Twilio lays off staff as it looks to attain profitability

Customer engagement platform firm, Twilio, is laying off 11% of its workforce - between 800 and 900 people across its staff of 7,800+, as it faces up to the dangers of rapid growth.

In a message to staff, CEO Jeff Lawson said: “Over the years, we’ve made lots of changes to the way Twilio operates and is organised, but none harder than what I’m sharing today.”

“I’m not going to sugarcoat things. A layoff is the last thing we want to do, but I believe it's wise and necessary. Twilio has grown at an astonishing rate over the past couple years.”

“It was too fast, and without enough focus on our most important company priorities. I take responsibility for those decisions, as well as the difficult decision to do this layoff.”

According to Lawson, the cuts will mostly impact “areas of go-to-market,” R&D, and general and administrative departments.

He continued: “Twilio has always been a growth company. And as you know, we're committed to being a profitable growth company.”

“At our scale, being profitable will make us stronger. It requires us to ask more rigorously which activities and investments are working. It forces us to ask where we have good alignment internally to amplify each of our efforts. This discipline requires us to ask if our investments are getting us where we need to go.”

“As we've discussed frequently, we have four priorities for reaching profitability and leading in customer engagement: Investing in our platform reliability and trust, increasing the profitability of messaging, accelerating Segment adoption, and scaling the Flex customer base.”

“Today's layoffs are about aligning our investments more squarely with our priorities, as well as running our company more efficiently overall.”

Lawson concluded: “We are builders. This is all part of the complicated, difficult and at times emotional journey as builders. No doubt, it will be a hard few months as we change the shape of our company for the opportunity ahead.”

“I am confident that we'll look back at this as a difficult time – but one that set up Twilio well for the future.”

Customer engagementStaff WriterTwilio, Customer engagement, Customer engagement solutions, Retail technology, Jeff LawsonComment