# Brad Birnbaum

> Brad Birnbaum is the co-founder and CEO of Kustomer. His customer support software career began with eShare in 1994 and includes co-founding Assistly, engineering leadership at Salesforce, and serving as CTO at Airtime. He continued leading Kustomer through its 2022 acquisition by Meta and 2023 return to independence. His current work focuses on combining customer context with AI for support teams.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Kustomer
- **Organizations:** Kustomer, Assistly, Salesforce, Airtime, AOL, Talisma, eAssist, Divine Interventures, eShare Technologies, Melita International
- **Education:** Bachelor of Science in Information Systems, State University of New York at Stony Brook
- **Known for:** Co-founded two customer support companies acquired by Salesforce and Meta respectively., Helped develop eShare’s early web chat and NetAgent customer support software., Led Kustomer through a return to venture-backed independence.

## Career timeline

- **1994** — Began eShare while a college sophomore, initially developing web chat software.
- **2008** — Led chat at AOL before leaving to build a SaaS support company with colleagues.
- **2009** — Co-founded Assistly.
- **2011** — Assistly acquired by Salesforce; its product subsequently became Desk.com.
- **2015** — Co-founded Kustomer with Jeremy Suriel on August 14.
- **2016** — Kustomer launched publicly and shifted its initial focus toward larger deployments.
- **2020** — Facebook announced an agreement to acquire Kustomer.
- **2022** — Kustomer acquisition by Meta closed in February.
- **2023** — Continued leading Kustomer as it spun out of Meta in May with $60 million in financing.
- **2025** — Announced a $30 million Series B led by Norwest on August 7.

## Achievements

- Co-founded two customer support companies acquired by Salesforce and Meta respectively.
- Helped develop eShare’s early web chat and NetAgent customer support software.
- Led Kustomer through a return to venture-backed independence.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — Discussed organizational obstacles to AI adoption and combining generative AI with deterministic rules in an October 8 Punk CX interview.
- **2026-06** — Discussed evaluating customer experience AI through business outcomes in a June 10 CX Today interview.
- **2026-05** — Discussed Kustomer Architect and linking support outcomes to retention and revenue in a May 21 CMSWire interview.
- **2026-04** — Outlined Kustomer’s AI vision in the CX Now podcast episode published April 10.
- **2025-08** — Announced $30 million in Series B financing led by Norwest, followed by Kustomer’s tenth anniversary.

## Links

- Website: https://www.kustomer.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bradleybirnbaum/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/bradbirnbaum
- GitHub: https://github.com/bradbirnbaum

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/brad-birnbaum
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-15