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Item 1. Business

2023-03-31 compared with 2022-03-31 · 172 added, 114 removed, 251 unchanged (53% of the section changed)

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Braze is a leading comprehensive customer engagement platform that powers customer-centric interactions between consumers and brands.

Customer Engagement is an emerging category of business activity and software which we define as the full set of activities that companies use to build and maintain direct, meaningful relationships with their customers.

Our platform empowers brands to listen to their customers better, understand them more deeply, and act on that understanding in a way that is human and personal.

Using our platform, brands ingest and process customer data in real time, orchestrate and optimize contextually relevant, cross-channel marketing campaigns and continuously evolve their customer engagement strategies.

As of January 2022, more th an 1,300 customers around the world trust Braze with their most valuable assets:

their customer relationships.

As of January 2023, 1,770 customers around the world trusted Braze to power their cross-channel customer engagement strategies.

In January 2023, our platform enabled interactions with 4.8 billion monthly active users via our customers’ apps, websites, and other digital interfaces, up from 3.7 billion in January 2022.

In fiscal year 2022 alone, we processed over nine trillion consumer-generated data points on our platform, and our customers sent approximately one and a half trillion messages to their consumers using our platform.

Today, consumers can interact with a seemingly unlimited number of brands anytime, anywhere, resulting in a dramatic increase in competitive pressure among brands.

At the same time, the data generated from digital experiences and the increased number of consumer touchpoints have provided brands with new opportunities to reach consumers and personalize consumer experiences.

But with this opportunity comes greater consumer expectations for highly relevant and seamless cross-channel interactions.

These trends have led brands to increase their focus and investment on customer experience–the holistic impression that brands create across the customer journey–to differentiate themselves and form long-lasting customer relationships.

Most marketing platforms available today approach customer engagement on a channel-by-channel basis.

Channel-centric strategies often lead to disjointed customer experiences that destroy brand equity and diminish customer loyalty.

We offer a new and different way of thinking about customer engagement.

We built our platform on the premise that in order to foster positive customer experiences and long-lasting customer relationships, brands must create personal and human connections with consumers.

To ensure that interactions between brands and consumers have the same relevance and cross-channel continuity as human interactions, we avoid channel silos so that each channel is aware of activity occurring in other channels and is able to react to that activity in real time.

The real-time nature of the interactions we enable is made possible by our proprietary, enterprise-grade stream processing architecture.

In fiscal year 2023 alone, we processed over 13 trillion consumer-generated data points on our platform, and through our platform, our customers sent approximately 2.2 trillion messages to their consumers.

Over the last decade, as individuals and as consumers, our bond with technology has strengthened immensely.

We have welcomed more and more digital services and products into our lives and integrated them into nearly every activity we take part in.

Braze was founded in 2011 in response to the stepchange in human history ushered in by the "smartphone", where we began to become significantly more connected to each other and to the products and services that brands compete to sell to us.

Today, consumers interact with many brands across a myriad of digital and physical touchpoints.

The data generated from digital experiences and the increased number of consumer touchpoints have provided brands with new opportunities to reach customers and personalize brand experiences, but it has also increased consumer expectations for highly relevant, personalized, and seamless cross-channel interactions.

These trends have put competitive pressure on brands and led even traditional enterprises to increase their focus and investment on customer experience.

Brands have evolved to create engagement opportunities with customers through the use of customer engagement software, increasing the use of first-party data and making those first-party relationships actionable in a way that helps differentiate them from their competition, while forming lasting customer relationships that can increase brand loyalty and customer value over time.

This can be as simple as capturing a user’s music or show preferences and alerting that user to similar new content on a media streaming service, or as advanced as using predictive AI to accompany a customer throughout their new user journey, each of which can create a lifelong attachment to the brand.

Most cross-channel marketing automation platforms available today approach customer engagement on a channel-by-channel basis, which creates disjointed customer experiences and diminishes customer loyalty.

We built Braze as a true customer engagement platform on the premise that brands must create personal and human connections with consumers through the consistent delivery of positive customer experiences in order to foster long-lasting customer relationships.

Using our platform, brands ingest and process customer data in real time and then orchestrate and optimize contextually relevant, marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

Our platform avoids the data and engagement silos that marketing point solutions create, so that each touchpoint across channels and platforms is aware of other engagement events and can react to that activity in real time.

In addition to avoiding siloed channels and data, our platform empowers real-time engagement between brands and their

The real-time nature of the interactions we enable is crucial, and is made possible by our proprietary, enterprise-grade stream processing architecture.

This architecture receives, contextualizes, and responds to first-party customer data in the moment.

We have designed it to mimic the human ability to listen, process new information in context, and react instantaneously.

We vertically integrate our orchestration, classification and personalization capabilities such that coordinating between them is simple and fast.

Meanwhile, we decouple our data ingestion and message sending capabilities from the channels they support.

This enables our capabilities to be centralized and available across channels and easily extensible to new channels.

We support interactions across in-product and out-of-product messaging channels.

Today, our in-product messaging channels consist of Content Cards, which are pieces of personalized content embedded into a brand’s website or application, and in-app and in-browser messages.

Our out-of-product channels include, but are not limited to, mobile push notifications, web push notifications, email, SMS and MMS messages, webhooks, Facebook and Google advertisements and multiple over-the-top, or OTT, media services and connected TV channels.

Braze unleashes the power of interdisciplinary teams by serving numerous stakeholders, beyond traditional marketers, including product and engineering teams and business intelligence teams.

Our platform produces valuable data that informs decisions and actions across the entire customer engagement spectrum.

Our messaging capabilities transcend marketing use cases, often being used for product or transactional use cases that facilitate or enhance the consumer’s experience with the brand or product.

We enable brands to easily integrate our platform with both their in-house technical infrastructure and our expanding partner ecosystem of best-in-class technologies.

Our customers can import data from other systems into any layer of our technology stack via our application programming interfaces, or APIs.

They can also use Braze Currents to stream data in real time to those systems, which increases the return on our customers’ other technology investments.

We support direct integrations with cloud data service providers such as Snowflake, customer data management platforms such as Segment, analytic solutions such as Amplitude and other components of the modern marketing technology ecosystem.

Our platform is designed to serve the needs of customers across sizes, stages of growth, industries, and geographies.

We have designed it to listen like a human would, process new information in context, and react instantaneously, enabling marketers to run engagement campaigns and messaging that feel relevant and personal.

Braze also unleashes the power of interdisciplinary teams by serving numerous stakeholders beyond traditional marketers, including product and engineering teams, business intelligence, and data engineering teams.

Our platform produces valuable data that informs decisions and actions across customer engagement strategies.

Our engagement capabilities transcend marketing use cases, often being used for product or transactional use cases that facilitate or enhance the consumer’s experience with the brand or product.

As a result, Braze is often a critical part of our customers’ communications infrastructure.

Our platform is also designed to serve the needs of customers across sizes, stages of growth, industries, and geographies.

Our customers include many established global enterprises and leading technology innovators.

We employ a land-and-expand business model centered around offering products that are easy to adopt and have a rapid time to value.

We expand our reach within existing customers when our customers add new channels, purchase additional subscription products such as Braze Currents, implement new engagement strategies, or onboard new business units and geographies.

We expand our reach within existing customers when our customers add new channels, purchase additional subscription products, implement new engagement strategies, or onboard new business units and geographies.

We also grow as our customers grow because our pricing is based in large part on the number of consumers that our customers reach and the volume of messages our customers send.

A key aspect of Braze's differentiation is that we offer a platform, not a point solution, that gives brands an end-to-end solution for achieving their customer engagement goals, not just a tool to send messages.

We vertically integrate our data ingestion, orchestration, classification, and personalization capabilities, so coordinating between them is simple and fast.

Meanwhile, we abstract away the particulars of disparate data sources and the vagaries of the many messaging channels we support, so that when marketers implement their customer engagement strategies in Braze, they can maintain a customer-centric mindset – focused on the intersection of the goals of their brand with the needs of the consumer, not the complexity of data integrations or siloed message channels.

This also provides consistency across Braze's classification, orchestration, and personalization feature set, making it easier for our customers to expand across channels, and allowing our R&D investments into areas like predictive intelligence or Braze's Canvas Flow visual development environment to deliver broad impact quickly and efficiently.

Within the orchestration layer, we enable marketers to easily design, visualize, and launch customer journeys utilizing Canvas Flow, our proprietary, no-code journey orchestration tool.

With Canvas Flow’s comprehensive journey testing, marketers can also test, implement, and optimize the most effective channels, cadence, frequency, messaging, or creative elements from a single tool.

As the usability of Canvas Flow has improved over time, we have observed that more and more customer communication and engagement workloads have shifted to it, which we believe cements Braze in our customers’ technology ecosystems.

We support interactions across both in-product and out-of-product messaging channels.

Today, our messaging channels consist of in-app messages (including in-product messaging to apps on connected TV platforms), in-browser messages, surveys, mobile and web push notifications, email, SMS and MMS messages, WhatsApp messaging, webhooks, Facebook and Google audience sync, and Content Cards – which are similar to a content-rich and personalized notification inbox.

The flexibility of our platform also allows us to add new channels quickly and efficiently as they become relevant to our customers.

In the past year, we have launched general availability for WhatsApp messaging, as well as early access to TikTok audience sync for certain customers on our platform.

We enable brands to easily integrate our platform with both in-house technical infrastructure and our expanding partner ecosystem of best-in-class technologies.

For instance, in late fiscal year 2023 we introduced Braze Cloud Data Ingestion, which allows our customers to set up a direct connection between their data warehouses or platforms and Braze to automatically sync relevant user attributes, events, and purchases.

Once synced to Braze through Cloud Data Ingestion, this data can be imported into any layer of our platform and can be leveraged for use cases such as personalization or segmentation.

Customers can also use Braze Currents to stream data in real time to those systems, which increases the return on our customers’ other technology investments.

We support direct integrations with cloud data service providers such as Snowflake, customer data management platforms such as Rudderstack, analytic solutions such as Amplitude, and other components of the modern marketing technology ecosystem.

Our Competitive Strengths

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Our cross-channel engagement approach enables customer-centric experiences.

We build a more complete picture of the customer and draw insights from data to inform strategy, enabling brands to tactically deploy channels according to each channel’s strengths and proven customer preferences.

We build a more timely, contextual, and complete picture of the customer and draw real-time insights from data flow to inform strategy and drive execution.

This fosters a more cohesive messaging and brand engagement experience across all channels, allowing brands to deploy the right

communication and engagement messaging through channels based on a channel’s strengths and proven customer preferences.

Our architecture ensures that our capabilities can be used across all of our channels, maximizing the impact of new feature development.

Additionally, when we add new channels, they immediately benefit from all of the existing features that we have already built, which makes them fully robust from the outset.

The applicability of features across all channels, combined with our intuitive user interface, allows our customers to quickly and easily construct cross-channel consumer journeys without the need to learn different skills for each channel or be constantly retrained.

This is accomplished without sacrificing the unique qualities or capabilities associated with each individual channel that we support.

This is particularly valuable for the investments we have and will continue to make in artificial intelligence and machine learning features, such as predictive audience targeting, AI copywriting assistance, and automatic multivariate testing and optimization, which are designed to reduce the amount of manual time that marketers dedicate to building and executing customer engagement campaigns, thereby improving overall results without additional effort.

Additionally, when we add new channels, they immediately benefit from all of the existing functionality that we have already built, which makes them fully featured and robust from the outset.

This means that these new channels, such as the launch of SMS and WhatsApp messaging, can compete against existing point solutions at launch and reach scale more quickly.

Because Braze offers a true end-to-end customer engagement platform, and not a point solution, marketers benefit from the applicability of features across all channels.

Combined with our intuitive user interface, this allows our customers to quickly and easily construct cross-channel consumer journeys without the need to learn different skills for each channel, making it easier for them to grow with Braze over time.

This is accomplished without sacrificing the unique qualities and capabilities associated with each individual channel that we support.

Data Streaming Architecture Processes First-Party Data in Real Time

The real-time nature of the interactions we enable is made possible by our proprietary, enterprise-grade stream processing architecture.

This architecture receives, contextualizes and responds to first-party customer data in the moment.

Our platform allows for high-volume, continuous data streaming, providing a live view of the various interactions that consumers are having with a brand.

This architecture receives, contextualizes and reacts to first-party customer data in the moment.

Our platform allows for high-volume, continuous streaming of user data to be processed in real time, providing a live understanding of the many interactions that consumers are having with a brand.

Unlike batch processing, where data is processed only when a specific time or threshold is hit, our data streaming architecture processes each unit of data as it is created.

Real-time data processing enhances messaging relevance, while delayed data processing often leads to irrelevant messages and frustrated consumers.

Real-time data processing enhances messaging relevance, in contrast to batch processing, where delayed data processing often leads to irrelevant messages and frustrated consumers.

We not only process data but also create analytical data.

When a consumer interacts with an out-of-product marketing campaign or a website or application with the Braze software development kit, SDK, embedded, that consumer generates data that is processed and contextualized with existing data in real time.

Value Propositions Across the Organization

While for many brands the marketing organization has traditionally owned overall responsibility for customer engagement, cross-functional collaboration enhances the experience for the customer and improves the return on investment for the marketing organization.

For brands that take 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.

Braze unleashes the power of interdisciplinary teams by serving numerous stakeholders, beyond traditional marketers, including product and engineering teams, and business intelligence teams.

Our platform produces valuable data that informs decisions and actions across the entire customer engagement spectrum.

Our messaging capabilities transcend marketing use cases, often being used for product or transactional use cases that facilitate or enhance the customer’s experience with the brand or product.

When a consumer interacts with any messaging channel that Braze delivers, or any of the brand’s digital products or services that have been integrated with an embedded Braze software development kit (SDK), that consumer generates data that is processed and contextualized with existing user data models in real time.

This allows marketers to better understand consumer behavior and associate specific content or messaging with in-product engagement, providing further context that can be leveraged for deeper engagement.

Global, High Performance at Scale

As brands continue to grow, transform, and conduct more of their business digitally, they need a customer engagement platform that scales with them.

In January 2023, our platform enabled interactions with 4.8 billion monthly active users via our customers’ apps, websites, and other digital interfaces, up from 3.7 billion in January 2022.

Our scalability distinguishes our platform from point solutions, and we can handle the biggest of enterprise needs.

with highly reliable uptime.

We facilitate the rapid delivery of a high volume of messages, which enables us to power a brand’s highest-volume events, whether they are expected, like Black Friday, or unexpected events or scenarios.

The depth and breadth of our business footprint around the world offers always-on support and local market expertise, which we view as a differentiator as organizations become more global.

Braze has customers in over 60 countries and an operational presence in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Rapid Time to Value Across the Organization

While for many brands the marketing organization has traditionally owned the responsibility for customer engagement, cross-functional collaboration enhances the experience for the customer and improves the return on investment for the marketing organization.

For brands that take a collaborative approach, marketing teams work hand-in-hand with data, product and engineering teams to optimize customer engagement.

Our platform’s ease of use and seamless integration into existing technologies, coupled with the high value data and insights that it generates, enables brands to develop and run campaigns that meet their strategic goals quickly and efficiently.

Using our intuitive user interface and drag-and-drop tools like Canvas Flow, individuals across all roles and technical skill levels can design and quickly deploy multi-message, cross-channel, A/B-tested strategies, with the process of new campaign creation accelerating over time.

Braze gives teams across a company the power to imagine, create, and evolve brilliant customer experiences.

When designing campaigns, marketers use our composition tools to unlock new creative ideas that can be deployed across all appropriate channels and platforms.

They can also leverage the strategic and creative insights of our Customer Success teams or find inspiration through engaging with our Braze Bonfire customer community as they brainstorm new approaches.

When it comes time for execution, marketers and product engineers use Braze to orchestrate personalized messaging experiences directly into their products, and to ensure that all campaigns, regardless of channel, are highly coordinated and additive to the overall customer experience.

When designing campaigns, marketers use our composition tools to bring new creative ideas to life across all appropriate channels and platforms.

They can also leverage the strategic and creative insights of our Customer Success and Strategic Consulting teams,

or find inspiration through engaging with our Braze Bonfire customer community as they brainstorm new approaches.

When it comes time for execution, marketers and product engineers use Braze to orchestrate personalized experiences and directly embed them into their products.

Finally, data scientists and business intelligence teams analyze data gained from marketing and lifecycle campaigns, creating a rapid experimentation loop that compounds improvements and gains over time, and helps inspire new creative ideas.

We serve as the unifying thread that enables brands to draw on the strength of multiple teams working in concert to bring creative, technical and business intelligence skills together.

Rapid Time to Value

Using our intuitive user interface, individuals across all roles and technical skill levels can design and quickly deploy multi-message, multi-channel, A/B-tested strategies, with the process of new campaign creation accelerating over time.

High Performance at Scale

As brands continue to globalize and conduct more of their business digitally, they need a scalable customer engagement platform.

In January 2022, our platform enabled interactions with 3.7 billion monthly active users via our customers’ apps, websites and other digital interfaces, up from 3.0 billion in January 2021.

Our scalability distinguishes our platform from point solutions, and we can handle the biggest of enterprise needs.

Seamless, Real-Time Interoperability across the Customer Engagement Technology Stack

Our open APIs support easy-to-implement integrations with an expanding selection of technology partners, which we refer to as Braze Alloys, other third-party technology providers and in-house systems.

These integrations allow our platform to import and export data to and from a wide variety of sources.

These seamless integrations with technology partners not only enrich the consumer insights collected by our platform but also increase the return on other technology investments by allowing other systems and tools to benefit from or add to the data and insights collected by our platform.

Our open APIs support easy-to-implement integrations with an expanding selection of in-house systems, third-party technology providers, global systems integrators, and our formal technology partners, which we refer to as Braze Alloys.

These integrations and partnerships allow customers to easily expand to messaging channels Braze may not offer native support for, easily import and export data to and from a wide variety of sources, or provide specialized services that speed integration and time to value.

Our seamless integrations with technology partners not only enrich the consumer insights collected by our platform, but also increase the return on other technology investments by allowing other systems and tools to benefit from or add to the data and insights collected by our platform.

For example, a food delivery app may combine a consumer’s food preferences with weather data to either send a campaign to encourage a consumer to order-in their favorite foods when a blizzard is forecasted or skip the “order-in tonight” discount on days when the weather is sunny.

A retailer might reach out to a consumer when a favorite article of clothing goes on sale after confirming with their inventory management technology that the particular article of clothing is in stock in the consumer’s size and color preference.

These and other integrations provide an opportunity for our customers to further build the personalized brand relationships that consumers desire.

Customer Engagement Expertise and Highly Engaged Community

When brands partner with us, they get access to strategic and technical advice from our experts and from a community of like-minded, forward-thinking marketers and product leaders.

Our documentation library, interactive online certification courses and customer success and technical support teams help brands design effective marketing strategies and use our platform to its maximum capability.

We provide a number of resources to help brands design effective marketing strategies and use our platform to its maximum capability, including customer success and technical support teams, documentation library, and interactive online learning paths and certification courses, such as Braze Certified Practitioners, Marketers, or Administrators.

Braze Bonfire, our virtual, global customer community, includes thousands of individuals across a wide spectrum of industries, business sizes, and roles.

As of January 31, 2022, over 5,000 community members use Braze Bonfire to exchange growth marketing and lifecycle marketing best practices, to give direct feedback to our product and engineering teams and to attend events and engage in professional networking.

As of January 31, 2022, Braze Firebrands, our customer advocacy group, consists of over 300 customers that represent us in the market.

In addition to serving as references to prospective customers, they participate in case studies, speaking engagements and media interviews, adding to our brand equity and overall market awareness.

As of January 31, 2023, over 7,000 community members use Braze Bonfire to exchange growth marketing and lifecycle marketing best practices, to give direct feedback to our product and engineering teams and to attend events, engage in professional networking, and explore career growth opportunities.

Growth Strategy

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We believe we can achieve significant growth by expanding sales within our existing customer base.

We expand the use of our platform by existing customers by, among others, adding new channels and increasing the messaging volume we sell to our customers as their businesses and needs continue to grow and as they reach additional consumers, which in turn leads to a need for greater messaging capacity.

We expand the use of our platform with existing customers by, among others, adding new channels and increasing the messaging volume we sell to our customers as their businesses and needs continue to grow and as they connect directly with additional consumers, which in turn leads to a need for greater messaging capacity.

We also anticipate that as more customers reach higher levels of digital sophistication, they will invest in additional data streaming and data management capabilities.

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We believe there is a significant opportunity to continue to expand usage of our platform outside the United States, both by expanding our presence in international markets where we operate today and by entering markets we have not yet penetrated.

For instance, we have recently expanded our global footprint to include Canada and France.

We expect to increase market penetration in regions like Europe and Asia-Pacific and to further capitalize on the greenfield opportunity in regions such as Latin America.

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We have built and plan to continue investing in direct integrations with technology partners that augment our core offering with a broad range of complementary offerings, including data augmentation and enrichment, analytics, and channel extensions.

We are also expanding our relationships with the ecosystem of solution partners, marketing agencies, and consultancies that offer opportunities for new customer referrals.

We are also expanding our relationships with the ecosystem of solution partners, marketing agencies, consultancies, and global system integrators that offer opportunities for new customer referrals.

We offer a single, vertically integrated platform that encompasses the major functionalities, or layers, required for modern customer engagement:

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They can then use membership in these user cohorts as additional criteria in the Braze Classification layer.

• Braze Cloud Data Ingestion:

Braze Cloud Data Ingestion enables brands to quickly set up a direct connection from a data warehouse to Braze in order to sync relevant user attributes, events, and purchases.

This enables brands to harness the bulk of their customer data to perform deeper levels of segmentation, message triggering, and personalization without the need to maintain complex data pipelines.

In 2022, we announced early access to our turnkey integration with Snowflake, and we anticipate expanding this integration to additional data warehouses in the near term.

Classification

• Segmentation:

Customers can define reusable segments of consumers based upon attributes, events, or predictive propensity scores from our machine learning algorithms.

Customers can define reusable segments of consumers based upon attributes, events, user behaviors, or predictive propensity scores from our machine learning algorithms.

Braze Segments are updated in real-time as data is ingested, allowing them to stay up-to-date with the latest data inputs.

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• Predictive Suite:

Our Predictive Suite allows customers to identify groups of consumers that are of critical business value such as “consumers who are likely to churn.” Our platform uses machine learning to automatically identify consumers who have a propensity to behave similarly to the identified audience, allowing customers to preemptively engage these consumers and thereby encourage or discourage their predicted behaviors.

consumers who have a propensity to behave similarly to the identified audience, allowing customers to preemptively engage these consumers and thereby encourage or discourage their predicted behaviors.

Orchestration

Canvas is our flagship orchestration tool, allowing customers to create journeys, mapping out multi-step, cross-channel messaging experiences such as onboarding flows, nurture campaigns, win-back strategies, and more.

• Canvas Flow:

Canvas Flow is our flagship orchestration tool, allowing customers to create journeys, mapping out multi-step, cross-channel messaging experiences such as onboarding flows, nurture campaigns, win-back strategies, and more.

Canvases are designed to be flexible and real-time, able to execute nearly any digital marketing campaign strategy that customers can envision.

Canvas is natively cross-channel and customers use it to design and execute strategies that span all of the platforms and channels that our platform supports.

Using Canvas, customers can create multiple variants of a journey and automatically optimize customer journeys based on the performance of the variants.

Canvas Flow is natively cross-channel and customers use it to design and execute strategies that span all of the platforms and channels that our platform supports.

Using Canvas Flow, customers can create multiple variants of a journey and automatically optimize customer journeys based on the performance of the variants.

Campaigns allow customers to send one set of single-channel or multi-channel messages to be delivered to customers in a particular user segment.

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• Event and API Triggering:

Messages, steps within a Canvas, or entire Canvas flows can be triggered in a variety of ways, such as when events of a certain type are received or when API calls are initiated from our customers’ servers.

Messages, steps within a Canvas Flow, or entire Canvas flows can be triggered in a variety of ways, such as when events of a certain type are received or when API calls are initiated from our customers’ servers.

• Frequency Capping and Rate Limiting:

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• Intelligent Selection:

Our platform can automatically run a multi-armed bandit optimization to improve the outcomes of a recurring Canvas or Campaign.

Consumers can traverse different Canvas paths or receive different Campaign variations in a manner designed to maximize the total number of conversions.

Our platform can automatically run a multi-armed bandit optimization to improve the outcomes of a recurring Canvas Flow or Campaign.

Consumers can traverse different Canvas Flow paths or receive different Campaign variations in a manner designed to maximize the total number of conversions.

• Personalized Variant :

Braze sends each user the campaign variant they’re most likely to engage with by analyzing how users with similar profiles respond to each variant in an initial A/B test.

• Reporting and Analytics:

We provide a variety of analytics features to help our customers understand and improve their customer engagement strategies:

◦ Campaign and Canvas Analytics:

◦ Campaign and Canvas Flow Analytics:

Our platform provides analytics breakdowns for all Campaigns and Canvases, including tracking conversion rates.

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Customers can analyze the retention uplift caused by a messaging strategy, or create and analyze funnels of actions that were taken by consumers after receiving a message.

◦ Predictive Suite:

The Braze Predictive Suite enables brands to use machine learning to determine what customers are likely to purchase and/or churn without any engineering resources.

Predictive Churn and Predictive Purchases are customizable, on-demand predictive models brands can create in minutes to effectively leverage and act on data seamlessly within the Braze platform.

◦ Report Builder:

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Customers can personalize messages using the Liquid Templating language to inject personalized content into their messages.

Our platform allows customers to flexibly utilize a wide variety of data in this templating process, including data ingested and stored on consumer profiles, as well as contextual data, such as properties of a consumer action that triggered a message flow.

Personalization options include use cases such as listing a set of consumer-specific recommendations or creating complex if/else logic inside of a message to conditionally determine what content to deliver.

Our platform allows customers to flexibly utilize a wide variety of data in this templating

process, including data ingested and stored on consumer profiles, as well as contextual data, such as properties of a consumer action that triggered a message flow.

Personalization options include use cases such as listing a set of consumer-specific recommendations or creating sophisticated if/else logic inside of a message to conditionally determine what content to deliver.

• Connected Content:

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Our platform offers a variety of interstitial messages that can be added to mobile applications and web browsers for engagement use cases – ranging from reminders, confirmation dialogs, promotions, surveys, and more.

These in-experience messages can be built from templates or built from scratch with nearly infinite customizability.

These in-experience messages can be built from templates using our drag and drop editor or built from scratch with nearly infinite customizability.

◦ Content Cards:

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In addition to supporting push notifications on all major platforms, we have released advanced functionality such as Push Stories (paginated image carousels within notifications) to increase the power and flexibility of the channel.

Our platform provides a full suite of email engagement technology, including email template editing and management, link tracking and heatmap analytics, email preference centers, and seed lists.

Our platform provides a full suite of email engagement technology, including email template editing and management with a drag and drop editor, link tracking and heatmap analytics, email preference centers, and seed lists.

We also support advanced email content types, such as Accelerated Mobile Pages, which enables marketers to embed interactive elements.

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◦ Ad Network Integrations:

Using Braze Audience Sync with Facebook or Google, brands can sync user data from Braze to Facebook Custom Audiences and Google Display Network to deliver advertisements outside the Braze platform based upon behavioral triggers, segmentation and more.

Using Braze Audience Sync with Facebook, TikTok or Google, brands can sync user data from Braze to Facebook Custom Audiences, TikTok Custom Audiences, and Google Display Network to deliver advertisements outside the Braze platform based upon behavioral triggers, segmentation and more.

◦ WhatsApp Integration:

Our platform is directly integrated with the WhatsApp Cloud API, making it easy to natively compose and orchestrate two-way messages as part of any cross-channel campaign in Braze.

Our platform offers flexible webhooks, allowing customers to connect Braze to any external application via outbound web requests, using all of the targeting and templating mechanisms available on other channels.

Customers can use webhooks for utility purposes (such as messaging to their own servers) as well as to build integrations with other third-party partner systems, such as to direct email providers, extending the range and utility of our platform.

Customers can use webhooks for utility purposes (such as messaging to their own servers) as well as to build

integrations with other third-party partner systems, such as to direct email providers, extending the range and utility of our platform.

• Transactional Messaging:

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There are several established and emerging competitors that address specific aspects of customer engagement, but we believe that none of our competitors currently offer comparable comprehensive customer engagement solutions.

We face intense competition from software companies that offer marketing solutions, such as legacy marketing clouds like Adobe and Salesforce, and point solutions like Airship, Iterable, Leanplum, MailChimp and MoEngage.

Many of our existing competitors have, and our potential competitors could have, substantial competitive advantages, such as greater name recognition, longer operating histories, larger sales and marketing budgets and resources, greater customer support resources, lower labor and development costs, larger and more mature intellectual property portfolios and substantially greater financial, technical and other resources than we do.

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For example, competitors willing to sell customer data in markets where such activity is permissible may have a pricing advantage over us in such markets.

Additionally, to the extent there is a sustained general economic downturn, our customers and potential customers may experience delays and reductions in general customer engagement technology spending.

As a result, our competitors may respond to market conditions by lowering prices and attempting to lure away our current and potential customers.

With the introduction of new technologies and the entry of new competitors into the market, we expect competition to persist and intensify in the future.

In addition, merger and acquisition activity in the technology industry could increase the likelihood that we compete with other large technology companies.

In addition, recently, there has been significant merger and acquisition activity among our competitors, including the acquisition of MailChimp by Intuit and the acquisition of Leanplum by CleverTap.

Continued merger and acquisition activity in the technology industry could increase the likelihood that we compete with other large technology companies.

This could harm our ability to increase sales, maintain or increase subscription renewals, and maintain our prices.

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New start-up companies that innovate, and large companies that are making significant investments in research and development, may invent similar or superior products and technologies that compete with one or more of our platform offerings.

In addition, some of our competitors may enter into new alliances with each other or may establish or strengthen cooperative relationships with agency partners, technology and application providers in complementary categories, or other parties.

In addition, some of our competitors may enter into new alliances with each other or may establish or strengthen cooperative relationships with agency

partners, technology and application providers in complementary categories, or other parties.

Competitors may also consolidate with existing partners that we rely on, and as a result we could lose such partnerships.

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Sales and Marketing

We sell subscriptions to our platform primarily through a direct sales force with primary operations in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, London, Berlin, Austin, Tokyo and Singapore.

We sell subscriptions to our platform primarily through a direct sales force with primary operations in Austin, Berlin, Chicago, London, New York City, Paris, San Francisco, Singapore, and Tokyo.

Our team of account executives is responsible for selling to new customers as well as existing customers who may renew their subscriptions, increase the usage of our platform over time and expand the deployment of our platform across their organizations.

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Our marketing activities are designed to build broad brand awareness, generate thought leadership and create demand and leads for our sales organizations within our target markets.

Our marketing programs target influencers and decision makers participating in the buying cycle, including the chief marketing officer, chief customer officer, chief technology officer, and other key functional marketing and technology heads.

Our marketing programs target influencers and decision makers participating in the buying cycle, including the Chief Customer Officer, Chief Digital Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and other key functional marketing and technology heads.

Additionally, we conduct marketing programs to engage with our customers to promote upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and we engage with industry analysts, consulting firms, marketing service providers, data and technology partners, marketing agencies and other platform partners, business and trade press and other industry experts who exert considerable influence in our market.

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We use open source software in our services.

As of January 31, 2022, we owned 19 patents and had seven patent applications pending for examination in the United States and no non-U.S.

As of January 31, 2023, we owned 23 patents and had two patent applications pending for examination in the United States and no non-U.S.

patents or patent applications.

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patent applications may not result in issued patents.

As of January 31, 2022, we owned ten registered trademarks in the United States and 19 registered trademarks in various non-U.S.

As of January 31, 2023, we owned nine registered trademarks in the United States and 19 registered trademarks in various non-U.S.

jurisdictions.

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See the section titled “Risk Factors” for a more comprehensive description of risks related to our intellectual property.

We experience seasonality in our cost of revenue as a result of our customers’ increased usage of our platform based on their business demands.

Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Seasonality” for additional information.

Security, Privacy, Data Protection and Regulatory Matters

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These laws and regulations may involve privacy, data security, data protection, rights of publicity, content regulation, intellectual property, competition, consumer protection, taxation, anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and corruption, economic or other trade prohibitions or sanctions or securities law compliance or other subjects.

Such obligations may include, without limitation, the Federal Trade Commission Act, or the FTCA, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or COPPA, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, or the CCPA, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, or the EU GDPR, the EU GDPR as it forms part of United Kingdom, or the U.K., law by virtue of section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, or the U.K.

GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS.

In addition, several states within the United States have enacted or proposed data privacy laws.

For example, Virginia passed the Consumer Data Protection Act, and Colorado passed the Colorado Privacy Act.

Such obligations may include, without limitation, the Federal Trade Commission Act, or the FTCA, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998, or COPPA, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003, the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, as amended by the California Privacy Rights act of 2020, or the CCPA, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, or the EU GDPR, the EU GDPR as it forms part of United Kingdom, or the U.K., law by virtue of section 3 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, or the U.K.

GDPR, and the ePrivacy Directive.

In addition, several states within the United States have privacy laws which come into effect in 2023, namely, the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, the Colorado Privacy Act, the Connecticut Data Privacy Act and the Utah Consumer Privacy Act.

The CCPA and EU GDPR are examples of the increasingly stringent and evolving regulatory frameworks related to personal data processing that may increase our compliance obligations and exposure for any noncompliance.

For example, the CCPA imposes obligations on covered businesses to provide specific disclosures related to a business’s collecting, using, and disclosing personal data and to respond to certain requests from California residents related to their personal data (for example, requests to know of the business’s personal data processing activities, to delete the individual’s personal data, and to opt out of certain personal data disclosures).

For example, the CCPA imposes obligations on covered businesses to provide specific disclosures related to a business’s collection and use of personal data and to respond to certain requests from California consumers related to their personal data (for example, requests to know of the business’s personal data processing activities, to delete the individual’s personal data, and to opt out of the “sale and/or sharing” of their personal information).

The CCPA authorized the establishment of the California Privacy Protection Agency, or CPPA, to implement and enforce the CCPA.

Also, the CCPA provides for civil penalties and a private right of action for data breaches which may include an award of statutory damages.

In addition, it is anticipated that the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, or the CPRA, effective January 1, 2023, will expand the CCPA.

The CPRA will, among other things, give California residents the ability to limit use of certain sensitive personal data, establish restrictions on personal data retention, expand the types of data breaches that are subject to the CCPA’s private right of action, and establish a new California Privacy Protection Agency to implement and enforce the new law.

federal and state consumer protection laws may require us to publish statements that accurately and fairly describe how we handle personal data and choices individuals may have about the way we handle their personal data.

federal and state consumer protection laws may require us to publish statements that accurately and fairly describe how we handle personal data and rights individuals may have about the way we handle their personal data.

European data privacy and security laws (including the EU GDPR and U.K.

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For example, the EU GDPR applies to any company established in the European Economic Area, or the EEA, and to companies established outside the EEA that process personal data in connection with the offering of goods or services to data subjects in the EEA or the monitoring of the behavior of data subjects in the EEA.

These obligations may include limiting personal data processing to only what is necessary for specified,

explicit, and legitimate purposes;

These obligations may include limiting personal data processing to only what is necessary for specified, explicit, and legitimate purposes;

requiring a legal basis for personal data processing;

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We believe our impact is greatest when our workforce represents the diverse and global community that we serve.

Accordingly, we started our Braze For ALL initiative in 2018 and our Social Impact Department in 2021 in support of our view that diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, efforts are integral to our success and a key part of our core values.

As part of our Braze For ALL initiative, our DEI efforts include:

Accordingly, we established our Social Impact Department in 2021 in support of our view that diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, efforts are integral to our success and a key part of our core values.

Our DEI efforts include:

• Hiring Practices:

We use a number of techniques focused on the achievement of a diverse workforce.

For instance, we try to utilize recruitment strategies that will provide a diverse pipeline of candidates, including partnerships with colleges, universities and non-profit organizations that support underrepresented populations from which we can source talent.

For instance, we try to utilize recruitment strategies that will provide a diverse pipeline of candidates, including partnerships with affinity organizations and conferences that support underrepresented populations from which we can source talent.

• Employee Resource Groups:

Employee resource groups at Braze are employee-led and organizationally-supported groups of employees that are drawn together by shared characteristics (such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) or shared interests.

Employee resource groups (or ERGs) at Braze are employee-led and organizationally-supported groups of employees that are drawn together by shared characteristics (such as ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, etc.) or shared interests.

Participation is open to all.

Our employee resource groups serve as a resource, point of connection and community for underrepresented employees and their allies, and are an important part of building and maintaining an equitable, diverse and inclusive workforce and community.

ERGs provide employees with opportunities to develop leadership skills, learn about other cultures and build relationships across the company.

• Cultural Education, Bias Mitigation and Allyship:

We provide regular programming on cultural awareness, bias mitigation and allyship, including through partnerships with third parties.

We provide regular programming on inclusion, cultural awareness, bias mitigation and allyship, including through partnerships with third parties.

All new hires are required to participate in unconscious bias and diversity training.

As of January 31, 2022, our workforce was, based upon employee self-identification, 59% white, 20% Asian, 5% of two or more racial groups, 5% black, 4% of Latin background, 3% of our workforce identified as an ethnicity not included in these groups and the remainder declined to self-identify or did not respond.

As of the same date, based upon employee self-identification, our workforce was 54% male, 44% female, 0.4% non-binary or gender fluid and the remainder declined to self-identify or did not respond.

Social Responsibility and Community Initiatives

We are reporting our representation in accordance with the recommendations of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) Disclosure TC-SI-330.3, in effect as of January 31, 2023.

SASB has three classifications that include management, technical staff, and all other employees.

Management is defined as anyone who manages or oversees the activities of other employees.

The following table summarizes the race/ethnicity of our U.S.

workforce, based upon employee self-identification:

January 31, 2023

Management Technical Non-technical

White 63.9% 46.2% 61.4%

Asian 18.5% 32.7% 15.4%

Black or African American 4.0% 1.8% 8.2%

Hispanic or Latina/o 2.4% 4.0% 4.9%

5.2% 5.8% 7.7%

6.0% 9.5% 2.4%

(1) “Other” includes Native American or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander, and “Two or More Races”.

(2) “N/A” includes people who identified as “Other,” in addition to not available or not disclosed.

The following table summarizes the gender of our global workforce, based upon employee self-identification:

January 31, 2023

Management Technical Non-technical

Male 55.9% 70.7% 47.0%

Female 42.0% 24.9% 50.5%

2.1% 4.4% 2.5%

(1) “N/A” includes people who have identified as genderfluid and nonbinary, in addition to not available or not disclosed.

Social, Environmental, and Community Initiatives

Our core values not only express how we drive our business, but they also reflect how we seek to support the communities of which we are a part.

To support this, we have established a Social Impact Department with the goal of using our technology, expertise, and resources to transform how the world connects and communicates to shape an equitable and more sustainable future.

Our Social Impact Department oversees our corporate social responsibility and DEI initiatives under the pillars of community, education, and sustainability.

To support this, we have established a Social Impact Department with the goal of using our technology, ecosystem, and people to advance equitable growth, accelerate science-based climate solutions and create opportunities for underserved groups within our communities.

Our Social Impact Department oversees our corporate social responsibility and DEI initiatives under the pillars of equity, community, education, and environment.

We desire to improve our communities through a number of social initiatives, core among them our participation in the joint-initiative Tech for Black Founders.

As part of Tech for Black Founders, our mission is to create an ecosystem that provides resources and technology to empower Black-founded businesses and level the playing field for underserved founders.

All companies led by one or more Black founders that have bootstrapped or raised less than $30.0 million in venture capital financing and with fewer than 150 employees are eligible for this program.

Companies that satisfy these criteria are eligible to use certain aspects of our platform and certain products for free for a year, with the ability to apply for an additional year if the company continues to meet the applicable criteria.

As of January 31, 2022, there were 16 companies using Braze through this initiative.

As part of Tech for Black Founders, our mission is to level the playing field for Black-founded businesses by providing free access to valuable technology to accelerate their growth, with the goal of increasing their chances at securing funding and building successful businesses.

All companies led by one or more Black founders that have bootstrapped or raised less than $30.0 million in venture capital financing and with fewer than 100 employees are eligible for inclusion in this program.

Companies that satisfy these criteria are eligible to use certain aspects of our platform and certain products for free for a year.

As of January 31, 2023, we have provided 18 companies with free access to our platform through this initiative.

In November 2022, we published our first ESG report, which included the results of our first materiality assessment and our first Greenhouse gas emissions footprint for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2022.

We also disclosed data that aligns with the SASB for the “Software & IT Services” category.

The information contained within our ESG report is not incorporated by reference into this filing.

We have established the Braze Cares initiative which focuses on our charitable giving and fostering opportunities for our employees to volunteer in their communities.

As of January 31, 2022, through our Braze Cares program, we and our employees have made donations of approximately $294,787 to over 567 organizations.

During the fiscal year ended January 31, 2023, through our Braze Cares program, we and our employees have made donations of approximately $0.2 million to over 328 organizations.

Our employees have also volunteered with numerous organizations worldwide as part of this program.

We have also joined the Pledge 1% movement and have reserved up to 964,647 shares of our Class A common stock, which we may donate over the next ten years, to fund our social impact and environmental, social, and governance initiatives.

We have also joined the Pledge 1% movement and have reserved up to 964,647 shares of our Class A common stock, which we may donate to a donor advised fund, or DAF, over the next ten years, to fund our social impact and environmental, social, and governance initiatives.

In the fiscal year ended January 31, 2023, we transferred our first tranche of stock to our DAF, totaling 96,465 shares.

We may also donate our time and technology, in addition to our equity and financial resources, to support our social responsibility and community initiatives.

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Our Annual Report on Form 10-K, Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Current Reports on Form 8-K, and amendments to reports filed pursuant to Sections 13(a) and 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act, are filed with the SEC.

Such reports and other information filed by us with the SEC are available free of charge on our website at

www.investors.braze.com when such reports are available on the SEC’s website.

Such reports and other information filed by us with the SEC are available free of charge on our website at www.investors.braze.com when such reports are available on the SEC’s website.

The SEC maintains an internet site that contains reports, proxy and information statements and other information regarding issuers that file electronically with the SEC at www.sec.gov.

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Compared sentence by sentence after normalising whitespace, quotation marks, case and digits, so re-formatting and restated figures do not read as changed language. Wording changes appear as one removal and one addition. The current filing and the prior one are authoritative.

What changed 10-K

Item 1. Business