Brand-building today increasingly happens outside of traditional channels. Consumers are forming buying preferences in a scroll, a story or a direct message. They expect immediate access to information, authenticity from the brands they engage with and, importantly, a seamless path from discovery to purchase.
Creators—individuals with engaged followings and trusted voices—are playing a central role in this evolution. They are redefining how products are introduced, how value is communicated and how purchase decisions are made.
This transformation is accelerating demand for a new generation of MarTech tools—platforms that can support more agile, authentic and performance-driven go-to-market strategies. At Summit Partners, the Summit funds had the opportunity to invest in several companies that we believe are operating at the forefront of this evolution, including Klaviyo, Later, Manychat and StackAdapt.(2)
Through our work with these MarTech businesses—and our broader experience working with what we believe are category-leading software and commerce businesses—we’ve identified four key forces that, in our view, are shaping the future of brand growth.
1. From Paid to Owned: Creators Are Reshaping the Engagement Playbook
For years, paid media served as the growth engine for digital-first brands. Rising customer acquisition costs, platform dependency and privacy shifts have upended that model. As these pressures mount, we’re seeing many high-performing brands move toward channels they can control—while tapping into the authenticity and trust that creators uniquely offer.
Creators have become a scalable, high-performing complement to owned channels. Their content is designed to feel native, not intrusive. Their communities are built on trust, and increasingly, their reach is helping to facilitate direct communication strategies like email, SMS and brand-owned social channels.
Klaviyo’s solutions aim to help brands activate and personalize communication with their own audiences, turning first-party data into measurable revenue. Later, which includes Mavely’s creator discovery and performance tools, helps brands tap into creator partnerships that deliver authentic content and fold naturally into owned channels.
What we’re seeing in the market is a return to marketing fundamentals—build your list, speak directly to your customer and deliver consistent value. The difference now: the creator economy is helping brands do this at scale.
2. Commerce Is Everywhere: Discovery and Conversion Are Now One Motion
The storefront has been unbundled. Discovery no longer begins exclusively with a search; it can happen in a feed, a video or a direct message. The same environment that sparks product interest is increasingly where purchase decisions are made.(3) For brands, this shift presents both a challenge and an opportunity: be where your customers are and make it easy to act.
Manychat, a marketing automation and customer conversation platform, helps brands to turn conversation into commerce. Through integrations with messaging platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, it is designed to allow marketers to convert interest in the moment—without redirecting customers to external landing pages or checkout flows.
Later supports the top of this funnel by helping brands find and activate the right creators, amplify product discovery and extend reach across high-engagement platforms. When coordinated effectively, these solutions can shorten the customer journey and help reduce friction from consideration to conversion.
As commerce becomes increasingly decentralized, we believe building a presence in the environments where consumers already spend their time—and making those environments transactional – can be an effective strategy.
3. Performance Is the Currency: The Creator Channel Must Prove Its Value
As the creator economy becomes a core part of the marketing mix, expectations for performance have risen. What began as a brand-awareness channel is now being evaluated against the same benchmarks as paid search or social.
Marketing leaders at brands want clear attribution, full-funnel visibility and the confidence to allocate budget at scale. Later and Mavely are helping meet those needs—delivering data, tools and insights to help track creator performance from initial engagement through to conversion.
With visibility into impact, companies can move beyond experimentation and approach creator partnerships with the same rigor as any other high-performing acquisition strategy.
As marketing budgets come under greater scrutiny, we have seen that the platforms gaining traction are those that can deliver measurable impact—fast. For businesses focused on balancing efficiency and expansion, and driving rapid growth, we believe that clarity matters.
4. AI Is the Accelerator: Enhancing Creativity, Targeting and Scale
Artificial intelligence is driving a step-change in how both creators and brands operate. It's enabling faster content creation, smarter targeting and more efficient allocation of spend—all of which are critical for teams under pressure to do more with less.
For creators, AI is reducing friction in the content development process, helping them brainstorm, produce and iterate more efficiently across formats and channels. This acceleration supports more frequent collaboration with brands and higher-impact campaigns.
In our view, AI is increasingly being used by brands to support functions such as campaign optimization to message personalization. StackAdapt, a leading self-serve programmatic advertising platform, uses AI to help marketers manage spend and measure campaign performance across the open internet with a level of control and insight typically associated with walled gardens. Manychat applies AI to real-time customer interactions, helping brands to guide consumers through higher-conversion experiences in a scalable, personalized way.
These capabilities aren’t just about automation, they’re about unlocking new ways to compete. As AI continues to evolve, we see it becoming a connective layer across the commerce stack, enabling smarter, faster decision-making from content to conversion.
Growth Timeline
January 1, 2024
Acquired by Vista Equity Partners
Rebrands as InvoiceCloud
Began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KVYO on September 20, 2023
January 1, 2023
Launched Klaviyo Customer Data Platform (CDP) and reviews - Surpassed 130,000 customers
January 1, 2022
Entered into a strategic partnership with Shopify, including capital investment - Launched partnership with Wix and completed first acquisition, Napkin.io - Opened Sydney office
January 1, 2021
Completes IPO on September 23 (NYSE: ESMT)
January 1, 2020
Rebranded to EngageSmart
Introduced support for Apple Pay, Google Pay
January 1, 2017
Entered the wellness vertical with the acquisition of SImplePractice.
January 1, 2021
Raised additional capital in a funding round led by Sands Capital - Launched SMS product - Announced native integration with Prestashop and partnership with WooCommerce
January 1, 2020
Raised approximately $200 million in new capital from Summit Partners and Accel
January 1, 2019
Raised approximately $150 million in capital from Summit Partners Opened London office
January 1, 2009
InvoiceCloud founded
Focused on local government and utility verticals
January 1, 2018
Surpassed 10,000 customers
January 1, 2017
Launched a partnership with BigCommerce
June 1, 2016
Surpassed 1,000 customers
January 1, 2016
Raised new capital in a funding round led by Astrial Capital
January 1, 2015
Received SAFE financing led by Accomplice
January 1, 2014
Surpassed 100 customers
January 1, 2012
Klaviyo founded
January 1, 2021
Completes IPO (NASDAQ: LFST) on June 10
January 6, 2020
Announces majority recapitalization
January 1, 2020
LifeStance completes 50th acquisition. With COVID onset, transitioned from 300 telepsych visits per week to more than 40,000
January 1, 2020
2.3M patient visits, 370 centers and 3,000+ clinicians
January 1, 2019
1.4M patient visits, 170 centers and 1,400 clinicians
January 1, 2018
930k patient visits, 125 centers and 800 clinicians
January 1, 2017
LifeStance founded with backing from Summit Partners and Silversmith Capital Partners
January 1, 2019
Launced charity streaming - live streaming fundraising
General Atlantic invests alongside Summit and management team
January 1, 2018
Entered the non-profit vertical with the acquisition of DonorDrive
Introduced and integrated telehealth solution
January 1, 2015
Summit Partners invests
Entered the healthcare vertical with the acquisition of HealthPay24
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We believe the creator economy is redefining how brands grow. It’s changing how products are discovered, how trust is built and how consumers make decisions. It’s creating new dynamics between brands and customers, dynamics rooted in authenticity, immediacy and performance.
We believe the companies that are adapting to this shift are building deeper relationships, unlocking new efficiencies and finding better ways to scale. Companies are investing in platforms that combine creativity with accountability—because in today’s environment, we believe both are required to grow.
At Summit, we’ve had the privilege of partnering with teams helping to build the infrastructure for this next chapter. We believe the future belongs to platforms that enable brands and creators to connect more meaningfully and to grow more efficiently.
Related Experience
About the Authors
* There can be no assurance that the performance of any such professional serves as an indicator of future performance. There is no guarantee that Summit's investment professionals will successfully implement the Summit funds’ investment strategy. A complete list of Summit employees is available upon request.
(1) “How Social Media Is Driving E-Commerce (And How Brands Can Capitalize”, Forbes, February 2025. “The Evolution of Social Commerce: TikTok, Instagram, and the Next Generation of Online Shopping”, Etrend September 2024. “Brands that don’t sell via social media are missing out”, The Times, February 2025.
(2) A complete list of each fund’s investments is available via the applicable Summit fund’s financial statements posted to the LP website or upon request. Klaviyo is an investment held by Summit IX, Clout.io (dba Later) is an investment held in Summit X and Summit XI and Manychat and StackAdapt are each an investment held by Summit XI.
(3) “How Social Media Is Driving E-Commerce (And How Brands Can Capitalize”, Forbes, February 2025. “The Evolution of Social Commerce: TikTok, Instagram, and the Next Generation of Online Shopping”, Etrend September 2024. “Brands that don’t sell via social media are missing out”, The Times, February 2025.
About Summit Partners
Summit Partners is a leading growth-focused investment firm, investing across growth sectors of the economy. Today, Summit manages more than $45 billion in capital and targets growth equity investments of $10 million – $500 million per company. Since the firm’s founding in 1984, Summit has invested in more than 550 companies in the technology, healthcare and life sciences, and growth products and services sectors.