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#196 CEO & Co-Founder Braze, Bill Magnuson: Principles of Change

Author
Kleiner Perkins
Published
Mon 24 Jun 2024
Episode Link
https://share.transistor.fm/s/c1046327

Guest: Bill Magnuson, CEO and co-founder of Braze

The deployment of smartphones around the world was more impactful than any other technology to date, says Braze CEO Bill Magnuson — and that has big implications for emerging fields like generative AI. “If we get to the point where they [LLMs] really can be useful, human-like companions ... they will be usable by everyone that has smartphone technology.” In other words, the question is not business opportunity or scale: It’s capability.

In this episode, Bill and Joubin discuss earnings days, Aaron Levie, MIT, customer churn, shower thoughts, technical co-founders, lacking context, AGI, “hands on keyboard,” the T-Mobile G1, app marketing, the 2008 financial crisis, Bob Iger, World War II, Peter Reinhardt, Watershed, and international offices.

Chapters:

  • (00:51) - Morning people

  • (05:09) - What Braze does

  • (06:59) - From CTO to CEO

  • (08:17) - Waking up and commuting

  • (10:49) - Leading vs. engineering

  • (12:35) - Cognizant of believability

  • (19:52) - LLMs and the human brain

  • (25:46) - The AI ceiling

  • (28:43) - The historic deployment of smartphones

  • (37:58) - The benefits of youth

  • (40:18) - Taking the leap

  • (43:35) - Read more sci-fi

  • (46:38) - Survivor bias

  • (48:55) - Big risks at scale

  • (52:30) - Who Braze is hiring around the world

  • (55:32) - What “grit” means to Bill


Links:

Connect with Bill

Connect with Joubin

Learn more about Kleiner Perkins


This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

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