Bill Magnuson

Guest: Bill Magnuson, CEO and co-founder of Braze The deployment of smartphones around the world was more impactful than any other technology to date, says Braze CEO Bill Magnuson — and that has big implications for emerging fields like generative AI. “If we get to the point where they [LLMs] really can be useful, human-like companions ... they will be usable by everyone that has smartphone technology.” In other words, the question is not business opportunity or scale: It’s capability. In this episode, Bill and Joubin discuss earnings days, Aaron Levie, MIT, customer churn, shower thoughts, technical co-founders, lacking context, AGI, “hands on keyboard,” the T-Mobile G1, app marketing, the 2008 financial crisis, Bob Iger, World War II, Peter Reinhardt, Watershed, and international offices. Chapters: (00:51) - Morning people (05:09) - What Braze does (06:59) - From CTO to CEO (08:17) - Waking up and commuting (10:49) - Leading vs. engineering (12:35) - Cognizant of believability (19:52) - LLMs and the human brain (25:46) - The AI ceiling (28:43) - The historic deployment of smartphones (37:58) - The benefits of youth (40:18) - Taking the leap (43:35) - Read more sci-fi (46:38) - Survivor bias (48:55) - Big risks at scale (52:30) - Who Braze is hiring around the world (55:32) - What “grit” means to Bill Links: Connect with Bill Twitter LinkedIn Connect with Joubin Twitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Bill Magnuson

Co-Founder and CEO

Braze

It's not an easy time to be a startup entrepreneur. Even as generative AI and LLMs present the potential for a technical paradigm shift, startups today must also grapple with the realities of financial market upheaval, ominous global power shifts, uncertain economic indicators, and disruption up and down the supply chain: It may feel as though "hunkering down" is the best that a founder can do. Bill Magnuson, Co-founder and CEO of Braze, has a different take, in which there's no time like the present era of change to uncover opportunities that can distinguish your business from competitors' as the skies clear. Having navigated through the early days of mobile and the multiple macro disruptions since to take Braze public and scale to a revenue run rate of $400+ million, Bill has put this strategy to the test. Seeing opportunity in today's times requires a longitudinal perspective on the underlying forces of change that create growth opportunities and strategy that anticipates the evolution of those forces while positioning your business to best take advantage of the resulting changes over time.. Timing around disruptions is key, and they provide a key opportunity for innovators to build in response to the evolution of new skillsets, team structures, and business models, all of which create new buyer personas, and can be cultivated even while headwinds stall growth. Those who lean into disruptions with curiosity and optimism can emerge as stronger innovators with deeper competitive moats because they were out building with a growth mindset while everyone else was hunkered down. Key takeaways from this talk include: *How to think about second-order effects of disruption, and when their evolution may ultimately reward patience, creating room for the slower growth that is often forced by a difficult macro. *What to watch for in areas of macro disruption in order to identify differentiating opportunities in unexpected places. *How evolving skillsets, team compositions, and ways of working can transform business, and why its absence can lead to obsolescence.

Bill Magnuson

Co-Founder and CEO

Braze

"Find a need and fill it" is a well-known maxim. After identifying the white space, though, understanding how to navigate category creation is key in order to grow and scale a company for the long term. For many SaaS businesses, the first category others consign you to may not match your ambitions as a founder. Entrenched forces have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and it takes courage to stick to your convictions about the future. As industries expand and mature, new strategies are needed to further deepen the competitive moat to secure and retain category leadership. Product is just the beginning: Ongoing success hinges on the growth and cultivation of the team, the company culture, and the larger stakeholder community—the work is never done. When Braze was founded in 2011 with Bill Magnuson as CTO, smartphones were just becoming mainstream and mobile marketing was in its infancy. At that time, the category term 'customer engagement platform' did not exist yet, but the cofounders believed that technology which enabled brands to better understand and serve customers across mobile and beyond was the future for Braze. Fast forward 10+ years, and the founding team's conviction has enabled Braze to become a leader in the nascent customer engagement category, reaching $100M in ARR in eight years, then doubling that to $200M less than 18 months later, to then making its public company debut at the end of 2021. In this session, Braze Cofounder and CEO Bill Magnuson will share best practices and lessons learned from his experience scaling Braze and establishing the company as a leader in the recently formed customer engagement category, including: Having conviction for your vision will help you navigate the changing SaaS landscape as you grow your business. Staying true to your initial vision is critical to category creation and for long-term company success. Determine when and whether to pivot, or to adapt to shifting circumstances. Founders must be adept at identifying and articulating the unique value the business delivers, refining the message over time without deviating from foundational beliefs. Category leadership results from a community effort: customers, end users, partners, investors, analysts, and team members collaborate to build on the founders' vision. How and why a CTO founder might transition to CEO: Technical founders deeply understand product value and can take on the wider leadership role as they navigate the nuance of category creation. Full video: https://youtu.be/T5r6ajAHyvI Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software. Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976 Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/ Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8

Bill Magnuson

Co-Founder and CEO

Braze

In the 25th episode of Cartoon Avatars Logan talks with friend and Braze CEO Bill Magnuson about his start, his success, and the joke stocking stuffer worth 20k. Plus Redpoint’s Rashad Assir is back once again to discuss his own background, and how it led to his TikTok success and work with Redpoint. (0:00) Intro (0:22) Introducing Rashad (3:05) Rashad’s background (5:45) Redpoint’s TikTok (10:45) Introducing Bill Magnuson (16:27) How big is Braze? (17:36) Bill’s Background (20:48) Taking college classes as a high school freshman (25:11) Applying to MIT (29:32) Building Google android product (34:14) Bridgewater (39:42) Founding Appboy (44:46) Thesis behind Braze (48:29) The “aha moment” (52:05) Throughput vs Deliverability (55:57) Predicting the future of infrastructure (1:02:35) Advice for entrepreneurs (1:05:37) Being on the path of progress (1:10:31) Taking over as CEO (1:15:23) Recruiting your team (1:19:32) Going public (1:24:35) What keeps you motivated? (1:27:22) Bill’s bitcoin story (1:30:02) Outro   Links: https://www.tiktok.com/@redpoint?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@corporayshid?lang=en   Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music Griff Lawson   🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb... Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0...   Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/cartoonavatars 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars   About the Show A Saturday morning podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett (Partner and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures) covering the tech news with his friends and other people with industry expertise. Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

Bill Magnuson

Co-Founder and CEO

Braze