S11 E15: Passing Telco Infrastructure Costs to Advertisers and Scaling an All-IP Wireless Carrier to 300M+ Downloads with Derek Ting, Co-Founder & CEO of TextNow

Code Story | Startup Podcast for CTOs, CEOs and Technical Founders · Sep 2, 2025 · 23m

Derek Ting grew up in Canada-land, enjoying all the things of the area but especially hockey. He mentioned he has a bit of ADD, which made it hard for him to make it through a chapter in school. Nowadays, he has 2 kids. His oldest son plays hockey, and he and his family enjoys rooting on the Toronto Maple Leafs. When asked about food, he claimed to be one of lives to eat, as he loves food. In fact, the more exotic food the better - but not as far as insects or something.

When Derek figured out that carriers wanted to charge for texting, on top of the fees he was already paying for his phone…