Stories from the Climb

Klaviyo: From Bootstrapped Beginnings to IPO

Klaviyo – the company that powers smarter digital relationships and makes it easy for businesses to capture, store, analyze, and predictively use their own data to drive measurable, high-value outcomes – began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KVYO on September 20, 2023. This represents a significant milestone in a growth journey that began over a decade ago – a journey that Summit Partners has supported since leading Klaviyo’s Series B financing in 2019.

Recognizing the growing importance of data-driven solutions to help businesses of all sizes understand consumer behavior and connect with customers and prospects, Summit identified Klaviyo as a leader in a rapidly evolving landscape of marketing technology and commerce enablement solutions. We believed the company shared the attributes we see in many of the most successful growth businesses: an uncompromising commitment to the customer, a strong product-market fit, and a relentless focus on cash-efficient growth. Below, we share our perspective on Klaviyo’s path from bootstrapped beginnings to publicly traded company during a time of dramatic changes in the consumer and marketing technology landscape.

Klaviyo 2023: By the Numbers

$585M
Revenue
57%
Revenue Growth*
130K+
Total Customers
119%
Dollar-Based Net Revenue Retention Rate**

SOURCE: Klaviyo S-1/A filed on September 18, 2023
*For the last 12 months ended June 30, 2023
**Metrics as of June 30, 2023

Founding
Defining Organizational Purpose

Klaviyo co-founders Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen started Klaviyo in 2012 to provide businesses of all sizes with the tools to be maximally successful and do it on their own terms. The company’s software enables businesses to drive revenue growth by making it easy to bring their first-party data together and use it to create and deliver highly personalized consumer experiences across digital channels.

Andrew and Ed self-funded Klaviyo in its early years, and from the beginning, they took a customer-first approach to product development. The Klaviyo platform was designed with a north star of helping businesses improve their engagement and drive revenue. We believe this uncompromising focus on the customer set the company on a path of growth. As Klaviyo delivers significant measurable and attributable value to its customers, these customers become powerful advocates of Klaviyo’s solution, which allows the company to benefit from a strong word-of-mouth motion.

Driving Adoption
Unifying Data and the Applications They Power

When we met Andrew and Ed, it was clear to us that the Klaviyo team not only recognized the growing importance of personalized customer experiences in driving business success, but also understood the challenges brands faced in leveraging their own data to do so. It is not enough to manage data; businesses need to be able to put that data into action quickly. Klaviyo’s modern and intuitive SaaS platform was designed to help bridge that gap by consolidating those data and application layers into one vertically-integrated solution with advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities.

This approach enables business users of any skill level harness their data in order to send customers the right message at the right time, more accurately measure and predict performance, and deploy the specific actions and campaigns that drive the highest impact. Klaviyo’s solutions leverage data from the channels a company already “owns” (e.g., email, SMS, website and mobile applications) to build and maintain direct customer relationships and reduce dependence on third-party channels or marketplaces. We believe that the platform’s ability to track customer behavior, deliver impactful consumer experiences, and drive conversions enabled Klaviyo to garner attention, and ultimately led to the platform’s adoption among many e-commerce businesses and an increase in market recognition.

Accelerating Growth
Building for Scale

By 2018, Klaviyo reached an inflection point; with more than 10,000 customers and a robust product vision, the company had an opportunity to build on its already significant momentum. In April 2019, Klaviyo raised an approximately $150 million growth investment from Summit Partners. Since then, the Klaviyo team has worked to scale the organization, launch new products, expand the company’s geographic presence, raise additional capital and formalize key strategic partnerships with leading e-commerce platforms and technology providers.

We believe this investment helped position Klaviyo to support its customers during a time of unprecedented challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with changes to Apple’s consent rules for user tracking in 2020, ushered in a new era of complexity for brands; marketers were faced with the challenge of capturing growing consumer demand and reaching their customers in a highly competitive market, all while losing an important source of third-party data. We believe that Klaviyo’s growing product portfolio and unwavering commitment to leveraging first-party data proved invaluable in helping these businesses navigate this new landscape with confidence.

Enduring Impact
Providing a Central Source of Truth for Marketing and Analysis

With a focus on empowering businesses through personalized customer experiences and data ownership, Klaviyo continues to reshape how brands connect with their customers. Today, the company operates at the forefront of a rapidly evolving marketing landscape, providing solutions that help companies store, analyze and predictively use data in a single, vertically-integrated platform.

The Klaviyo team continues to emphasize a customer-first approach and is guided by the north star of helping businesses improve their engagement and drive revenue through the metric “Klaviyo Attributed Value” or “KAV”(1), the amount of revenue that customers generate with specific engagements through the Klaviyo platform. Klaviyo delivered more than $37 billion of KAV to its customers in 2022, and as of June 30, 2023, Klaviyo had assembled over 6.9 billion consumer profiles across its customer base to help derive new insights and ultimately drive revenue generation. We believe that the milestones achieved, partnerships forged and impact made are a testament to Klaviyo’s unyielding dedication to innovation, adaptability and, above all, the success of the businesses it has helped empower.

Growth Timeline

Klaviyo's Growth Timeline

2012

Klaviyo founded

2014

Surpassed 100 customers

2015

Received SAFE financing led by Accomplice

2016

Raised new capital in a funding round led by Astrial Capital

2016

Surpassed 1,000 customers

2017

Launched a partnership with BigCommerce

2018

Surpassed 10,000 customers

2019

Raised approximately $150 million in capital from Summit Partners Opened London office

2020

Raised approximately $200 million in new capital from Summit Partners and Accel

2021

Raised additional capital in a funding round led by Sands Capital - Launched SMS product - Announced native integration with Prestashop and partnership with WooCommerce

2022

Entered into a strategic partnership with Shopify, including capital investment - Launched partnership with Wix and completed first acquisition, Napkin.io - Opened Sydney office

2023

Launched Klaviyo Customer Data Platform (CDP) and reviews - Surpassed 130,000 customers

Began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KVYO on September 20, 2023

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Klaviyo 2023: By the Numbers

$585M
Revenue
57%
Revenue Growth*
130K+
Total Customers
119%
Dollar-Based Net Revenue Retention Rate**

SOURCE: Klaviyo S-1/A filed on September 18, 2023
*For the last 12 months ended June 30, 2023
**Metrics as of June 30, 2023

Related Experience

(1) “Klaviyo Attributed Value” or “KAV” is defined as the amount of revenue Klaviyo customers generated through orders placed by consumers within a specified period of time after a message is sent using the Klaviyo platform.

Published on September 20, 2023

Stories from the Climb

At Summit, it’s the stories that inspire us – the problems being solved and the different paths each team takes to grow a business. Stories from the Climb is a series dedicated to celebrating and sharing the challenges of building a growth company. For more Stories and other Summit perspectives, please visit our Growth Company Resource Center.

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