Twilio will lay off approximately 11 percent of its staff, CEO Jeff Lawson announced in a message to Twilio employees, joining the likes of Google, Meta, and Amazon in reeling from the economic downturn.
The cuts will affect staff in Twilio’s go-to-market teams, which the CEO said can succeed with less human intervention, alongside employees in R&D and administrative functions.
Twilio is expected to cut around 900 positions, based on its headcount of 7,800 at the start of 2022.
The CEO admitted Twilio grew too fast, and “without enough focus” on the company’s priorities, which include its cloud contact center platform Flex.
Echoing Avaya CEO Alan Masarek’s comments following the company’s cuts, Lawson said:
I am not asking you all to “do more with less.” I’m asking the company to actually do fewer things better. I know that we can succeed in becoming the leading Customer Engagement Platform we envision.
Twilio has grown at a fast pace in recent years, doubling headcount and engaging in an acquisition spree, buoyed by the industry’s switch to cloud solutions. However, in its most recent quarter, the company reported a loss of nearly $312 million, leading Lawson to admit that it had to refocus its energies on becoming profitable. He added:
“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.”
Lawson also noted that the company will double down on its focus on customer data platform Segment, in addition to Flex.
The sombre news comes after industry analysts had predicted Twilio will dominate the CPaaS market. Meanwhile. the company had also secured its “largest Flex deal ever” in the second quarter.
