What changed in this filing

/stocks — the workspaceLOADING

Item 1. Business

2024-04-01 compared with 2023-03-31 · 129 added, 152 removed, 271 unchanged (51% of the section changed)

Our mission is to forge human connections between consumers and the brands they love through relevant and memorable experiences.

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

Our mission is to forge human connections between consumers and the brands they love through absolutely engaging experiences.

Braze is a leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging™.

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.

2 unchanged sentences

In January 2024, our platform enabled interactions with 6.2 billion monthly active users via our customers’ apps, websites, and other digital interfaces, up from 4.8 billion in January 2023.

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.

Braze was founded in 2011 in response to the step change 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.

The first-party 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

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 or transform their businesses, while forming lasting customer relationships that can increase brand loyalty and customer value over time.

We view our own role as steward of a brand's first party relationships, achieved through the sophisticated management of their first-party data, as well as the orchestration and delivery of critical components of their marketing and product experience across an increasingly non-linear and digital customer journey.

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

We built Braze to facilitate the craft of customer engagement— a pursuit that is distinct from merely the activity of sending marketing messages.

The craft of customer engagement brings together diverse skillsets, bold creativity, the sophisticated use of data, and an agile, experimental approach to the strategy that unlocks value in more of the moments that matter for customers as they move through their journey with a brand.

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

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

13 unchanged sentences

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.

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 visual development environment to deliver broad impact quickly and efficiently.

This product architecture supports differentiated use of AI and machine learning through its comprehensive access to first party-data, and an ability to directly take action to guide the customer journey.

When deployed by our customers, our platform is typically leveraged across nearly all consumer touchpoints and sources of first-party data, including integration of the Braze SDKs into end-user applications and websites, and the configuration of automated connections into customer data warehouses or data platforms.

This enables more advanced automated decision making and creates the opportunity to optimize customer journeys, improving outcomes for consumers and brands through improved content relevance and personalization.

Our platform also has the promise to improve operational efficiency for the teams that use Braze – as we continue to expand our product surface area and enhance its capabilities by infusing AI, we can help brands create personalized, cross-channel solutions faster, and compound their learnings through automated experimentation and data analysis, ultimately increasing their return on investment over time.

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

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

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

We have also developed, and continue to refine, an AI recommendation engine that utilizes a custom-trained transformer model to match items for Braze catalogs with customers more likely to buy them, providing content personalization that can outperform competing techniques.

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.

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, Content Cards – which are flexible, content-rich messages embedded in a mobile app or web browsers, and Feature Flags, which allows our customers to remotely enable or disable mobile or web experiences for different audiences.

Braze Audience sync unifies owned and paid channels such as Meta and Google and, in the past year, we have launched audience sync to TikTok, Pinterest, Snapchat, and Criteo.

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.

For instance, Braze Cloud Data Ingestion 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.

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

Our Competitive Strengths

2 unchanged sentences

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.

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.

1 unchanged sentence

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.

This means that these new channels 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.

10 unchanged sentences

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.

Our stream processing architecture and access to first-party data also supports differentiated use of AI and machine learning, which can improve consumer outcomes and, in turn, increase the return on investment our platform provides to our customers.

Global, High Performance at Scale

1 unchanged sentence

In January 2024, our platform enabled interactions with 6.2 billion monthly active users via our customers’ apps, websites, and other digital interfaces, up from 4.8 billion in January 2023.

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

with highly reliable uptime.

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.

Braze has customers in over 70 countries and an operational presence across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

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.

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.

For example, our Feature Flags product is designed to support product and growth teams to easily deliver personalized experiences allowing brands to launch features faster, tailor functionality to different audiences, and coordinate feature releases with cross-channel messages.

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.

Using our intuitive user interface and drag-and-drop tools like Canvas, 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 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.

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.

5 unchanged sentences

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 instance, with Braze Cloud Data Ingestion, our customers can 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 a number use cases.

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

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.

3 unchanged sentences

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.

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.

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, a comprehensive documentation library, and interactive online learning paths and certifications, including certifications for Braze Certified Practitioners, Braze Certified Marketers, Braze Certified Digital Strategists, or Braze Certified Developers.

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, 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.

Thousands of 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

1 unchanged sentence

• Acquire new customers:

We intend to continue to expand our customer base in verticals where we already have a strong presence, such as retail, eCommerce, media, entertainment, and on-demand services, and to increase our presence in verticals where we are not yet strongly represented.

Through our sales and marketing efforts, we plan to capitalize on the ongoing digital transformation in regulated industries like healthcare and financial services to further propel adoption of our technology.

We intend to continue to expand our customer base in verticals where we already have a strong presence — such as retail, media, and entertainment, on-demand services, gaming, health and lifestyle, and financial services — and to increase our presence in verticals where we are not yet strongly represented.

Through our sales and marketing efforts, we also plan to capitalize on industries and verticals subject to ongoing digital transformation and where direct-to-consumer relationships are accelerating to further propel adoption of our technology, such as Consumables.

• Expand within our existing customer base:

1 unchanged sentence

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.

The addition of new channels that benefit from our orchestration engine and real-time streaming platform may also further differentiate our product, helping to sustain or increase win-rates.

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

3 unchanged sentences

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.

For instance, we have operational footprints across North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, and we expect to continue increasing our market penetration in these regions, particularly the Asia-Pacific where we’ve recently expanded our footprint in Indonesia, while further capitalizing on the greenfield opportunities in regions such as Latin America.

• Expand our technology leadership through continued investment and new products:

6 unchanged sentences

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, consultancies, and global system integrators that offer opportunities for new customer referrals.

We have also invested in, and continued to expand, 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:

data ingestion, classification, orchestration, personalization, and action.

data ingestion, classification, orchestration, personalization, and action, all of which is supported by Sage AI by Braze, our AI engine designed to power AI functionality across all layers of this stack.

Data Ingestion

5 unchanged sentences

The majority of our customers also integrate via connecting to server-to-server APIs.

The Braze REST API can be used to import or export data or to trigger workflows between Braze and brands’ existing technology stacks.

The Braze REST API can be used to import or export data or to trigger workflows between Braze and brands’ existing technology

For example, customers can send messages using Braze within internal business processes or connect Braze to third-party services such as customer data platforms or attribution providers.

• Partner Cohort Syncing:

Brands can sync user cohorts from partners such as Amplitude or Mixpanel to our platform.

• Partner Data Integrations:

Brands can sync user cohorts from partners such as Amplitude, Tealium, or Mixpanel to our platform.

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

Retail brands can also sync e-commerce data directly from Shopify, configurable via a simple web interface.

• Data Transformation:

Brands can programmatically sync and transform user data from SaaS tools or platforms that can send webhooks.

Once synced to our platform, this data can be used just like any other data in the Braze platform.

• 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.

Braze Cloud Data Ingestion enables brands to quickly set up a direct connection from a data warehouse to Braze in order to sync relevant customer and product data with Braze.

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.

Braze Cloud Data Ingestion supports syncing data from commonly used data platform solutions such as Snowflake, Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery and Databricks.

Classification

• Segmentation:

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

Customers can define reusable segments of consumers based upon data such as, but not limited to, attributes, events, user behaviors, product catalog metadata, 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.

3 unchanged sentences

• Predictive Suite:

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.

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.

Orchestration

• 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

2 unchanged sentences

• Event and API Triggering:

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:

Customers can limit the number of messages sent from the platform by capping the frequency of message type (e.g., no more than three push notifications per week or no more than one promotional email per day), or by limiting the speed at which our platform sends messages (e.g., no more than 10,000 messages per minute).

• Intelligent Selection:

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.

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.

• Marketing Pressure Management:

Customers can create sophisticated and targeted campaigns designed to appropriately target the individual consumer.

Customers can use our platform to automatically run a multi-armed bandit optimization, and to send each user the campaign variant they are most likely to engage based on A/B testing.

Once the appropriate campaign has been identified, our customers can then limit the number of messages sent from the platform by capping the frequency of message type (e.g., no more than three push notifications per week or no more than one promotional email per day), or by limiting the speed at which our platform sends messages (e.g., no more than 10,000 messages per minute).

• Reporting and Analytics:

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

◦ Campaign and Canvas Flow Analytics:

◦ Campaign and Canvas Analytics:

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

13 unchanged sentences

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.

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.

2 unchanged sentences

For example, customers can personalize messages on a one-to-one basis by connecting to a recommendation engine or modify messages to a user based upon the current weather at the user’s location.

• Content Blocks:

Customers can store and reuse blocks of content (including Liquid Templating content) which can be used across multiple messages.

Content Blocks can also be updated and managed via API, extending their functionality and connecting them to customer data sources dynamically.

• Intelligent Timing:

• Content Management:

Customers can upload, store and reuse various types of content across messages.

Braze offers both pre-built and customer-generated templates, a media asset library, a preference center builder and Content Blocks.

Content Blocks enable customers to create reusable, cross-channel content (including Liquid Templating content).

Templates, Content Blocks and a customer’s preference center can also be updated and managed via API, extending their functionality and connecting them to customer data sources dynamically.

Customers can also utilize our generative AI functions to support the development of new content or images, and use our approval workflows to provide additional oversight of how and when content is used in campaigns.

• Intelligent Timing and Channel:

Our platform will automatically calculate when consumers are most likely to engage with a particular messaging channel, and can send messages to consumers at the time that is optimal for them based upon their behavior patterns for a particular channel.

• Promotion Codes:

Customers can store promotion codes within the platform, and use them to serve unique, one-time use promotional coupon codes to consumers.

• In-Product Messaging:

• Personalized Variant:

Our platform can send each user the campaign variant they are most likely to engage with based on an analysis of how users with similar profiles responded to each variant in an initial A/B test.

• AI Item Recommendations:

Customers can calculate what is likely to be the most popular item or product or create personalized AI recommendations from a specific catalog which can then be inserted into messages.

Customers can store relational or tabular data with Braze that can be used for segmentation, event triggering, and message personalization.

Data stored in Braze Catalogs can be synced automatically from customer data warehouses using Braze Cloud Data Ingestion, and Catalogs natively supports triggered notifications such as "back-in-stock" journeys that can trigger when an item in a Catalog is replenished and back in stock.

For example, Catalog data can be combined with our Braze segmentation to identify high-value cohorts of customers, such as users who recently viewed products that are now discounted.

Catalogs can also be used for basic product recommendation use cases.

• In-Product Messaging and Experimentation:

◦ In-App and In-Browser Messages:

3 unchanged sentences

In addition to ephemeral messages, we offer Content Cards, a proprietary Braze product where a personalized feed of user-controllable content is embedded directly into applications and browsers for persistent viewing.

◦ Feature Flags:

Feature flags allow customers to remotely enable or disable mobile app or web functionality for a selection of users.

Customers can turn a feature on and off in production without additional code deployment or app store updates.

This allows customers to safely roll out new features with confidence and coordinate roll-outs with messaging across the full set of channels supported by our platform.

• Out-of-Product Messaging:

1 unchanged sentence

Our platform provides robust push notification messaging capabilities across both mobile and web.

In addition to supporting push notifications on all major platforms, we have released advanced functionality such as Push Stories (paginated image carousels within notifications) and iOS Live Activities (persistent, interactive notifications displayed directly on users’ lock screens), 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 with a drag and drop editor, link tracking and heatmap analytics, email preference centers, and seed lists.

4 unchanged sentences

◦ Ad Network Integrations:

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.

Using Braze Audience Sync with Meta, TikTok, Google, Snapchat, Pinterest, or Criteo, brands can sync user data from Braze to each respective advertising platform to deliver advertisements outside the Braze platform based upon behavioral triggers, segmentation and more.

◦ WhatsApp Integration:

1 unchanged sentence

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:

11 unchanged sentences

sizes to maximize their efficiency:

• Activity Logs:

we provide activity logs for major actions that occur in our platform, and changelogs for updates to objects such as Campaigns, Segments, or Canvases on our dashboard.

These logs allow customers to troubleshoot their integrations and audit their team’s activities on the platform.

• Media Library:

we offer a media library consisting of images that can be stored and reused in messages across the entire platform.

• User Permissions:

• Operations and Administration:

We provide audit logs for major actions that occur in our platform, change logs for updates to objects such as Campaigns, Segments, or Canvases on our dashboard, and permissions, versioning and approval flow capabilities in various parts of the product.

Furthermore, we offer, and plan to expand on, debugging capabilities in the platform that allow customers to better troubleshoot their integrations and messaging strategies.

• Access Controls and Security:

We provide a complete set of Role-Based Access Controls to allow large global teams to manage our platform effectively.

In addition to these Role-Based Access Control mechanisms, we offer Braze Teams, which allows customers to break their consumer base into segments based on the consumer’s country, language, or a custom attribute.

With Braze Teams, customers can create groups to manage individual regions or subsets of their businesses while restricting their ability to view or manage data outside of their assigned region.

With Braze Teams, customers can create groups to manage individual regions or subsets of their businesses while restricting the ability of specified users to view or manage data outside of their assigned region.

We also integrate with a variety of identity providers for single-sign-on or user account provisioning and provide configurable security controls such as session timeouts, password complexity, two-factor authentication, and IP allow lists.

Our Competition

1 unchanged sentence

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 (Clevertap), MailChimp (Intuit) 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.

2 unchanged sentences

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.

As a result, our competitors may respond to market conditions by lowering prices or making other contractual concessions in an attempt 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, 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.

Recently, there has also been significant merger and acquisition activity in the technology industry, including among our competitors.

These consolidation trends 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.

2 unchanged sentences

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.

5 unchanged sentences

Sales and Marketing

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.

We sell subscriptions to our platform primarily through a direct sales force with primary operations in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.

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.

In addition, we sell our platform through our joint venture in Japan, as well as through resellers in South Korea, Australia, and Latin America.

In addition, we sell our platform through our joint venture in Japan, as well as through resellers in South Korea and Latin America.

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.

4 unchanged sentences

We rely on a combination of patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws in the United States and other jurisdictions, as well as license agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements with third parties, and other contractual protections, to protect our intellectual property rights, including our proprietary technology, software, know-how and brand.

We use open source software in our services.

However, we also use open source software in our services.

As of January 31, 2024, we owned 25 patents and had two patent applications pending for examination in the United States and no non-U.S.

1 unchanged sentence

The pending U.S.

patent applications, if issued, would be scheduled to expire in 2040 and 2041.

Our pending U.S.

patent applications may not result in issued patents.

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

patent applications, if issued, would be scheduled to expire in 2043.

As of January 31, 2024, we owned six registered trademarks in the United States and 25 registered trademarks in various non-U.S.

jurisdictions.

4 unchanged sentences

In addition, we generally enter into confidentiality agreements with our customers and partners.

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

See the section titled “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Intellectual Property” 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

Privacy, Data Security and Data Protection

In the ordinary course of our business, we may process personal data.

We are, or may become, subject to a number of data privacy and security obligations, including federal, state and foreign laws and regulations that involve matters central to our business.

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, 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 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.

We are, or may become, subject to a number of privacy, data security and data protection obligations, including federal, state and foreign laws and regulations that involve matters central to our business.

These laws and regulations may involve privacy, data security, data protection, rights of publicity, content regulation, intellectual property, competition, consumer protection or other subjects.

Such obligations may include, without limitation, the Federal Trade Commission Act, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act, the California Consumer Privacy Act (as amended by the California Privacy Rights Act), or the CCPA, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or the EU GDPR, the EU GDPR’s equivalent in the United Kingdom, or the U.K.

GDPR, the ePrivacy Directive, Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act and various related provincial laws, and Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation.

In addition, numerous other states within the United States have also enacted, or are in the process of enacting or considering, comprehensive data privacy laws that share similarities with the CCPA.

The increasingly stringent and evolving regulatory frameworks related to personal data processing 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’ collection and use of personal data and to respond to certain requests from California residents related to their personal data, including requests to receive information on the business’s personal data processing activities, to delete the individual’s personal data, and to opt out of certain sharing and sales of personal data.

The CCPA also provides for civil penalties and a private right of action for violations which may include an award of statutory damages.

Moreover, laws in all 50 U.S.

states require businesses to provide notice under certain circumstances to consumers whose personal data has been disclosed as a result of a data breach.

Further, U.S.

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.

GDPR) impose significant and complex compliance obligations on entities that are subject to those laws.

GDPR) impose significant and complex compliance obligations regarding the collection, control, use, sharing, disclosure and other processing of personal data on entities that are subject to those laws.

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;

requiring a legal basis for personal data processing;

requiring the appointment of a data protection officer in certain circumstances;

increasing transparency obligations to data subjects;

requiring data protection impact assessments in certain circumstances;

limiting the collection and retention of personal data;

increasing rights for data subjects;

formalizing a heightened and codified standard of data subject consents;

requiring the implementation and maintenance of technical and organizational safeguards for personal data;

mandating notice of certain personal data breaches to the relevant supervisory authorities and affected individuals;

and mandating the appointment of representatives in the U.K.

or the EU in certain circumstances.

For additional information about the laws and regulations to which we are or may become subject and about the risks to our business associated with such laws and regulations, please see the section titled “Risk Factors — Risks Related to Privacy, Data Security and Data Protection Laws.”

31 unchanged sentences

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.

3 unchanged sentences

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

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.

Additional information on our diversity and inclusion strategy, and diversity metrics and programs can be found in our social impact report, which we publish annually and make available on our investor relations website at www.investors.braze.com.

Nothing on our website shall be deemed incorporated by reference into this Form 10-K.

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, 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 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.

To support this, we have established a Social Impact Department.

This department oversees our corporate social responsibility, sustainability and DEI initiatives under the pillars of Community, Equity and Environment.

We desire to improve our communities through a number of social initiatives, core among them our product grant program, Tech for an Equitable Future.

The Tech for an Equitable Future aims to remove barriers and accelerate business growth for underrepresented founders, including women founders, by providing 12 months of free access to the Braze platform and supporting services.

As of January 31, 2024, the initiative— originally launched in 2020 as Tech for Black Founders and expanded into Tech for an Equitable Future in December 2023— provides 24 startups led by underrepresented founders free access to Braze.

Companies led by one or more underrepresented 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.

Annually, we publish an ESG report, which summarizes the progress of ESG issues (including DEI, data privacy matters, corporate governance programs, our estimated greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change programs, among others).

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.

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.

During the fiscal year ended January 31, 2024, through our Braze Cares program, we and our employees have made donations of approximately $0.2 million to 892 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 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.

In 2021, we became a member of the Pledge 1% movement, through which we have reserved up to 964,647 shares of our Class A common stock, which we may continue to donate to a donor advised fund, or DAF, through 2031, to fund our social impact and environmental, social, and governance initiatives.

Human Capital

18 unchanged sentences

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