Klaviyo (NYSE: KVYO) is the only CRM built for B2C brands. Powered by its built-in data platform and AI insights, Klaviyo combines marketing automation, analytics, and customer service into one unified solution, making it easy for businesses to know their customers and grow faster.
Surabhi Gupta, CTO, shares the details of Klaviyo, and what it’s like to work there.
We discuss:
- Details on Klaviyo
- Details on the platform and how AI is utilized
- What do Klaviyo Engineers get to work on?
- Surabhi’s background
- The culture at Klaviyo
- Why is now a great time to join Klaviyo?
Video Transcript
Surabhii, thanks so much for joining us.
Hey, thanks for having me. Good to be here.
I’m excited to talk to you because we’re going to talk about Klaviyo, which is one of the anchor Boston tech companies doing so much these days.
For people that aren’t familiar with the company, what is Klaviyo?
Klaviyo brings together marketing, analytics, and service all under one umbrella and one platform. A lot of our business, let’s say businesses like Glossier or Mattel, have the ability to understand their customers, grow their business, and do all of this with the power of our underlying data platform. Of course, all of our work is AI first and AI forward.
We have 170,000 businesses, ranging all the way from really small businesses like somebody running a coffee shop to these large businesses like Mattel. This gives us a large spectrum of customers, and each of them want a slightly different way of reaching their customers. We build all of that in one place. Our North Star really is helping brands deliver the right message to the right person at the right moment across every channel. There’s a lot of headroom, a lot to do to keep making this experience the best that it can be.
And I think the key to that is it’s leveraging first-party data. Correct.
Yes.
So, how is Klaviyo using AI within the platform?
We have our data platform where we store all of this data. That allows you to do things like, “A customer has put something in their cart but didn’t buy it.” We can then help the marketers reach out to all of those customers and send them a personalized message to help re-engage them.
In the realm of AI, we’re trying to do a lot across the board:
- How do you write a better email?
- How do you get better content in there?
- How do you know that now is the right time to reach out to them versus, say, Monday?
One really cool example: if you’ve bought a certain item, what is the likelihood of you buying a different item, and how likely are you to buy that item in 60 days or 90 days? We can give you those insights and then make it really easy for you to action on them. What I really love is that we’re getting the insights and the data, but then helping you connect it back to the marketing flow and our platform so you can just take action on it in a very easy way. AI comes into each part of this and helps you reach the right customer at the right time.
Which is amazing, and again, it’s first-party data, so it’s getting to know me, how I’m interfacing with that brand, what I like, what my buying habits are. It’s just helping me as a consumer have a better experience with that brand, and that first-party data is so key to that experience.
You’re the CTO of Klaviyo. Engineering is obviously a big piece of making the platform great. So what do the engineers get to work on?
What’s been really great to see is that we try to marry together platform and product. You have a lot of companies that are providing data infrastructure or a platform, or companies that are building best-in-class products. At Klaviyo, you get to do both and work at the intersection of both.
We have engineers that can work across a range of different problems. On one end of the spectrum, you take scale. A fun stat for you is that during BFCM (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, our peak time of the year), we sent over 420 million messages in just one single peak hour. Engineers can come in and do work to operate at this level of scale, and we’re continuing to grow.
On the other end of the spectrum, we’re releasing new products. We’re just coming out with Service, which has been really exciting. We are launching Omnichannel, which is our vision for sending the right message across all different channels and reaching customers where they are. And then there’s a bunch of work we’re doing around extending AI capabilities. We’re building a strong base both in Boston and in the Bay Area. You can learn from a top-tier team that’s fundamentally built on data, and you get to work on really fun AI features.
Now you joined the company about a year ago. What was your background prior?
I actually spent my entire career prior to Klaviyo at consumer companies. I got to help be a part of the scaling journey at Robinhood and at Airbnb. I spent my foundational years working at Google. From a technical perspective, I’ve spent a lot of time working on search and search ranking. I’ve always found it a fascinating technical problem. With everything that’s going on with the technology shift and AI, it’s been really fun to help Klaviyo through that next stage of evolution.
Once someone does join the team at Klaviyo, what’s it like to work there? What’s the day-to-day culture like?
I’ve been fortunate to work at all founder-led companies. At Klaviyo, people might think, “Oh, it’s a public company,” but I consider us very early in our journey. What’s great is you get the benefit of having a large customer base (170,000 customers), but then you get to build these foundational, new products and features, and you immediately get the benefit of having this large customer base that you can launch them to. So, I believe we actually have the best of both worlds where we’re very early in our journey, operating like a startup, but then you get this base of customers that you don’t have to start from scratch.
Another aspect that stands out is the combination of data and product. We’re not a company that’s searching for an interesting AI use case to add; it’s the foundation of what’s going to make our product the best. We want people to come in and get really excited about what the right data is to show people, and not just to show it, but to integrate it into the product and have them find immense value from it.
Top-tier talent always has opportunities. So why is now the ideal time to join Klaviyo?
For me, it really comes back to where we are in our journey. You get to work with really awesome people. It’s been really fun building with these people. You’ll get to do your best work here at a time when we’re not looking for people that are just going to keep the trains running. It’s about people that are going to have high agency and want to build the best things they can.
Ultimately, the moments that have always stood out in my career have been the people I’ve done it with. You feel so proud of what you’ve done because of the people that you did it with. So, I think the foundation of all of this is the people.
Another aspect for me is just how much you feel like you can keep learning and growing. There’s this concept of a growth mindset—you’re never done, the world is evolving around us, and we keep learning about our business. People that are hungry for that are the people that I think will really enjoy being here.
If you are interested in exploring opportunities at Klaviyo, you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz, which has all their job listings. Go to venturefizz.com/Klaviyo and you’ll see their jobs there. Surabhii, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the details on the company.
Come be a part of our team and help us build the best products we can.
