A 10DLC Origin Story

Some unsolicited career advice: When the platform owner invites you to partner with them, say yes. In telecom, if an operator asks for your help,…

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The WSJ Calls Out Political Spam

The WSJ's Joanna Stern recently highlighted the frustrations many of us share around text messaging spam, and the tools and tactics she covered were spot-on—some…

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The Docket Digest Giveaway

The Docket Digest is your go-to source for staying informed about the FCC's actions in the voice and text messaging space. In our industry—highly regulated…

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The Best Night in Wireless

The first woman to win the Marconi Prize; a spectrum auction innovator and trailblazing regulator; and two entrepreneurs who brought wireless connectivity to underserved areas.…

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My Best Advice — Cassie Holmes

Cassie Mogilner Holmes, a distinguished professor of marketing and behavioral decision-making at UCLA Anderson School of Management, holds the Bud Knapp Marketing Professorship. Born and…

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The Growth Endurance Calculation

Growth endurance measures a company’s ability to sustain high revenue growth as it scales. It’s calculated by dividing the current year’s growth by the previous…

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iConectiv’s $1 Billion Price Tag

Describing iConectiv merely as a number information provider would be an oversimplification. In North America alone, it operates three core registries: LERG (how phone calls…

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LINK Mobility Reports a Solid Q2

Like its peers, LINK Mobility showed strong results in Q2. Unlike its peers, however, it is the only CPaaS company to report double-digit improvements in…

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My Humans of Telecom Profile

I highly recommend subscribing to the Humans of Telecom podcast. Host Anurag Aggarwal offers a unique perspective on the global telecom industry by profiling the…

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My Best Advice — David Diggs

Thrown into the deep end at my first industry trade group meeting in 2013, I quickly learned the harsh realities of navigating challenging industry discussions.…

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An AI Read I’m Enjoying

I’m enjoying reading Fei-Fei Li’s The Worlds I See. I usually reserve my book recommendations until the end of the year, but if you’re looking…

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The 2024 SaaS Growth Snapshot

Since 2012, I’ve maintained a dynamic list of public companies I follow. If it is true that software is eating the world, then understanding these…

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Proof that Voice is not Text

ICYMI, last month four states experienced a 911 outage due to the oldest reason in network operations: cutting the wrong cable.  Jokes aside, the workaround…

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2024 Earnings Season Kicks Off

CPaaS earnings season kicks off in a week, and even temperamental optimists like myself are pensive. This marks the first de-risked year—the first year-over-year comparisons…

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Beeper Gets Acquired

Last week Beeper was acquired by Automattic in a deal valued at $125 million. We don’t know what this means for its FCC petition, but…

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Messaging and Growth in 2024

In Messaging and Growth in the Pandemic, we unpacked the drivers of pandemic-led growth. We discussed why it was a one-time event, with little to…

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Twilio’s Spring Surprise

Much to the relief of industry insiders, Twilio is keeping its Segment business. Some feared that Twilio would bow to investor pressure, and that would…

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The Klaviyo Papers

In a series of posts I call ‘the Klaviyo papers’ I wrote about Klaviyo’s business model. Klaviyo, like Attentive before it, and Twilio before it,…

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T-Mobile Fines Unwanted Content

ICYMI, T-Mobile announced fines on senders of spam content that went into effect in January and an update (thanks, Glenn Richards) that went into effect…

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Messaging and Growth in the Pandemic

By March 2020, the pandemic had shut down the world. Its effect on businesses was swift and brutal. Airlines, hotels, restaurants, manufacturing, retail, health, and…

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Growth and Valuation in 2024

The seventh week of the year kicks off the earnings season for the messaging space. On Valentine’s Day, within twenty-four hours of each other, Twilio,…

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PTC ‘24—Infrastructure Meets Messaging

Industry conferences, like the Pacific Telecommunications Council’s (PTC) conference, are hotbeds of collaboration. They often have a festival-like atmosphere, with multiple stages serving as focal…

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Twilio Announces a Transition

Ariana Huffington, Bill Gates, Ben Chestnutt, Jeff Bezos, Marc Benioff, Michael Dell, and Steve Jobs changed entire industries and, in some cases, the world. HuffPost…

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The FCC Continues the Spam Fight

At the last meeting of 2023, the FCC enacted four new rulings around text messaging: Require blocking of texts upon notification by the Commission  Declare…

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My Best Advice — Laurinda Pang

From Sinch’s headquarters in Stockholm, Laurinda Pang leads 4,000 Sinchers around the globe who empower brands to connect with their customers across messaging, voice and…

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My Best Advice — Huggy Rao

Huggy Rao, the Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, has spent over forty-five years shaping the minds of…

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Newsletter: The SOMOS Summit Reflections

In this morning's email, my thoughts on the recently concluded Somos, Inc. summit, including:1. clarifying my first-ever on-the-record future predictions,2. KYC is good friction (ask your car…

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My Best Advice — John Lauer

John Lauer is your archetypical serial entrepreneur. While most famous for founding Zipwhip—sold to Twilio for a whopping $952 million (based on the closing date…

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My Best Advice — Terry Hsiao

Terry Hsiao is an entrepreneur, advisor, and investor with extensive experience in cloud software, mobile apps, wireless networks, and fintech. He has founded multiple companies…

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My Best Advice — Stacey Estrella

Curiosity and patience are the bedrock to good storytelling. They have been integral tools to Stacey Estrella's approach, aiding her clients in discerning their own…

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When to Call Off a Wedding

"In many deals, people get so focused on the wedding, they forget about the marriage.", says Huggy Rao when describing why 50% of M&A deals…

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Living on the Margins

I blog on Software, Startups, and Simplicity, where I make the case that building software and running software companies has gotten unnecessarily complex. It doesn't…

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How Interoperability Made Texting a Big Deal

US customers sent 2.2 trillion text messages in 2020. In other words, the wireless operators have created a big party—one which application developers, marketers, and software companies…

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The RCS Killer App

Once it has won over the geeks and early adopters, new technology needs to win the heart of the everyday user. You do that by…

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A Founder’s Ignorance

Smart founders are comfortable with perpetual ignorance and combat it with tireless learning. The preceding Twitter-friendly headline would aptly summarize this article, but outside of…

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A Founder’s Arrogance

All Founders are arrogant. How's that for a polarizing statement? If you're a founder and disagree, it means you haven't been rejected, denied, denigrated, ghosted,…

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A Founder’s Passion

A startup, like any risky endeavor, requires the persistence of a punch-me doll. As long as a Founder is a principal in the company, they…

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What to Build and Why

If a product is only as good as its feedback loops, then only the feedback of the customer matters. There will be many stakeholders, but…

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Culture & Belonging

Building a culture of belonging in a company is hard. Stanford's Huggy Rao says that the best cultures create a sense of mutual ownership, where "I own…

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When Code and Law Collide

A recent filing in a TCPA case uses source code to back up claims made by the plaintiff. The filing is interesting because it shows how hard…

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The Genius with 1000 Helpers

If genius results from untiring work over long periods of time, then every founder building a company is a genius.  They know the customer, the…

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On Selflessness

Tucked in The Checklist Manifesto, an already quick read, is a little manifesto for any learned profession. The author—Atul Gawande—calls them the four expectations of…

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Security and 5G

When it comes to bandwidth, 5G is like having your cake and eating it too, in this case the cake is double chocolate, no fat*.…

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eNPS & Company Culture

A robust, vibrant, living company culture needs strong feedback loops. It’s pretty easy to accomplish this when it’s you and your co-founder in a garage, a team…

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