In this guest post, TJ Thinakaran, CEO & Founder of CasselRoad shares a comprehensive view of Interoperability and Messaging, told in the context of Twilio’s ZipWhip acquisition, as detailed in full in his fascinating new white paper, available to download now.
“Is Twilio going into the SMB Market?”, “Are they trying to build UI-based solutions?”, “Is the A2P API business flat-lining?”
These were some of the questions I was getting when word of Twilio’s acquisition of Zipwhip got out. I was repeating myself a lot. The fact was that none of the above were true, and a short-form explanation made too many assumptions about the knowledge of the questioner.
I knew writing about Twilio’s ZipWhip acquisition would take time. I didn’t expect it would require over 6,000 words across six posts. This white paper combines them into 15 pages of quantitative research compressed into one accessible format.
This paper intentionally lacks graphics (a discussion for another time). However, it has over 15 pages of charts, graphs, and numbers about Twilio’s business.
The structure of the white paper mirrors the blog posts. In “Know Whose Party You’re Crashing,” we introduce the interoperability framework that allows us to differentiate between the consumer, operator, and the A2P provider.
Part II gives us an overview of how interoperability made Text Messaging the biggest digital bullhorn attached to our phones. In chapters III & IV, we dissect Twilio’s business model as it relates to the wireless network.
And in chapter V, we discuss how ZipWhip became a big deal.
We talk about the similarities between Jeff Lawson and John Lauer. We discuss how interoperability created the conditions for the acquisition and how the regulator enabled it. And we do all this using Cory Doctorow’s framework while discarding his caustic us-versus-them rhetoric.
Twilio’s acquisition of ZipWhip is a single M&A transaction in a year where there were many. This acquisition, however, reveals why the North American market remains singularly unique regarding the adoption and usage of A2P messaging.
