Yeah, tech growth is slowing down

Shares of Amplitude, Airbnb and Twilio are down sharply this morning following their earnings results yesterday.

It might seem odd to group these companies together given the different sectors they operate in: Amplitude does digital product analytics, Airbnb provides a marketplace for consumer lodging rentals, and Twilio sells communications services for software products via APIs. What could they have in common?

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The answer seems to be their growth forecasts for the year, which came in below what Wall Street was hoping for.

While we were less than impressed with how slowly the largest American tech companies are expanding their revenue, it appears we’re not dealing with an issue that only impacts Big Tech. Their smaller peers are seeing similar headwinds, too.

This morning, we’ll go over each company’s results and then we’ll hear from Amplitude CEO Spencer Skates, whom we spoke to yesterday. Lastly, we’ll look at a broader index of modern software companies’ growth rates and put all that together to glean takeaways for startups.

The (financial) road ahead

Airbnb needs no introduction, so we can jump straight to the numbers. The company reported better-than-expected revenue and its first GAAP profit in the quarter, while also generating fistfuls of cash. It certainly feels like a good result, especially given that revenue expanded 20% at Airbnb’s age in this economy.

However, Airbnb expects revenue to increase by 12% to 16% in the second quarter from a year earlier. That’s quite a bit less than the 58% growth it saw in Q2 2022, and it’s also a decline from the 20% it grew in Q1 2023. Investors did not like that forecast.

As for Twilio, it reported better-than-expected profit and revenue for the first quarter, but its revenue forecast of $980 million to $990 million for the second quarter, or growth of just 4% to 5%, left investors unsatisfied, especially as analysts were expecting a far greater $1.05 billion in revenue.