After 18 years in business, cloud-based communications platform Twilio hit a substantial milestone last year of $5 billion in annual revenue. CRO Thomas Wyatt, who took on the role in October 2024, credits the growth to the company’s self-service offering, which has grown over 20% YoY and includes customer chatbots and interactive voice responses.

“We provide the communication infrastructure for companies that want to communicate with their consumers, and that’s increasingly important now because it’s not just applications like [voice or messaging services], but all these modern AI agents that are being built require the ability for the agent to communicate with humans as well,” he said.

Prior to taking on the CRO role at Twilio, Wyatt spent time in the product space at companies like Cisco and People.ai. Revenue Brew sat down with Wyatt to discuss Twilio’s self-service offering, customer retention, and its evolving go-to-market strategy.

How are you leveraging your prior roles for the CRO position?

A lot of the platform transitions we’re making as a company, like integrating a lot of new services on the Twilio platform, requires us to have sort of a general manager’s type of mindset in the way we think about what it means for our business model…That requires us to think more about multiproduct selling and the ability to deliver a more integrated set of solutions for customers.

What do you think contributed to Twilio’s $5 billion in annual revenue last year?

The customers are embracing the Twilio platform to deliver their communications for their next-generation apps and agents. In order for customers to really, truly get the benefit whatever use case they might be building toward, Twilio is providing the way to effectively personalize those experiences.

Keep reading our latest interview with Twilio.—LI

Evolving with your customer is an important strategy for sustaining long-term growth. After 28 years of operating its digital invitations platform, Evite is doing just that with a rebrand centering around creating more personal relationships with customers.

• Since returning to private ownership in 2020 and receiving a strategic investment from Francisco Partners in 2024, Evite has closely examined the evolving party space by monitoring social media trends and shifting Gen Z consumer behaviors.

“There was almost a white space in the area…just recognizing that hosting is emotional,” said Olivia Pollock, VP of brand at Evite. “There’s just so much happening before the actual event happens and it’s like: How can we be that steady friend and show up? How do we take that emotion and distill it and bring it back to the brand?”

Focus on the user: Pollock said “stagnant” designs and an outdated user experience were big pain points the brand identified; it has introduced a sleeker look with a friendlier voice—or as Pollock calls it, a “steady friend persona.” There’s also more user-generated content displayed to provide event inspiration in line with images users would find on Pinterest.

“Helping a powerhouse legacy brand like Evite navigate this next chapter has been such a deeply intentional journey for us,” said Jhoanna Marissa Flores, CEO and founder of Willa Creative, the agency behind Evite’s rebrand, via email statement. “We wanted to celebrate that heritage while injecting a fresh energy that reflects the magic of how we all connect today.”

Pollock said customers had been impacted by social media fatigue, and it wanted to lean into the reality of hosting parties, which can include “sitting with your guests on the floor of the kitchen eating cake and chatting.”

Part of Evite’s rebooted strategy is also focusing more on analog events, like book clubs or mahjong nights—which internal data shows younger customers gravitating toward.

• There’s also a desire for more unique events: Pollock highlighted “garden discos” as an event Evite promoted based on broader social media trends, resulting in a 10% YoY increase in popularity for the party type on the platform.

Keep reading about Evite’s evolving approach.—LI

Much of the economic news these days feels like we’re headed in the wrong direction. Oil prices are high. Inflation is on the rise. Consumers are gloomy. Pundits are raising the specter of stagflation and calculating the odds of a recession. Though some indicators are worrisome, the economy as a whole is in better shape than people give it credit for, Fifth Third Bank Chief Economist Jeffrey Korzenik believes. And the discourse around the “K-shaped economy” may be distorted.

Low debt ratios. Though lower-income consumers are showing signs of stress, on the whole “the American consumer has a tremendous amount of resiliency,” Korzenik told CFO Brew. Consumers’ debt relative to their disposable income is “near multi-generational lows,” he pointed out during a session at the AICPA CFO Conference in April. That leaves households better able to “withstand shocks” such as high energy prices, he noted.

Keep reading about interpreting economic headwinds.—CV

Is the economy in better shape than CFOs think? (CFO Brew)

Much of the economic news these days feels like we’re headed in the wrong direction. Oil prices are high. Inflation is on the rise. Consumers are gloomy. Though some indicators are worrisome, the economy as a whole is in better shape than people give it credit for, Fifth Third Bank Chief Economist Jeffrey Korzenik believes.

AI is making physical stores more important, not less (Retail Brew)

A new report by Colliers found that retailers are increasingly using AI to optimize store performance while expanding brick-and-mortar footprints.

Large hospital systems are leading the ‘food is medicine’ movement (Healthcare Brew)

An apple a day can’t keep the doctor away entirely—but it can lead to better health outcomes overall. In fact, hospital executives might encourage providers to prescribe apples (among other items from the produce department) as part of growing “food is medicine” programs.

Forget sifting through endless listings. Revenue Brew and CollabWORK highlight only a handful of roles each week, chosen for your interests and industry. Click here to view the full job board.

• Account Manager at CommScope, Inc.
• Business Development Manager at CSC ServiceWorks
• Account Executive at United Site Services
• Director, Pro Sales Operations at Home Depot
• Director of Project Management at Post Holdings Inc.