Braze (company)

Braze is a customer engagement platform provider offering companies connect with consumers through conversations across channels.

Brave, Inc. ($BRZE): Founded in 2011. Braze is a company that specializes in customer interaction software. The platform provides messaging via push notifications, email, in-product and so on. A comprehensive customer engagement platform provides customer-centric interaction between consumers and brands. Using the Brazos platform, brands collect and process customer data in real time, organize and optimize contextually relevant cross-channel marketing campaigns and continuously develop their customer engagement strategies.

Customers

As of July 2021, the company had 1,119 customers worldwide. The company's platform interacts with 3.3 billion active users per month. The company's clients include: Etsy, Globo, The Guardian, Delivero, Soundcloud, Goldman Sachs and others. The company's retention rate is 125%. As of July 31, 2021, January 31, 2021 and January 31, 2020, no client has submitted more than 5% of the company's ARR.

Market volume and dynamics

According to IDC, the market for marketing company management software is $15 billion in 2021 with projected growth to $19.4 billion by 2024.

Uniqueness of the idea and competitive advantages

Braze was named a leader in the Forrester Wave report: Multichannel Campaign Management (Independent Platforms) in Q3 2021 and "The Forrester Wave: Mobile Interaction Automation in Q3 2020", was included in the Forbes Cloud 100 four years in a row, as well as receiving the Crain's Best Places to Work award in New York three years in a row.

Multi-channel approach that allows you to focus on the customer

The company creates a more complete view of the customer and extracts analytical information from the data to inform strategy, allowing brands to tactically deploy channels according to the strengths of each channel and proven customer preferences.

The architecture ensures that capabilities can be used across all channels, maximizing the impact of developing new features. The applicability of functions across all channels, combined with an intuitive user interface, allows customers to quickly and easily build cross-channel consumer paths without having to acquire different skills for each channel or constantly undergo retraining.

The data streaming architecture processes its own data in real time

Providing real-time interaction has become possible thanks to a proprietary enterprise-level streaming processing architecture. This architecture receives, contextualizes customer data and responds to it at the moment. The platform allows for continuous streaming of large amounts of data, providing an operational view of various consumer interactions with the brand.

Value propositions throughout the organization

While for many brands, the marketing organization has traditionally shared responsibility for customer interaction, cross-functional collaboration improves customer service and increases ROI for the marketing organization. For brands using a collaborative approach, marketing teams work hand-in-hand with other groups within the organization, including data, product, and engineering teams, to optimize customer engagement. The platform provides valuable data that is used to make decisions and actions across the entire spectrum of customer interaction.

Fast payback

The ease of use of the platform and seamless integration with existing technologies, combined with the valuable data and knowledge it generates, allow brands to quickly and efficiently develop and conduct campaigns that achieve their strategic goals.

High performance at scale

As brands continue to globalize and increasingly conduct their business digitally, they need a scalable customer engagement platform. The platform enabled interaction with 3.3 billion monthly active users through apps, websites and other digital customer interfaces in July 2021, compared to 2.3 billion in January 2020 and 1.6 billion in January 2019.

Seamless real-time compatibility with the customer interaction technology stack

Open APIs support easy-to-implement integrations with an expanding selection of technology partners. These integrations allow the platform to import and export data to and from a variety of sources. This seamless integration with technology partners not only enriches the consumer insights gathered by the platform, but also increases the return on other technology investments by allowing other systems and tools to benefit from or complement the data and ideas collected by the platform.

Customer experience and an engaged community

When brands collaborate with a company, they gain access to strategic and technical advice from experts and a community of like-minded, visionary marketers and product leaders.

The documentation library, interactive online certification courses, as well as customer support and technical support services help brands develop effective marketing strategies and maximize the use of the platform. Braze Bonfire, a virtual global customer community, includes thousands of people from a wide variety of industries, business sizes and roles. As of July 2021, more than 3,000 community members are using Braze Bonfire to share best practices in growth and lifecycle marketing, to provide direct feedback to development and development teams, and to attend events and participate in professional networks.

Competitors

The main competitors are Adobe, Salesforce, Blimp, Iterable, Leanplum, MailChimp, MoEngage, Sprinkle and Qualtrix.

Industry restrictions

The Company is subject to strict and constantly changing laws and regulations, industry standards and contractual obligations related to confidentiality, security and data protection.

Monetization model

The company generates revenue primarily from the sale of subscriptions to the platform, which accounted for more than 90% of total revenue in each year ended December 31, 2019 and 2020, and each of the six months ended June 30, 2020 and 2021. The subscription plan includes access to the platform, including customer support. The vast majority of subscriptions are designed for one year without the possibility of cancellation, while some large multi-year subscriptions are up to three years, and some small short-term subscriptions are less than one year. The company also receives income from professional services. Professional services include research, training services, and strategy seminars. In 2020, revenue from professional services amounted to less than 10% of revenue. UserTesting offers two main subscription plans - a subscription plan based on the number of seats and a subscription plan on a flexible basis. Each tariff plan provides customers with access to the platform during the term of the contract, and revenue is recognized on a fair basis. Within each tariff plan, the company offers certain releases based on different levels of tools and functions.

Regional focus

The company believes that there is a significant opportunity to further expand their presence in international markets that they have already entered, and to enter markets that they have not yet entered. For each fiscal year ended January 31, 2021, and the six months ended July 31, 2021, approximately 40% of revenue was generated outside the United States. It is expected to increase market penetration in regions including Europe and Asia-Pacific, and further benefit from new opportunities in regions such as Latin America. For example, in the second half of fiscal year 2021, the company established a joint venture with partner Japan Cloud Computing Co., Ltd. to facilitate further expansion into the Japanese market.

Management

William Magnuson has been Chief Executive Officer since January 2017 and a member of the Board of Directors since August 2014. Previously, he worked as Chief Technical Officer from July 2011 to December 2016.

Mr. Magnuson holds a Master of Engineering Degree (MEng) and a Bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Jonathan Hyman has been Chief Technology Officer since December 2016. Previously, he served as Director of Information Technology from July 2011 to December 2016.

Mr. Hyman holds a Bachelor's degree in computer science from Harvard College.

Miles Kleger has been President since December 2016 and Chief Customer Officer since January 2018. He previously served as Director of Revenue from December 2014 to January 2018. Mr. Kleger holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from New York University and a bachelor's degree from Duke University.

Isabelle Winkles has been the CFO since January 2020. Before joining the company

Ms. Winkles held various positions, including Vice President of Finance at Cognizant Technologies Solutions Corp., a professional services company, from April 2018 to January 2020 and Managing Director of investment bank Morgan Stanley & Co. from January 2016 to April 2018. Ms. Winkles received an MBA from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Susan Wiseman has been working as General Counsel since January 2016. Previously, she held the position of Managing Legal Adviser on Commercial issues in Salesforce.com , Inc., a customer relationship management technology company, from August 2012 to December 2015. Ms. Wiseman received a doctorate in law and a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University.