Jeff Lawson

Jeff Lawson is an American Entrepreneur, CEO and cofounder of Twilio. From 1995 to 2003, Jeff Lawson attended the University of Michigan. He graduated in 2003 with a bachelor's degree in computer science and film/video.

In middle school, Jeff Lawson began an event film business in middle school where he began taking videos and editing footage shot at bar mitzvahs. According to reports, Lawson was able to grow his video business until he graduated high school, making up to $5,000 to film weddings over weekends.

During his time at the University of Michigan, Lawson took about four years off his university degree program for entrepreneurial pursuits. He founded Versity.com, Inc., in August 1998, Stubhub.com in April 2000, and Nine Star Inc in September 2000. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 2003, Lawson began working for Amazon.com in September 2004 as a technical product manager.

During his time at Amazon, Lawson spent 15 months working on the company's Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform, and according to Forbes during a 2016 interview, Lawson made the following comments on why he was so inspired by his work at Amazon: "This whole idea that you can offer infrastructure as a service was kind of mind-blowing."

He left Amazon in January 2008 to become the founder and CEO of Twilio, a company that provides communications infrastructure—SMS, voice, video, email, and more—through its APIs.

Jeff Lawson has made angel investments in Mattermark, Nine Star, Major League Hacking, and Versity.