When Klaviyo became a public company in 2023, we celebrated a moment over a decade in the making. In this episode of Spotlight On, Andrew Bialecki shares learnings from Klaviyo’s unique growth story, from the diligence that came from bootstrapping to the 'unfair advantage' gained by scaling a startup outside a typical tech hub.

Klaviyo is an intelligent marketing automation platform. Under Andrew’s leadership, Klaviyo has grown to support over 143,000 brands. The discussion covers how a startup changes during various stages of growth and offers an open look into the evolving nature of the CEO role—from the earliest stages to operating as a public company.

#vc #venturecapital #founder #entrepreneurs #tech #CEO #IPO #growth #bootstrapping #startup #scaling #publiccompany

Season 2:
Hear from Chainalysis, Crowdstrike, Monte Carlo, Klaviyo, Linear, Wonder, and more on this season of Spotlight On. Established and rising leaders across both private and public sectors discuss the challenges and opportunities of building companies in today’s rapidly changing technology landscape. .

Spotlight On:
Spotlight On examines the technology shaping our world. Highlighting a new topic each
season, company builders at all stages of company growth will share their learnings,
challenges, and breakthroughs.

Accel:
Accel is a global venture capital firm that is the first partner to exceptional teams everywhere, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Atlassian, Bumble, CrowdStrike, Fiverr, Flipkart, Freshworks, Qualtrics, Scale, Segment, Slack, Spotify, Squarespace, Tenable, and UiPath are among the companies Accel has backed over the past 40+ years. We help ambitious entrepreneurs build iconic global businesses.

Featured: Andrew Bialecki, CEO and Co-Founder of Klaviyo and Ping Li, Partner at Accel

Conversation highlights:
00:00 – Background and Klaviyo’s founding story
06:03 – Reflecting on the hustle it took to gain early customers
10:27 – Challenges & benefits of bootstrapping, what Andrew would do differently today
18:36 – Launching in Boston and learnings for startups building outside of a tech hub
22:47 – Building enduring partnerships like Klaviyo x Shopify
27:20 – How Klaviyo stays ahead by being a customer of their own products.
32:54 – Benchmarks Andrew looked for during the pre-IPO journey
35:53 – Klaviyo AI, and the impact Andrew sees from the technology in the future
41:00 – Advice for the challenges a founder faces as their roles change and evolve

Connect With Us:
Website: https://www.accel.com/?utm_medium=pla...
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Twitter:   / accel  

Access this episode on Spotlight On: https://www.accel.com/spotlight-on/ep...

Klaviyo's Andrew Bialecki | Building Tech Startups Anywhere | S2 E1 | Spotlight On | AccelVC
   / @accelvc