Bessemer made an early bet on Twilio, and it opted to hold onto the shares long after the IPO. : In a year that's featured the high-profile market debuts of Dropbox, Spotify and DocuSign, as well as numerous multibillion-dollar software acquisitions, one of the most lucrative deals was the decision by Bessemer Venture Partners to hang onto its Twilio shares. Twilio, whose software powers the communications systems used by Airbnb, Salesforce and Nordstrom, went public in mid-2016. But 2018 will go down as the year that the company truly resonated with investors.