from Hacker News

Twilio set to acquire Segment for $3.2B

by harryzhang on 10/9/20, 11:23 PM with 93 comments

  • by spondyl on 10/10/20, 12:36 AM

    This is the same Segment that started out as a single Javascript file that a couple guys threw together before rebranding right? I mean, they're so much more now (or so it seems) but feels like it was just yesterday... and I'm only 26!

  • by aeromusek on 10/9/20, 11:43 PM

    Genius move for Twilio, honestly. Segment can supply the central hub to tie in all channel spokes Twilio already powers (especially after the SendGrid acquisition from a couple years ago).

    I can't help thinking Segment had much more room to run though...everyone I know who uses them loves them, and they were still only just scratching the surface of the addressable market.

  • by tosh on 10/9/20, 11:40 PM

    Twilio feels like a great fit for Segment, all the best to the team and the next steps.

    Show HN: Analytics.js (2012)

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4912076

    via @rauchg

    https://twitter.com/rauchg/status/1314709848030756864

  • by dmix on 10/10/20, 12:54 AM

    I follow(ed) Segment’s GitHub branches and always felt they adopted the latest and best front end tooling. I usually let them being the testing ground at a real company in between the stuff they developed themselves.

    This goes from using Metalsmith early for their single page web sites, some coding practices (mono vs micro), some CSS frameworks and design patterns and other library choices when there always seemed like a barrage of new choices (like css in JS ) and React.

    Anyway I much appreciate their efforts in this area as inspiration and real world examples published on OSS sites. Even if it was simple stuff like their marketing websites.

    They clearly had respectable and internally influential talent working in this area.

    It’s been a while since I’ve explored their GitHub repos for fun but the I still respect the stuff I learned.

  • by emdowling on 10/10/20, 9:04 AM

    A fantastic outcome for a fantastic team and product. I've worked closely with both Twilio and Segment for a number of years as the internal driver behind large enterprise deployments.

    I first encountered Segment when they were a young company and would frequently chat directly with Ian if I needed support or needed feedback. He was always gracious and humble, despite no doubt being ridiculously busy.

    Twilio has gone from strength to strength - they have an agility that is only possible from a company that is willing to deeply listen to the market and stay one step ahead. Very excited to see where this leads!

  • by noway421 on 10/9/20, 11:53 PM

    Last round's valuation seems to be $1.5B, so it looks like the acquisition price is 2x that so everyone hopefully walks off happy. I hope Accel, GV, etc. didn't have a crazy liquidation preference.

  • by knes on 10/9/20, 11:53 PM

    That sounds like a sweet deal, especially as Twilio stock is current "overvalued" (like most tech stocks right now).

    Jeff Lawson continues to follow the SFDC playbook of buying companies (and existing revenue growth) with stocks everytime their stock pops ;)

  • by siquick on 10/10/20, 12:14 AM

    Hopefully this means Segment dropping their prices - $120p/m for 10k users is out of the range of a lot of potential customers, and changing around an established analytics setup later on is always a pain.

  • by est on 10/10/20, 3:13 AM

    Offtopic: what's the best self-host tool for Intranet analytics? Would be best if can track user keystroke/mouse without predefined events, like what heap.io do.

  • by soumyadeb on 10/10/20, 12:09 AM

    Wow, congrats to the team @ Segment. This is very well deserved - they created this category. Also, looks that Twillio is investing big time in owning the marketing stack.

  • by fancyfish on 10/10/20, 6:28 AM

    Really happy for the team and especially for the founders. They proved to be very technical and assembled a truly impressive engineering team, culminating in a huge exit.

    The founders deserve every penny of that $3.2b and deserve the very nice lifestyle that will afford them. A great story that will inspire others including myself.

  • by robbiemitchell on 10/10/20, 5:01 AM

    Really happy for the team. Huge fan of Segment from the start, and Twilio is slowly getting itself into the middle of everything. (I realized only recently that they've owned Authy for years following the recent rebranding.)

    I find it interesting that Segment (and thus the entire downstream ecosystem) has gone this far while staying strictly oriented around users and accounts, without first-class support for other entities -- namely a notion of workspace/team/contract/opportunity/etc. "Groups" was sort of a false start that didn't get a new direction. There's still a ways to go connecting all the dots between how companies structure their data and how all third-party products are prepared (or not) to mirror that structure.

  • by arrty88 on 10/10/20, 1:54 AM

    Who's gonna pick up Zapier??

  • by Sebguer on 10/10/20, 12:40 AM

    Step one towards rebranding Sendgrid as a marketing platform and getting them away from the cesspit that is transactional email.

  • by ajit_singh on 10/13/20, 4:52 AM

    Was a segment user around two years ago. Felt like a software that is made at exactly the moment when it should have, for a really hungry audience. Their success never surprised me. They also had a capable alternative- mParticle. Not sure what are they upto.

  • by sqs on 10/10/20, 12:01 AM

    Congratulations to all Segment folks! I’ve met so many amazing people at Segment.

  • by maerF0x0 on 10/11/20, 5:59 AM

    All the parties declined to comment. How can forbes report on this if no one is willing to say it's happening?

  • by lasky on 10/12/20, 7:02 PM

    /strums G, D, C on guitar/

    “If I had a billion dollars...”

  • by esotericimpl on 10/9/20, 11:41 PM

    This seems cheap, segment was doing great especially with sass the way it is now.

  • by zed88 on 10/10/20, 1:18 AM

    Hopefully they drop the pricing after this, else I am moving to Rudderstack.

  • by gigatexal on 10/10/20, 5:34 AM

    The article is so dumb. Not a single sentence on what Segment does.