Formerly | Appboy Inc. (2011–2017) |
---|---|
Type | Public company |
Nasdaq: BRZE | |
Industry | |
Founded | 2011 [1] |
Founders |
|
Headquarters | , |
Key people |
|
Products | Customer Engagement Platform |
Number of employees | 1000+ |
Website | www.braze.com |
Braze, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company based in New York City [4] [5] It is a customer engagement platform used by businesses for multichannel marketing. [5]
Braze provides customer engagement technology for companies such as HBO Max, [6] Skyscanner, [7] PureGym, [8] Burger King, [9] Babylon Health, [10] Grubhub, [11] [12] NASCAR [13] and CleanChoice Energy. [14]
Braze was co-founded as Appboy in 2011 by Bill Magnuson, Jon Hyman, and Mark Ghermezian. The three met after Magnuson and Hyman won the 2011 NYC Disrupt Hackathon for Gilt-ii. [15] The trio raised $3 million from investors in order to start the company. [1] [16] [17]
In 2016, the company launched Canvas (Cross Channel Journey Management) which allows brands to personalize and automate messages to users as well as incentivizing customers with rewards. [18] [19]
In August of 2017, the company received $50 million in Series D Financing [20] and later that year, Appboy rebranded to Braze, Inc. [21]
The company launched Braze Alloys in 2018, a network of over 45 integration applications with companies like Segment, mParticle, and Amplitude. [22] The company also raised $80 million in Series E funding, with a valuation of $850 million, and opened an office in Singapore. [23]
In 2019, Braze added Google AMP for email [24] and passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue. [25] The company was named a leader in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Mobile Marketing Platforms. [22] Also in 2019, Braze was listed by Inc. as one of the Best Places to Work and Forbes listed Braze on its Cloud 100 list. [26]
In 2020, Braze boycotted Facebook advertising and encouraged other brands to do the same over content moderation practices. [27] The company also joined several other marketing tech firms to offer technology grants to Black founded businesses with the Tech for Black Founders program. [28] At this time, Braze was delivering over 100 billion messages each month [29] and had raised over $175 million in funding. [30] That same year, Inc. listed Braze as one of the Best Workplaces for a second year. [31]
Braze also commissioned the Data Privacy Report providing details about consumers and their privacy concerns. [32] Along with Skyscanner and Apptopia, Braze published the Ready for Takeoff 2021 Travel Industry Trends, Insights and Strategies. [33] Braze introduced integrations with Snowflake and Shopify. [34] [35] Forbes named the company on the Cloud 100 list again. [36] [37] Braze was also recognized as a leader in the Forrester CCCM Wave in 2021. [38]
In October 2021, Braze filed to go public. [39] On November 17, 2021, Braze’s IPO raised $520 million and had a market valuation of $5.9 billion. [40] [41]
In 2022, Braze released the second annual Global Customer Engagement Review, detailing how retailers approach customer engagement. [42] [43]
Benchmark is a venture capital firm based in San Francisco that provides seed money to startups.
Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development.
RingCentral, Inc. is an American publicly traded provider of cloud-based communication and collaboration products and services for businesses.
Wix.com Ltd. is an Israeli software company, publicly listed in the US, that provides cloud-based web development services. It allows users to create HTML5 websites and mobile sites through the use of online drag and drop tools. Along with its headquarters and other offices in Israel, Wix also has offices in Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Lithuania, Poland, the Netherlands, the United States, Ukraine, and Singapore.
HubSpot is an American developer and marketer of software products for inbound marketing, sales, and customer service. HubSpot was founded by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah in 2006.
Canva is an Australian graphic design platform that is used to create social media graphics and presentations. The app includes readymade templates for users to use, and the platform is free and offers paid subscriptions such as Canva Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality. In 2021, Canva launched a video editing tool. Users can also pay for physical products to be printed and shipped. The company has announced it intends to compete with Google and Microsoft in the office software category, with website and whiteboard products.
Qualtrics is an American experience management company, with co-headquarters in Seattle, Washington, and Provo, Utah, in the United States. The company was founded in 2002 by Scott M. Smith, Ryan Smith, Jared Smith, and Stuart Orgill.
Shopify Inc. is a Canadian multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. Shopify is the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. The Shopify platform offers online retailers a suite of services including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools.
SimilarWeb Ltd. is an Israeli web analytics company specializing in web traffic and performance. Headquartered in Tel Aviv, the company has 12 offices worldwide. Similarweb went public on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2021.
Twilio is an American company based in San Francisco, California, which provides programmable communication tools for making and receiving phone calls, sending and receiving text messages, and performing other communication functions using its web service APIs.
Udemy, Inc. is a global destination for teaching and learning online. It was founded in May 2010 by Eren Bali, Gagan Biyani, and Oktay Caglar.
Cvent Holding Corp. is a publicly held software-as-a-service (SaaS) company based in Virginia that specializes in meetings, events, and hospitality management technology. The company has over 4,000 employees. Cvent offers web-based software for in-person, virtual, and hybrid events, including online event registration, venue selection, event marketing and management, virtual and onsite, and attendee engagement. The company also offers software for hotels and venues to manage group and corporate travel business and attract group business through Cvent’s sourcing platforms.
Mailchimp is a marketing automation platform and email marketing service. "Mailchimp" is the trade name of its operator, Rocket Science Group, an American company founded in 2001 by Ben Chestnut and Mark Armstrong, with Dan Kurzius joining at a later date.
Emplifi is a private company headquartered in New York City. It develops and markets customer experience systems. The business was founded in 2020 after social media analytics company Socialbakers was acquired by customer experience systems business Astute. The combined entity changed its name to Emplifi.
WalkMe is an American multinational software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, with headquarters in San Francisco, California. Its Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) was recognized in Everest Group's PEAK Matrix Assessment of DAP vendors as the leading DAP product. Alongside its headquarters in San Francisco, the company has offices in Raleigh, North Carolina, Tel Aviv, Israel, and a global footprint including the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan.
Lemonade, Inc. offers renters' insurance, homeowners' insurance, car insurance, pet insurance and term life insurance in the United States as well as contents and liability policies in Germany and the Netherlands and renters insurance in France. The company is based in New York City. It has approximately 1 million customers and 70% of its customers are under the age of 35. The company is registered as a public benefit corporation and has a stated mission of ‘transforming insurance from a necessary evil into a social good." Its business plan includes annually giving a portion of its underwriting profits to a nonprofit organization chosen by each customer upon signup. Lemonade uses artificial intelligence and chatbots to process claims.
BigCommerce is a NASDAQ-listed ecommerce platform that provides software as a service services to retailers. The company’s platform includes online store creation, search engine optimization, hosting, and marketing and security from small to Enterprise sized businesses.
Zeta Global Holdings Corp. is a data-driven marketing technology company which was founded in 2007. Zeta offers companies a suite of multichannel marketing tools focused on creating, maintaining, and monetizing customer relationships.
UiPath is a global software company that makes robotic process automation (RPA) software. It was founded in Bucharest, Romania, by Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă. Its headquarters are in New York City. The company's software monitors user activity to automate repetitive front and back office tasks, including those performed using other business software such as customer relationship management or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.