tomazstolfa

I'm the co-founder of Layer.

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: Parse was acquired by Facebook and unfortunately did not make the cut despite being a great asset for developers. One of the reasons is Facebook's shift in focus, but I'm sure there are others. I love Parse and I'm a big fan of Ilya and the team.

Layer is independent, backed by strong investors, and focusing on growing revenue. The product, unlike Parse, is very vertically specialized on something very hard to do well in house. Layer is providing value that customers recognize and are willing to pay for. Unlike Parse, Layer powers messaging in both new and established products with large user bases like Hinge, Trunk Club (Nordstrom), and many others.

Happy to answer any questions - [email protected]

Did you invest in Stripe (or start a similar company)?

It obviously was a difficult bet - young founders, powerful incumbents - plenty of risk and unknowns.

That said, I believe a good seed investor will spend a lot of time with the founders and the team before pulling the trigger. You'd be surprised at how few investors actually do that.

Layer -- San Francisco, CA

We’re looking for talented and driven engineers to help us build Layer, the open communications layer for the Internet. Layer enables app developers to easily build secure, scalable messaging, voice and video features into any app. We're tackling problems you won't find anywhere else, and we're obsessed with doing it right. A few of our high priority roles are:

* Senior Software Engineer

* Dev Ops Engineer

* Software Tech Lead

For more information and our full list of openings, visit: https://layer.com/jobs#positions

I think they shouldn't. Simplicity is the key of Povio and they are doing an amazing job at keeping it minimal ;)

been using this since the start and the evolution of the product is just amazing. The team is doing a wonderful job at simplifying everything around a very good core experience.

I hardly open Instagram these days and don't use Snapchat, but have been using Povio 5+ times/day over the last year.

Yes, it is in the roadmap. Let's nail mobile first ;)

The Layer UI kit will be open-source from day one. The SDK and protocol will be opened up soon after.

Like mentioned in our presentation today - we are on a mission to make communications better for everyone, and we firmly believe that open is a better option. A bit more about Layer: https://layer.com/introducing-layer

Thanks, this is great feedback! Please get in touch with us, we'd love to chat more - [email protected]

At Layer we will always offer a free tier for low volume products, and only charge once an app gets meaningful traction.

We are here to help apps built on top of Layer win.

that's some great insight! thanks for this.