMS sending but went with (Competitor) at a fraction of the cost."

"I believe their exit strategy is to be acquired by Amazon or someone of their scale... anyone can do it once they learn how to handle the SMS messages between the web and the carrier gateways, as well as how to handle call flows with Asterisk or Freeswitch." - (ed "Anyone can do it once [the entire value proposition])

Twilio Launches MMS

"Well, all the kudos should go to Bandwidth.com the primary carrier of of Twilio, (Competitor), (free, irrelevant service), etc ..." - (ed. This is completely incorrect)

"MMS died years ago. Terrible technically and never actually worked the four times in someone tried to send one."

Twilio Launches WebRTC Support

"I came to the conclusion that on mobile phones, WebRTC video is not yet usable."

"Out of all the WebRTC products I've tried, (competitor) was the easiest one for me to use."

Twilio Launches International SMS

"Love how Hacker News will post anything Twilio like their pricing, but competitors posts are instantly removed. More proof that HN is a silicon valley whore"

Twilio Launches SIP Support

"( Competitor ) has been supporting SIP for a very long time."

Twilio Acquires Authy

"Authy is one of the worst-designed iOS applications I have ever used."

"Authy was only a marginal improvement in technology."

Twilio Files S-1

"This IPO is an exit for their VCs. They were all the way up to a series E round, and since they grew fast by losing money, the early investors had to pour in a lot of cash."

"I can only imagine that as more and more developers flock to "free" SMS verification services provided by companies like Facebook (Account Kit) and Twitter (Digits), their long term outlook is even more unsure."

"Looking at their escalating losses, I have to wonder if this IPO is a desperation play after failing to raise private money at an acceptable valuation in the current climate."

"Not even cash flow positive. Stay away."

This Post Gets Submitted to HN

"What is the point of this post?"

"It seems like a running [joke] that their primary (ed. struggling) competitor is ahead on features, and has better prices. I think those are completely fair criticisms of any company. It's a little strange that this compilation goes to great lengths to never mention the competitor by name."

Twilio Sells 10m Shares on Open Market, Stock Rises 90% on Opening Day, Hope Restored for Other Tech Company IPO's

(In this thread someone posted links to a spreadsheet with 500 other SMS API's. Oh. Shut down the company)

"Good service but still very overvalued."

"For a company with a yearly gross profit of USD92 millions and net losses of USD35 millions, I cannot imagine who is buying shares at a USD1.8 billion market cap."

"I'm not sure how defensible this is against AWS or another infrastructure provider cross-selling to existing customers."

"I used to work for a company that vaguely competed with them. It was frustrating to have people ask "why does your service cost so much compared to Twilio" and to bite my tongue and say something diplomatic rather than "because we're running an actual business that makes money rather than a VC-funded playpen". Apparently they're not even cash-flow positive at this point?"

Keep doubting! And don't forget to crap on any new thing that gets launched.

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