CXTech Week 39 2021 News and Analysis

The purpose of this CXTech Week 39 2021 newsletter is to highlight, with commentary, some of the news stories in CXTech this week. What is CXTech?  The C stands for Connectivity, Communications, Collaboration, Conversation, Customer; X for Experience because that’s what matters; and Tech because the focus is enablers.

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Covered this week:

  • Sinch Acquires Pathwire for $1.9B
  • That’s a wrap for TADHack Global 2021
  • LoopUP buys MashMe
  • Five9 and Zoom Merger is Off
  • Check out MicroAcquire – avoid the Investment Bankers
  • People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Sinch Acquires Pathwire for $1.9B

Following Twilo (SendGrid for $2B in 2018), MessageBird (SparkPost for $1B in CXTech Week 17 2021), and Intuit (TurboTax) ($12B for MailChimp – but mark my words, this one will end badly).

Sinch are buying Pathwire for $1.9B,  products include Mailgun, Mailjet, and Email on Acid. I had Pathwire 2020 revenues at around $75-100M, they’re claiming $132M for 2021. Note Mailchimp’s 2020 revenues were $800M. Both Intuit and Sinch’s deals are similar multiples at 2021 revenues. Thought I’m always a little concerned about significant run-ups in revenue in a mature segment just before acquisition, as 2022 revenue growth is unlikely to to be as strong. Cisco learned that one with Broadsoft.

The value of the mail providers is not so much the customers as it’s easy to churn email providers, rather all the campaign management, ecommerce integration, workflow, and analytics. Which tend to be missing on messaging aggregator focused platforms, their focus is minimizing routing costs and ‘losing’ a few of the messages on the way to help with margins. BTW check out AWA Networks, an alternative to the aggregators for developers with significant savings, check out this hack ‘The AWA Effect‘ from TADHack Global.

Sinch are principally B2B focused, they mention developers, but really they mean developers employed by a business they sell to. Twilio and Telnyx also sell to businesses, that’s where the bulk of the revenue resides, but they also engage developers.

That’s a wrap for TADHack Global 2021

Thank you to everyone who took part in TADHack Global 2021 from all around the world. We had over 1000 registrations, kicked off a new initiative TADHack TEENS in Sri Lanka (150 registrations), had 3 in-person locations (BerlinChicago, and Orlando), South Africa achieved a MASSIVE 400 registrations, and many hacks did an excellent job in mashing up the sponsors.  Well done everyone!

Thank you to our global sponsors, without whom, TADHack would not be possible: Symbl.aijambonz.orgSubspaceAWA Network, and Telnyx.

Thank you to AyobaMTNhSenid Mobile, and Ideamart for making TADHack South Africa and Sri Lanka possible. Both are world-leading examples of country-wide innovation ecosystems. 

Check out the linked weblog in the title for all the winners, the Enterprise Connect 2021 presentation, and press coverage.

I’ll be presenting at the RTC Conference, on “TADHack Global 2021- The results” in the WebRTC & Real-Time Applications track at 12:45 – 1:10 PM CT on Tuesday, Oct 12.

And we’ll have a session dedicated to TADHack Global at TADSummit EMEA Americas in November.

Enterprise Connect 2021 summary of TADHack Global, recorded Sunday night / Monday morning after a long TADHack Global weekend. I was knackered (rather tired).

LoopUP buys MashMe

Congratulations to Victor (another TADSummit regular) and his team.

Five9 and Zoom Merger is Off

I talked about CCaaS consolidation in CXTech Week 29 2021. I considered the GoContact / BroadVoice tie-up more sensible than that of Five9 / Zoom, given their respective market focus.

Check out MicroAcquire – avoid the Investment Bankers

One of the reasons about 80% of announcements about acquisitions sound from another planet is Investment Bankers’ spin on fashionable categories. Essentially conning the buyer into spending money to ‘leapfrog the competition’ or ‘catch-up with a category’ they’re not ever likely to be considered in. Investment bankers have no magic insights, they are trapped in a world of spin and spreadsheets; detached from the technology, and especially the what and why customers are buying.

MicroAcquire cuts out the banker, which I hope helps many more sensible transactions take place that generate long term value.

People, Gossip, and Frivolous Stuff

Filipe Leitão is now with RingCentral, here’s the announcement.

I couldn’t help myself in the comments around the announcement to declare “RingCentral is the new Cisco for Service Providers for Enterprise Telephony. Cisco didn’t move over to SaaS fast enough and kept legacy pricing which now squeezes telcos’ margins because enterprises are increasingly going direct to Enterprise Telephony providers :)” If this statement is news to you, you’re following the wrong analysts. BTW I’m not an analyst, I just say what I see, not what I’m paid to say. And by corollary, yes, those ‘magic shapes’ that compare vendors are influenced by $$$!!!

Víctor Sánchez is now Group CTO at LoopUP, see above acquisition.

Marcel Pirlich is now CMO & Co-Founder at BottleAd Media GmbH

Marten Schoenherr is now CEO/Founder at AWA Network GmbH, a sponsor of TADHack Global 2021, and catch their keynote at TADSummit EMEA Americas in November. Check out the ‘The AWA Effect‘ from TADHack Global.

Gunter Reiss is now an Advisor at Webomates

Gözde Yaman is now Software Engineer at Siemens

Paul Szczepan is now VP Global Partner Solutions Engineering at F5 Networks.

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