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Sencha Touch Launches Today - Uses Twilio to Help Demo Framework To Customers

When Abe, the CEO of Sencha, emailed yesterday to tell us that his company would be launching Sencha Touch today we were excited to be among the first to hear.  This wasn't just a social call, what he really needed was a simple way for users on their product website to send a demo link to their mobile phones, to witness Sencha Touch in action.  

Sounds like a simple little feature, but when you consider the immediate gratification element it deliver for developer, its pretty powerful.  When you click the link, a page opens which takes advantage of Sencha Touch and demos some of its new functionality.

Twilio to the rescue!  

Its possible you haven't heard of Sencha yet, and that's because it's a newly formed company that combines several tools that mobile developers know and love.  As of Monday, Ext JS has combined forces with jQTouch and Raphael to form Sencha. You can read more about it on the Sencha blog but basically Ext JS + jQTouch + Raphaël = Sencha

From their website:

Sencha Touch allows your web apps to look and feel like native apps. Beautiful user interface components and rich data management, all powered by the latest HTML5 and CSS3 web standards and ready for Android™ and Apple iOS devices. Keep them web-based or wrap them for distribution on mobile app stores.

Congrats to the team at Sencha on their launch, and we're glad we could make it super easy for them to send text messages for their customers to check out their mobile demos of Sencha Touch.

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Have you built something cool with Twilio?  We'd love to share it with our blog readers to help jog their imaginations about ways, big and small, that Twilio can be used for building better businesses.  Drop us a note at help@twilio.com to share your story.  Happy coding!

New Geek: John Britton is the Latest Addition to Twilio

<Say>Hello, Twilio</Say>

My name is John Britton. I joined Twilio just over a week ago, and let me tell you, it's been an amazing experience so far. I'm coming on board as a Developer Evangelist, and I'll be working alongside John Sheehan to make the lives of all Twilio developers as easy as possible. I'm here to help you get your new Twilio apps off the ground and sprinkle Twilio goodness all over your existing apps. I live in New York City, but I'm visiting the Twilio HQ in San Francisco for the month of June to get ramped up. I'm really looking forward to bringing the Twilio special sauce back to the Big Apple.

Why Twilio

A few years ago, a good friend and I were running a small IT consulting shop. We provided web design and application development but soon realized that many of our customers would benefit from an advanced phone system. After a bit of digging, we came across Asterisk PBX, an open source application for building phone systems. At the time, Asterisk seemed to be exactly what we were looking for. We powered through the intense learning curve and got our first system setup after a week or two of tinkering. It was clunky, hard to maintain, expensive, and had a single point of failure. We deployed Asterisk for a number of small businesses, but eventually decided the overhead wasn't worth our while.

Fast forward to last month. I heard about Twilio through a developer contest with Boxee. I was amazed when I learned about the simple, pay as you go, scalable voice and SMS API that I could use with my tried and true web development skills. It seemed so logical to use a web service to hide all of the cumbersome telephony details. If Twilio had existed a few years back, I definitely would have used it for my customers. As a matter of fact, my partner and I wished for a similar service for years. Ultimately, I decided to join the Twilio team because I know the product addresses a real need from my own first hand experience.

Background

I've been tinkering with computers for as long as I can remember, so I guess I'd qualify as a 'digital native'. I built my first ecommerce site when I was in 7th grade using imagemaps and MS Frontpage. As I, and the web, matured I learned to avoid <BLINK> tags, frames, background music, and all that jazz. When I started university I studied nuclear engineering, but promptly switched to computer science after landing my first programming job.

In 2008 I published my first open source contribution as part of Google's Summer of Code program. I've worked for a number of web startups over the years in retail, gaming, and communities. Most recently, before joining the team at Twilio, I was the Lead Developer at Flat World Knowledge, an open college textbook publishing company.

Passions

I'm a technologist by trade, and I love free / libre / open source software. I'm addicted to travel and Couch Surf often. I've been known to hitch-hike without a destination. In the past three years I've been to 30+ countries on three continents. I'm a language junkie: written, spoken, and computer. I love to learn new things and am heavily involved in the Open Education community. I love to take photos of the places I go and the things I build.

My First Week

I've been in San Francisco since last Tuesday I've been working and adventuring nonstop. I spent my first four days (short week) in the office learning the ropes on customer support and product offerings. Every Wednesday we have a company dinner; we ate delicious Thai food and learned a very alternative theory about dinosaur bones on the moon. The development and marketing teams have been great and taken me for a few nights on the town. My first weekend I took a road trip to Reno and Tahoe with one of my coworkers and a few new friends. As if that wasn't enough, this week isn't even over and I met Rasmus Lerdorf, the inventor of PHP, at Hacker Dojo and I won a 3D Mouse at the SFNewTech meetup. In short, I've been keeping very busy and am looking forward to keeping it that way.

Projects

In addition to my work at Twilio, I'm involved in a number of projects which some of you may find interesting:

• Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) - An online community of open study groups for short university-level courses.
• P2PU Open Web - The ultimate curriculum and certificate for open web developers.
• Mozilla Drumbeat - Drumbeat gathers smart, creative people like you around big ideas, practical projects and local events that improve the open web.
• Open Everything - A global series of unconferences revolving around Open.

Stay Connected

Feel free to drop me a line with any questions. I'm looking forward to talking to you about the cool things you're building. I don't just get around in the real world, I'm all over the interwebs too! Here's the shortlist of social webs that I use on a regular basis:

• My Blog
• Facebook
• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Dopplr
• Couch Surfing
• Flickr
• Last.fm

We're Hiring

We're growing fast, and have a few positions open at the moment. I highly suggest you check them out, working at Twilio is sweet. You can also email jobs@twilio.com for more information.

Discover Job Opportunities at Twilio - Interview with CTO Evan Cooke

Andrew Lee from One Third of My Life dropped by Twilio HQ to speak with Evan Cooke, CTO and cofounder of our company, about some of the job opportunities we have available.  In this candid 9 minute interview, Evan discusses Twilio's culture, organizational structure, and other things that make us unique and a great place to work. 

Check it out, and if you like what you hear please visit our jobs page to learn more and apply.

Meet John Sheehan - Hero Maker

Let me tell you a story about how I came to work at Twilio. In November of 2008 I was reading TechCrunch and came across a blog post about Twilio. I had been thinking about building an application that needed voice and SMS for awhile, but couldn't invest in building the infrastructure to support it. Twilio changed everything. I literally leaped out of my chair.  I've been following the company ever since. 

I've built a couple other projects with it along the way, won one of the developer contests and started an open source project to make Twilio in .NET super easy. Now I'm fortunate enough to be the most recent addition to the Twilio team as a Developer Evangelist.

What the heck is a Developer Evangelist?

I'm here to help you get the most out of Twilio. I will be creating blog posts, example applications, how-tos, screencasts and more to highlight all the great features of Twilio. You will also see me answering questions in the forums and tweeting at @twilio. The rest of my time will be spent attending conferences, meetups, code camps, Startup Weekends, user groups or wherever else developers hang out. Also you'll continue to see me around my favorite online communities like Stack Overflow, Hacker News and of course on Twitter and my blog.

What can I do to help *you* get more out of Twilio? 

Let me know in the comments below or feel free to email me at jsheehan@twilio.com. Looking forward to hearing from you! And if this sounds like a job you'd like to do, we're looking to add another Developer Evangelist to the team. 

We've got some other great openings as well.

Check 'em out - and join us!

Office Hours Today @ 4pm Pacific Time - Meet John Sheehan, Developer Evangelist

We will be holding our weekly office hours today to 4pm on the #twilio IRC channel on freenode.  Join us via your desktop client, or use this slick little web interface to log into the chat.

John is the latest addition to the Twilio team, and he will be leading a discussion what improvements you'd like to see in the Twilio development community in the coming months.

See you at 4pm Pacific Time!

Oh yeah... We're Hiring

Twilio is a fast-paced environment for motivated geeks, and rewards the awesome. Do you like Macbooks, automated testing, and distributed data stores? You might be our kind of people.

• Front End Web Software Engineer
• Product Manager
• Developer Evangelist
• Software Engineer (recent graduate or intern)
• Head of Business Development

If you're interested in any of the jobs here, please apply via Jobscoree or send us an email to jobs@twilio.com.  Feel free to drop by the IRC chat today if you have questions as well.

Help Wanted: Seeking Agents of Awesome for Team Twilio

Put quite simply, we're hiring. We're looking for intelligent, dynamic, creative individuals to help us grow our company and build our teams.

You won't just be working "at", "in" or "on" Twilio - we're looking for people who want to be Twilio.  To embody our values, our focus, and our future.  It's a tall order, and we're passionate about finding those rare people who will be a perfect fit.  Learn a bit more about our team, culture, product, and the kinds of people we're looking for on our jobs page, and email jobs@twilio.com with any questions.

Available Positions

You can always find our most current job listings on our website, and here are the roles we're looking to fill right now:

Front End / Web Software Engineer

Build amazing applications that are one layer up from Twilio APIs.  Write clean, re-usable code. Elegant code that’s simple and will be read by and used by thousands of developers around the world.  Make browsers submit to your will. Ship things that look great and perform well.  Read more...

Product Manager

As the first product hire in a 15 person company we'll need you to do a bit of everything. You are a startup person who thrives in a chaotic, fast moving environment… a leader who gets stuff done.  Read more...

Developer Evangelist

Engage in conversations with the Twilio developer community online and in person. Generate content (blog, video, etc.), provide customer support, and spread the word about Twilio.  Read more...

Head of Business Development

We are looking for a hands-on leader to join as our first 100% dedicated business hire.  Ideally, you're an impact player working tirelessly to help us drive revenue and scale.  Knock on doors. Barrel through them as necessary. Read more...

Defining Twilio Culture

A lot of companies try to define the culture they want to have, and while we have goals for the kind of people we strive to be and the kind of experiences we want to create for everyone who interacts with our company, we also know this is a work in progress.  Each person we add to the team brings new elements to weave into the fabric of details that makes us who we are.

We work hard

We eat well

We joke around

We make customers happy

Meet Some of Our Geeks

Jeff Lawson, CEO & Co-Founder

Meet Jeff. He never fits in. Jeff was the first CTO of Stubhub.com, and doesn't go to sporting events. He built an ajax point of sales system for an extreme sporting goods store, and he can't skate. He wrote a PHP object translator for javascript, and it was ok. Jeff was the only Product Manager at Amazon Web Services with a linux development box.

Evan Cooke, Ph.D. CTO & Co-Founder

Meet Evan.  Evan is Co-Founder, CTO, and alpha-nerd of Twilio. Evan was recently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in network security and distributed systems at the University of Michigan - a title so large it takes up both sides of a business card. While there he completed his M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science. He hearts massively distributed systems, asynchronous programming, scalable cloud security, monitoring, and analytics, python and twisted.

John Wolthuis, Lead Engineer & Co-Founder

See John. See John hack. Hack, John, hack. A builder at heart, he likes building new software and bending code to his needs. John has built an MTA from scratch in Java, an open source stumbler mapping client, and more banking software than he'd care to admit. He also makes award winning cupcakes.

Adam Ballai, Senior Core Engineer

Meet Adam. Adam likes compiler optimizations, asynchronous socket programming, and distributed data stores. Adam built protobuffers in 2000 before they were cool, built the world's largest recycling locator (in OCaml!) and ported a C# cross compiler to PS2, and then he ditched C#. Because all good things eventually come to an end.

If Twilio sounds like somewhere you'd like to work, read more on our jobs page.

Twilio Tin Can Telephones at SxSW 2010

Last week we hung out in Austin, Texas for the annual South by Southwest interactive conference.  Among the keynotes, sessions, panels, and parties there are some other activities that take place on the fringe and one of those was our charity event Doing Good at SXSW with Twilio, combined with a flashmob to create what (we claimed) was the largest tin can telephone conference call of all time. 

A big thank you to Daryn Nakuda, who helped us empty over 300 soup cans at the Angel House Soup Kitchen and to Jonathan Kressaty who helped us to prep those cans for telephony awesomeness.  We can't wait to come back to SxSW next year and create an even larger conference call!

Daryn Nakuda of Teachstreet.com - Helping out at Angel House Soup Kitchen

Jonathan Kressaty of Betwext.com - Helping Prep the Cans (and Spread the Word)

Derek Neighbors of Gangplank in Phoenix, Rockin' the Tin Cans

Twilio Logo in the Snow by David Jones

Everyone once in awhile, someone creates a Twilio logo and sends us a picture (usually via Twitter).  Some of your might remember the Twilio Burgers... and now we have Twilio in the snow thanks to David Jones!

Now I'm just waiting for someone to do Twilio crop circles... that might be fun weekend project.

Twilio Burgers anyone?

Last night, Brian from LetsCallMe (a customer of ours) spotted the likeness to the Twilio logo in his uncooked hamburgers.




John: "At least two of them weren't grey."

Startup PR on a Shoestring

On Monday we announced funding from Founders Fund and Mitch Kapor.  Leading up to the announcement, we decided to write our own press release and even though we have little experience, it turns out you can get some high quality coverage (although our friends certainly have helped us out), even without a PR agency.  To kick start the process, Jeff did a couple searches for startup press releases, especially those mentioning a funding raise, and took it from there.  Here's what we've learned, so far:

Remember the "Digital" Press Release

In business it's standard practice to write a press release, and we're also fans of sending an email with a personal intro, a little extra color on the story, and some great attachments (images, slide decks, etc) to spice things up.  Catch the potential author's attention, and make it super easy for them to put together an interesting post.

Twilio Closes Institutional Financing and Customers

View more presentations from twilio. (tags: customers api)

Use Correct Formatting (So the Press Will Take You Seriously)

You might be thinking, "who cares?"  Imagine a noisy press room, with fax machines spitting out reams of paper.  In this context, making sure the overly-caffeinated and perennially stressed out staff writer who receives your missive gets the full story makes a lot more sense.  Correctly formatting a press release makes it easy for journalists to turn a release into a story and press "publish".

• write FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE or FOR RELEASE <DATE> at the top
• include contact info (name, company, physical address, phone number, email, website)
• at the beginning of the body include the city, state and date in bold
• make sure you include ### at the end of your formal press releas
• include an About Company section AFTER the ###
• if the release is more than one page include - MORE - at the bottom of each page
• at the end of the document write END to indicate there are no more pages to receive
• take a look at press releases from major companies for examples, they're usually done by big PR agencies who are required to get it right
  

Think of this, if you're a member of the media reviewing a stack of press release who are you going to focus on?  Conforming to the industry standard let's members of know that you've taken the time to get it right, and you're serious about your business.

Substantive Content (Not Just Noise)

• keep the headline to less than 75 words, with words longer than three letters capitalized
• include a 1-3 sentence summary of the release after the headline that sums up key facts
• the entire press release should be between 300 and 700 words (not just the body)
• the tone should be factual and include quotes from relevant individuals
• at the end of the release provide info on how to contact your company for more info, as well as any trademark or other product info

To Release or Not to Release (Formally)

There are plenty of services out there who will publish a press release to the wire for cheap, and sometimes even for free - which is great when you're trying to be scrappy. Sometimes, releasing an announcement by email to select contacts might be enough, because your product is not a consumer product and the press coverage you're looking for is focused on the technology enthusiast niche (like us).

If you are going to release formally, why not run your press release through HubSpot's Press Release Grader?  Get a score out of 100 and a bunch of suggestions on how to improve.  We loved this, it was fun making changes and then running it again (and again, and again) to see if our score went up.

Hubspot Pr Analysis

Publish at Scribd or explore others: How-To Guides & DIY startup pr

Get the Word Out

Once your press release is out there, make sure that you reach out to the people you've worked with, received advice from, and respect in your field to get the word out about your news.  Sending an email letting them know that you just made an announcement is good, and asking for their feedback and thanking them for their support is even better.

At the end of the day having a personal connection (just like with fund raising, hiring, etc) is so much more likely to help you break through the noise with an introduction.  Use LinkedIn, your advisers, investors, and employees to figure out how to make a personal connection with your desired media contacts.  You can do a lot of this stuff on a shoestring IF you build up your network.  If you don't have a network, using a PR firm is great.

More Resources

• HubSpot's Press Release Grader
• Concept Marketing Group's Press Release Template
• PRWebDirect Guidelines for Writing a Press Release