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Comment by zaatar | Hacker News Reader

Actual complaint (PDF): https://www.bloomberglaw.com/iframe/document/X1Q6NR78D282/do...

Am I reading that document correctly? He had a clause for accelerated vesting upon termination and so vested 507885 shares immediately when they fired him in December (par. 36), and this suit is about the remaining 127386 "earn-out" shares that were dependent on hitting revenue targets? On the one hand that sucks and it sounds like he had a terrible time at Twilio; on the other hand he just got an extra 2.5 years' worth of stock without having to stick it out and is basically set up for life if he wants to be. Puts this in a slightly different light. (I have no connection to any of these people or companies, just interested in the story.)

It's common to have this sentiment, but it doesn't actually put anything in a different light, anymore than the fact that you're getting a salary of (say) $150,000/year makes your landord stealing your $5,000 deposit "in a different light". (If it looks completely unrelated to you, think about the deposit story from the point of view of someone who lives on $20/day).

I have not read the complaint, and have no knowledge of this case. But when you've been treated unfairly (in the legal sense), it is your right to seek compensation for that through the courts, and the fact that other agreements were honored (and put him in a good financial position) should not put anything in "a different light".

Absolutely - I'm not saying he shouldn't take action if he thinks he's entitled to that compensation. But I think most people coming to this thread with just the news article will be reading it more as "twilio acquired and fired so they could claw back promised equity" rather than "head of acquired company thinks twilio made it hard for him to hit revenue goals, affecting 1/6 of his equity compensation."

He got a very good deal, he is lucky that Twilio acquired his company that I've never heard of.

I think I've heard of them once, but what does Twilio bring to the table to enrich Authy? Plus, Authy is literally competing against Google Authenticator, which despite the name is open source and free to use. Authy is asking nearly 10 cents per auth: https://www.twilio.com/two-factor-authentication/pricing

Google authenticator only stores its data locally. If you lose your phone you're screwed.

Authy replicates data so you can have your 2FA on multiple devices and easily restore them if your phone dies.

The funny thing is that as and end user, I can use authy to replace my Google authenticator, since it also implements the same protocol. So I use it for all my 2fa codes, mainly so I can access it from places other than my phone if needs be. I wonder if authy has monetized my use case somehow (adverts most likely).

Yes it stores locally, but on iOS the data will be kept in backups if they're encrypyted.

The price per auth was incredible when I priced it out once. It was going to be several hundred K per year just to support normal 2FA with it.

The other thing they advertise us 2FA for actions. So not just on login, but on actions. Imagine getting a 2F push notification that someone is transferring 5k out of your bank account, accept?

That also means the price isn't just logins, but could also be sensitive actions!

Just FYI, Google Authenticator is no longer open source. The last open source version was released 5 years ago.[0] TOTP is an open standard though, and can be implemented by anyone, such as Authy has done.

[0] https://github.com/google/google-authenticator-android

Other way around, Authy gets Twilio another channel to upsell telco services. $0.09/auth is fine if you cache it for 30 days/ever.

And why not Google Authenticator? Some people either want to avoid Google products or be more appealing to customers who want to avoid Google. I know of Authy since itch.io use them.

Damn, that is over $1 a year per user. Gotta have a high value customer demographic to justify that...

Yeah, that's a great succinct analysis. Use this to auth your mult-dollar purchases, not your SSH logins.

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