Twilio has appointed Andy Stafman, a Partner at Sachem Head Capital Management LP, to its Board, effective immediately.
The announcement comes after Twilio Co-Founder & CEO Jeff Lawson stepped down earlier this year.
His departure came amid mounting pressure from activist investors to sell up Twilio Segment and Engage – if not the business in its entirety – as the vendor’s push for profitability slowed.
While the firm’s new leadership doubled down on its intentions to stick with Segment earlier this month, the appointment of Stafman seems like a move to appease investors.
Of course, Twilio didn’t frame it that way. In making the new appointment, Jeff Epstein, Chair of the Board for Twilio, said:
Over the last year and a half, we have made important changes to accelerate our path to profitability and position Twilio to capitalize on the opportunities we see ahead.
"We look forward to benefiting from the addition of Andy’s perspectives as an additional shareholder in the boardroom as we continue our strong oversight of the company’s strategy to enhance value for all our stakeholders."
The changes Epstein alluded to include Twilio embarking on three rounds of layoffs, ditching Zipwhip, and selling off its IoT arm.
However, these moves do not address perhaps the most fundamental issue at Twilio, stalling its drive to profitability: how the business lands new customers but struggles to expand upon them.
For instance, as of the advent of 2024, Twilio had 305,000 active customer accounts – up 15,000 from 12 months ago.
Yet, across the full year 2023, it secured a dollar-based net expansion rate of 103 percent.
That statistic suggests that if Twilio hadn’t added any new customers last year, its revenues would have only increased by three percent.
Recognizing this issue, Khozema Shipchandler, the new CEO of Twilio, has looked to pull Twilio’s two businesses – Communications and Segment – closer together.
Indeed, he recently promised three innovations will come this year to bridge the businesses – and, just last week, Twilio released the first at Enterprise Connect 2024.
The innovation adds a native data layer to Twilio Flex – the vendor’s CCaaS platform – that the Segment CDP powers. That aims to generate a more "complete view" of the customer.
