Inside Braze’s blitz to $500M in CARR | Building broad, going global, and outfoxing the competition | Bill Magnuson (Co-founder & CEO) and Kevin Wang (CPO)

Bill Magnuson is the co-founder and CEO at Braze, along with Kevin Wang, who joined as employee #8 and serves as the CPO. The two MIT graduates have built Braze into a publicly listed customer engagement platform with a $4.4B market cap. In 2023, Braze surpassed $500M in CARR, and serves over 2,200 customers worldwide. Before Braze, Bill spent time at Bridgewater Associates. Kevin’s academic background is in brain & cognitive sciences, and prior to joining Braze he worked at Accenture and Brewgene.

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In today’s episode, we discuss:

• The Braze founders’ early insights into the mobile revolution
• How a TechCrunch Hackathon sparked Braze's creation
• The journey from 1,000 beta signups to 2,200+ paying customers
• Breaking traditional lean startup rules
• Navigating early fundraising challenges
• Finding product market fit by “fishing in every pond”
• Approaching competition strategically like a boxer
• Much more

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Referenced:

• Accenture: https://www.accenture.com/
• Appboy: https://www.braze.com/resources/articles/appboy-social-network-for-mobile-apps
• Bipul Sinha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bipulsinha/
• Braze: https://www.braze.com/
• Bridgewater Associates: https://www.bridgewater.com/
• Jon Hyman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jon-hyman/
• Mark Ghermezian: https://x.com/markgher
• MIT: https://www.mit.edu/
• Rubrik: https://www.rubrik.com/
• WeWork: https://www.wework.com/

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Where to find Bill:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billmagnuson/
• Twitter/X: https://x.com/billmag

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Where to find Kevin:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-wang-96131916/

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Where to find Brett:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson

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Where to find First Round Capital:

• Website: https://firstround.com/
• First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/firstround
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
• This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Teaser: Finding “terminal value” product market fit

(00:24) Introduction

(02:34) Bill's insights into the mobile revolution

(04:43) Lessons from Bridgewater Associates

(09:12) First principles thinking in action at Braze

(14:14) Meeting co-founders at an NYC Hackathon

(24:35) Braze’s scrappy scaling

(33:37) Early product development

(39:37) From 1,000 beta signups to 2,200+ paying customers

(43:51) Braze’s fundraising struggles

(47:01) Breaking the rules of a lean startup

(53:02) Riding the mobile wave to success

(60:02) Building a global customer base

(64:04) The never-ending quest for PMF

(70:29) 3 things every founder needs to know

(73:56) Navigating competition like a boxer

(79:03) When scale helps or hurts

(80:32) 1 thing they’ve learned from each other