Johnny kicks off the podcast with his, “I LOVE MEF” hat, and his “KISS MY tyntec” sweatshirt. His claim is The Czar (Eric Troutman) and #GMoney (Robert Gerstmann) have said he can be the new CEO of MEF, which will be sited in Greenland. That made me laugh.
Johnny also gave props to Eddie DeCurtis, founder/CEO of Shush. Who Johnny claims taught him the messaging industry. So you know who to blame.
In the news:
1 IMC v. FCC– the Eleventh Circuit case brought down the TCPA one-to-one rule happened. However, the carriers are not approving SMS campaigns that do not include it to protect their customers, that post got 2k impressions in the first 24 hours. The Czar with his Responsible Enterprises Against Consumer Harassment, MBC (R.E.A.C.H.) hat on responded by sending to the FCC “PETITION TO REVISE SAFE HARBOR RULES RELATING TO CALL AND TEXT BLOCKING“. Also included in that petition is The Campaign Registry, more on that later.
2 Twilio has lost their monopoly on 1800 SMS. That’s news to me, but competition is always good. AT&T is already supporting 1800 SMS.
3 Twilio is a massive story, with a stock price of 147. Hedge funds have certainly been driving up the price, also turning a GAAP profit (thanks to all the layoffs) certainly raised its ratings. Goldman Sachs analyst Kash Rangan upgraded the stock to a buy with a $185 price target on January 27th. Johnny thinks it could be $200. I’m feeling like we’re heading to a dot com like crash with AI.
Investments of half a trillion, investors get spooked by DeepSeek (open source Chinese AI), while other open source AIs like Ultravox and Llama are popular and been around since 2023. Twilio is doing the same as during its SaaS run up. Providing messaging and voice to the likes of early AI companies that will move to cheaper providers as costs become more important than time to market. Johnny does his, “you know nothing John Snow”, the market decides, not a geek.
4 Johnny is also pushing on selling tyntec yet again, the timing is definitely right. Other alternatives include Sinch, GMS, and Infobip. He also shared that Twilio could not buy all of Syniverse as the carriers would not let them. So sees Twilio as a potential buyer of tyntec, but he thinks Five9 is a more likely to be bought by Twilio. Given the control the activist investors now have on the Twilio board. It’s a more traditional business, but given the disruption AI could have on Five9’s business this could be risky in the medium term. But if the focus is near-term, there is money to be made by injecting some Twilio technology fizz into Five9.
5 Johnny moves onto his Doge deal with Robert Vis, see video below. How the Vis needs to copy Twilio’s lead in stock compensation.
6 The biggest news is Bill Peters has settled his lawsuit, see here. The problem for Tata Communications is they did not settle with Johnny. Given the election interference, and The Czar getting involved. See REACH’s FCC filing, “Relatedly, R.E.A.C.H. requests the Commission review the illegal—and unregulated—10 digit-long code registration process currently run by a foreign-owned company, The Campaign
Registry (TCR). ” Once the FCC chairman learns what happened, as well as his boss, there could be some significant consequences for Tata Communications’ business in the US.
7 Bill Peters notified Tata Communications on what was going on before the Kalyra acquisition was complete. Below is the letter and exhibits Bill sent to Amur Laksminarayanan, Managing Director & CEO at Tata Communications, source Giovanni Tarone. Here are the exhibits, and the detailed letter.
8 Johnny covers the complex MEF CEO situation:
The black-listing of Scott Warner is the latest abuse. Below is Uku showing his support for Scott, as well as on his recent Linkedin post.
The catalog of lies and abuse by the MEF CEO are shocking, some of which are covered in these posts:
This article covers the first 15 minutes of the podcast. The next 15 minutes are fun and free-wheeling. Enjoy!
Bill Peter’s Letter to Amur Laksminarayanan, Managing Director & CEO at Tata Communications,
Dear Mr. Laksminarayanan,
It is with great respect for the Tata brand and its reputation worldwide and also your superior accomplishments as a 35-year veteran of Tata that I am reaching out to you. As a former military officer and a founder of several companies, including the Campaign Registry, I can very much appreciate the integrity, honor and commitment you give to Tata, protecting the company. For this reason, I want to make you aware of important information related to the acquisition of Kaleyra. It is clear from the publicly filed stock purchase agreement that several actual and potential liabilities have not been disclosed by Kaleyra. Should the closing occur before these items are cleared up, Tata would unfairly and unwittingly inherit these problems. This is a situation that I and many others would like to avoid.
I sent several emails this past week to relevant members of your executive team, including Mysore Madhusudhan, Tri Pham, Troy Reynolds, Kabir Shakir and Rajiv Sharma, and the attorneys at Goodwin who were listed as Tata contacts for the deal in the proxy. Due to sending from my personal email, the attempts to Mysore were blocked by the server, and some of the other email may have been sent to a spam folder. So, I am continuing to follow up to make sure the Tata team receives the information. Additionally, I sent a hard copy of the main letter via Express Mail to the Reston VA office to ensure the information was received by Tata Communications. The letter arrived on July 21 and was addressed to the Chief of Legal / CFO. The exhibits to the letter still need to be delivered electronically, but this can be arranged once we are in contact.
I look forward to hearing from your team.
Best regards,
Bill Peters
Former CFO of Campaign Registry
Former US VP of Finance for Kaleyra