Ilya Volodarsky (@ivolo) / X

Ilya Volodarsky

1,085 posts

Ilya Volodarsky

@ivolo

Founder @WildfiresOrg, prev: co-founder @Segment. Also: developer and angel investor in fire-tech, functional healthcare.

Joined June 2010

Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
May 5, 2011 to Oct 12, 2020 — 9 years, 5 months to build a $3.2B SaaS company Here’s some of the lowlights/highlights that come to mind:
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 17, 2020
9 years, 5 months to build the culture that powered our $3.2B company. Here’s some of the cultural lessons learned:
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
Replying to @ivolo
2020: @segment is joining @twilio to build the customer engagement platform of the future; With Segment’s “single view of the customer” and Twilio’s communication platform, the combined product will be unstoppable. I can’t wait to see what we build next!
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
Your (& YC's) culture of belief in young people gave us the energy and the confidence to push through some low lows in the early days. It's a huge value add for young founders, and clearly a huge differentiator in terms of pre-seed accelerators. Thank you Dalton ❤️
Dalton Caldwell
@daltonc
Oct 12, 2020
You should always take young people seriously. On September 23, 2010 a young @ivolo chatted me up at my MIT career fair booth and sent the attached. He wasn't looking for a job but had questions about startups. 10 years later, his startup @segment sold for $3.2B to Twilio.
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Sep 14, 2021
Can we solve U.S mega-fires within 5 years? What if we can treat our forests at risk every 5 years, instead of every 126 yrs? There is once-in-a-decade opportunity, to bring back the western US we love, sitting in draft reconciliation bill form, and we need help. Read below:🔥👇
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
Replying to @ivolo
2011: @paulg looks at 3 scared MIT kids and says: “I have a good feeling about you guys”. We celebrate by feasting on three complimentary bananas. (high point!)
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Mar 22, 2017
Announcing @Segment Open Fellowship - focus full time on an open source project and we'll pay you $8k/mo to ship it
Open Source at Twilio
From twilio.com
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Jan 8, 2025
Save our Souls (SOS) or Find all the Owls (FAO)? 🧵 Who will kill us first, NEPA/CEQA or the high intensity wildfire? NEPA/CEQA is a huge brake pedal to fuel reduction work, and despite billions in funding, most western forests will see high intensity wildfire before they see
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Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
Replying to @ivolo
2010: @asmith speaks at the MIT Founders Journey; after class, we ask him to drop by our dorm for a beer. To our complete surprise, he agrees 🙂 Meeting Adam inspired @calvinfo, @reinpk and I to startup together. Crazy how small actions can have such profound consequences.
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
Replying to @ivolo
2012: With a few months of runway left in the bank, @ianstormtaylor has an idea for a final pivot: a simple Analytics API for developers; we launch Segment.io on HN, and developers seem to like it :)
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
Replying to @ivolo
2019: we launch our startup program: free Segment, free analytics+messaging stack, and YC growth bootcamps; this program has since provided analytics stacks to 10,000+ startups for free :)
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Jan 9, 2025
Firetech in 2030 🧵 4 years ago, during the horrible 2020 wildfire season, I was inspired to work on the wildfire mission. @WildfiresORG has since become an official US Forest Service partner, and has shipped & deployed a NEPA-accelerating software with US National Forests
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Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
Replying to @ivolo
2018: from humble beginnings, we move into our 7th and latest SF office (!!); from taking sales calls in a closet, we’ve upgraded to 20+ office rooms and 40k square feet; also higher rent!
Ilya Volodarsky
@ivolo
Oct 12, 2020
Replying to @ivolo
2012: 2 years and 3 big pivots later, and we’re looking at a dwindling bank account. PG now says: “so you’ve burned half a million dollars and don’t have anything to show for it?”