Jeff Lawson – How to Build a Platform - [Invest Like the Best, EP.158]

My guest this week is Jeff Lawson, the Founder and CEO of Twilio. Twilio is a 15-billion-dollar company offering a cloud communications platform to its customers. Twilio is used by customers like Lyft, Twitch, and Yelp to make communications in their products easy. Jeff and I talk about why it pays to be a platform, how to be a platform, and how to sculpt a company culture. This is a must listen for anyone building a business whether it’s a tech business or not.

Show Notes

1:18 – (First Question) –  Company vowels and draw the owl

5:26 – Significance of API’s

12:14 – How non-software businesses can transition into the space

            17:50 - Agile way of working at ING Belgium (video)

18:38 – How they strategize their product build

23:27 – The idea of ask your developer and why it’s so important to them

33:02 – How they codified their business culture

45:12 – Parting advice for people building platforms

48:13 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Jeff