TJ - TJ's Blog

Why Cross-Selling Is So Hard

Cross-sell is the single biggest revenue multiplier after retention, but it rarely behaves like a flywheel at scale. I’ve long been a skeptic of cross-selling…

Webinar: State of Omnichannel Messaging

I’ll be participating in a webinar with Josh Jacobson and Mikhail Gaushkin, hosted by Darren Withers on the state of omnichannel messaging. Click here to…

Klaviyo Q4 2025: Product Pivot Meets Enterprise Expansion

Klaviyo’s earnings results kicked off the earnings season for my cohort and my 5th year of this blog. Between double-digit revenue growth, SMS-driven cross-sell, the…

South Korea Doubles Down on Identity. Should the US Require It Too?

South Korea’s Big Three—SK Telecom, Korea Telecom, and LG UPlus—in coordination with its regulator, will require face ID verification for every new phone number. At…

Braze Q3 2025: Guidance Improves, AI Scales

Braze delivered double-digit growth, beat Q3 expectations, and raised Q4 guidance. Large customers showed up in force, and AI moved from narrative to measurable contribution.…

2025 Book List for the Startup Leader

I read to make sense of the moment we’re in. Some years the themes show up early. This year, it took longer. The pace of…

Why I Joined ID.me

There is an unbuckling of identity in the telecom network. Whether it’s a call from your bank, or a government login that doesn’t quite trust…

WhatsApp Is Hosting the Block Party Around Apple’s Blue Bubble

“You guys are lucky. WhatsApp isn’t a big threat in the US,” a major CPaaS CEO recently told me. That might be changing. WhatsApp is…

Why RCS Can’t Copy WhatsApp—Yet

WhatsApp is a platform; RCS is a protocol. In WhatsApp, Meta acts as the central authority. That makes it easy to build “super admin” tools…

BFCM: Klaviyo’s Billion-Dollar Signal

Klaviyo CEO Andrew Bialecki shared that Klaviyo-powered businesses crossed $1 billion in attributed sales (KAV) on Black Friday. That’s the first time the platform has…

What SMB Stress Really Means for Messaging Platforms

SMBs remain at the epicenter of economic anxiety and hope; they are both bellwether and backbone, the consumer and the producer, the hirer and the…

The Q3 2025 Valuation Update

While the fundamentals across the cohort companies held steady, yet with the exception of Twilio and CM.com, valuation multiples were down across the board. It’s…