Ahead of the Curve - Bill Magnuson, Co-Founder and CEO of Braze [S4.E1]

Welcome back for another series of Scaling Up. Season 4 will again explore some of the great growth stories from around the world. To kick off Series 4 is the the CEO and co-founder of Braze, Bill Magnuson – one of the world’s hottest technology companies. Based in New York, Braze is a customer engagement platform that works with some some huge brands and businesses like Gap, Deliveroo, The NBA and Canva to deliver real time and personalised messaging across platforms From a serendipitous meeting on a NYC street crossing, Bill and his co-founders set out to build an enduring company based on the premise that mobile technology was going to fundamentally change the world. With vision and purpose, Braze has grown into the gold standard, tool of choice for innovative marketers. While customer love has driven success, building great product requires building and supporting great teams, and this is where Braze has excelled. Bill is a rare type of software CEO – deeply humble, highly technically proficient and possesses  the softer people skills required to execute on the visionary strategy and inspire the rapidly growing team. If this is the first time you have heard of Braze, rest assured it won’t be the last. This business is a next generational category leader in the making. I hope you enjoy this episode with Bill Magnuson. You can follow TDM ( linktr.ee/tdmgrowth) and host Ed Cowan (linktr.ee/eddiecowan) across social channels. Show notes -  Bill’s background (0:02:27); Braze’s founding story (0:04:26); The rise of mobile (0:08:05); How Braze has been used by brands to drive engagement (0:10:23) What the future of customer engagement is going to look like (0:18:52) The technology behind Braze (0:22:21) Including the difference between batch processing and string processing (22:29) The transition from CTO to CEO (0:27:58) How Braze has scaled its culture (0:32:03) The advantages of having headquarters in New York (0:35:42) The value of having operators on the board (0:37:47) Bill’s experience of sitting on a board (0:40:32) The role that venture has played in Braze (0:43:41) The importance of balance in Bill’s life (0:48:08)