Silicon Valley giant Twilio opens two offices in Australia
Silicon Valley giant Twilio has announced its first foray into the Australian market through the opening of two new international offices in Melbourne and Sydney
Silicon Valley giant Twilio has announced its first foray into the Australian market through the opening of two new international offices in Melbourne and Sydney, which will further grow the startup and provide support for local businesses using the platform.
Twilio launched in 2008 and was founded by Jeff Lawson, a former product manager at Amazon. The platform provides developers with a way to integrate text messages, phone calls, and video calls into applications through the use of various Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), provided by the company.
Local Oracle and Symantec alumnus Richard Watson has been appointed the company’s Australian regional director, and while Twilio has not had operations in Australia prior to this, the company already has more than 100 local customers, including startup heavyweights such as Atlassian and zipMoney.
“We have had a fantastic amount of organic traction here in Australia, with leading companies including Atlassian, zipMoney, Dominos and Airtasker already building and scaling their applications using the Twilio platform. This is a testament to the quality of Twilio’s product offering and also to the maturity of the Australian market,” Watson said in a statement.
“There is a strong culture of innovation here and IT leaders in Aussie enterprises recognise the opportunities that new technologies can offer their business.”
Fairfax reports the business is looking to grow its offerings 100% in the coming year, which Watson said will be aided by the company’s new sales-centric focus brought on by chief operations officer George Hu, a recent addition to the Twilio team.
“[Hu’s] been great and he’s very focused on building a go-to-market strategy and identifying Twilio’s growth strategy … and you can see that looking at the company’s results in the last few quarters,” Watson told Fairfax.
Since its inception, Twilio has had a total of $US261.3 ($339 million) in funding, according to Crunchbase, with investors including Salesforce, Union Square Ventures, and Founders Circle Capital.
“International expansion represents a significant long-term growth opportunity for Twilio,” Hu said in a statement.
“This move builds on our existing customer and developer momentum in Australia and lays the foundation for building a significant long-term business in Australia and across the APAC Region. Richard will lead a broad effort to grow our Australia team, drive momentum, and build customer relationships.
“We believe we’re only at the beginning of this incredible journey and we can’t wait to see how our customers use Twilio to engage their consumers in a whole new way.”
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