While Twilio and Amazon Connect have some integrations it does not appear that Connect is built on top of Twilio. The Amazon FAQs says that all telephony services are charged separately by "AMCS LLC" which I'm guessing is a telco they've set up to do this at the lowest possible margins. If they went through someone else their pricing would be higher.
Great post. It was last year that there was a lot of chatter from everyone, worrying that we were in a bubble. Since then the talk of bubble has apparently decreased but the real signs of a bubble have accelerated, in particular, crazy living costs.
Very worried to read that this is still happening:
"Companies raising money at $15MM+ plus valuations with no traction and no real vision..."
This is cool. We currently host our app with Engine Yard and there's been a number of times when we've wanted to put in extra capacity for short bursts but it's impractical to do it. It's not the cost of upgrading for me that's the problem but the hassle of having to configure a new instance, and migrate to it. So I love the approach of dragging a few sliders and it magically happening. Go GoScale :)
Which makes me think of customer development... And how difficult it can be to sort through which feedback matters and is worth iterating around and what you should ignore. I think the biggest successes of recent times, Inatagram and Facebook just had an innate sense of what their users wanted.
Before I moved to silicon valley, I used to come here a couple of times a year, visiting as a Scottish person living in London. I would deliberately schedule any important meetings at the end of the trip, knowing full well that it would take me a while to get into the valley mindset and start thinking bigger. Unfortunately there is a pessimistic and sceptical mindset in Scotland which is extremely unhelpful.
By the way, if you'd just inflated your numbers that wouldn't have worked either; you need to believe them.
I think they don't want to make a noise because the next Air will have much of the power (but lacking the connectivity). This is literally one for the Pros. Can't see the line continuing beyond this iteration.
I'm the other cofounder of Teamly. Matt is very kind to describe me so nicely, but I feel just as lucky to have found him. As well as being extremely inquisitive he gets stuff done, and is as passionate about Teamly as I am. We clicked straight off, and that's why we're putting in so much effort in finding the right additional cofounder to join us now. It's far more than about technical skills, it's about fit and passion.
Great post. Janice Fraser's LUXr classes (and slides) are worth a look. What I particularly like is for the first step, you describe setting a clear user goal, and they expnad on that:
We believe that people like [customer type] have a need for, or problems doing [need/action/behaviour]. We will know when we've succeeded when [quantative/measurable outcome], or [qualititative/observable outcome], which will contribute to [KPI].
This article summarises what makes the valley both awesome and absurd. I got mixed emotions reading it. It manages to be both appalling and inspirational.
And Bill Nguyen makes the manic Zuck portrayal in The Social Network appear shy and retiring by comparison. I'd love to meet him.
Google Voice is a great product which could be so much better, it's pretty clear it's one of those things Google has not looked after or worked on much. It's also a complete pain to set up. Your average Joe is going to struggle to get it up and running and nicely integrated with Gmail. I've watched two reasonably techie people struggle to work out to make/receive calls inside of Gmail.
Note that if you struggle with cell reception and want to make calls over wifi then T-Mobile's UMA service - they call it "Wifi Calling" - is a good solid solution which just uses wifi as an alternate bearer for all your phone's usual capability. (voice, text, data)
Thanks for pointing that out, but putting it another way, the things I expected I would benefit from by being in London did occur, along with the pleasant and unexpected bonus of the government's tech city initiative.
I completely disagree with this, simply because there is already a fantastic and large hub in London. There's hundreds of startups here already and proximity to VCs, in one of the world's best cities. It makes a lot more sense to build on something that's already strong, and make it stronger.
I think one of the smartest things this Government has done is to recognise that and ignore calls from people outside London to create something elsewhere. But yes, London is frigging expensive. That said, you can live close to, but outside London and it's no more expensive than the other places you mention.