Assertion certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Early Braze competitors launched five simultaneous products to hit VC targets

Bill Magnuson · What It Takes to Forge Your Own Category with Braze Co-Founder and CEO Bill Magnuson · Oct 20, 2022 · at 21:56

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Braze co-founder and CEO Bill Magnuson reflects on how well-funded early competitors attempted to hit growth expectations by rapidly expanding into adjacent product lines.

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“You know, these are, these were companies that had 50, a hundred, a 150 employees. And all of a sudden they were trying to sell five products because in order for them to actually kind of hit the growth targets that they had signed up for, they needed to access not just one curve. They had to try to do it on multiple. And so instead of focusing on swinging that curve out, they wasted all their energy trying to claw up a bunch of these really hard to move up curves as the category was still emerging.”

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