2016 was a breakout year for cloud platform Twilio. The company added 11,000 active customers and 66 percent in revenue over 2015, according to Lee Kirkpatrick (pictured), chief financial officer of Twilio Inc., who said the company was started “by developers for developers.”

And while Kirkpatrick and Twilio recently received the Association for Corporate Growth in Silicon Valley’s 2017 Emerging Growth Award, at the time the company was founded, many weren’t impressed.

“When it was founded, John [Wolthuis], Jeff [Lawson] and Evan [Cooke], were told developers will never buy it; they’re not an audience,” Kirkpatrick said of Twilio’s founders during the ACG Silicon Valley U.S. Trust GROW! Awards in Mountain View, California. “But really we proved them wrong,” he told Lisa Martin (@Luccazara), host of of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio. (*Disclosure below.)

Providing a cloud platform that embodies developers’ values like risk-taking and innovation has turned out to be very profitable for Twilio. And echoing the “for developers by developers” motto, these are as much a part of Twilio’s platform as the culture inside of the company.

The Twilio team is so committed to challenging themselves that employees are told, “If what we’re doing isn’t terrifying you, you’re not pushing and trying hard enough,” Kirkpatrick said.

Code for community

It might surprise some that such an ambitious group would take an interest in charities. Community involvement is one criterion ACG weighs in its decisions when presenting awards, and the association was apparently pleased with Twilio’s various efforts.

These actually came about organically, according to Kirkpatrick. “We found that a lot of our early customers were not-for-profits,” he said, adding that Twilio’s flexibility, lack of up-front fees, simplicity and low cost attracted those organizations.

The company is involved in a number of social initiatives through Twilio.org.

“Twilio is part of the 1% Pledge, where we pledge one percent of our equity, one percent of our profits and one percent of our employee-time to give back and give to the community,” Kirkpatrick added.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s independent editorial coverage of ACG Silicon Valley U.S. Trust GROW! Awards. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner at the ACG Silicon Valley U.S. Trust GROW! Awards. The conference sponsor, AGS-SV, does not have editorial oversight of content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE