Klaviyo is the only CRM built for B2C brands.
We connected with Chano Fernández, Co-CEO at Klaviyo, to learn about his background, what drew him to Klaviyo, the unique challenges his team tackles, and more.
In this video
Chano answers:
- His Role and Responsibilities
- Unique Challenges that come with his role
- Chano’s Background
- What attracted Chano to Klaviyo
- Why now is a great time to join Klaviyo
Video Transcript
Introduction
Yeah, my name is Chano Fernández. I am the co-CEO at Klaviyo.
His Role and Responsibilities
As co-CEO, I would say my primary responsibility is ensuring that Klaviyo continues to scale both the business and the team without losing what makes us special—which is our obsession with great customer outcomes.
So that means, personally, owning and taking care of go-to-market globally, driving revenue growth and operations across the company, and partnering closely with Andrew, who is the co-founder and leads co-strategy and culture.
Unique Challenges That Come with His Role
It’s really fascinating times. I always say that growing times produce great learning opportunities for all of us. But I would say the biggest challenge is usually balancing two things that can feel sometimes a little bit opposite: maintaining the intimacy and speed of a founder culture while building the operational rigor of a public company and what that demands.
Clearly, the other challenge goes with the co-CEO dynamic itself. I know it’s a bit more rare and it requires constant alignment. I definitely love it—it’s kind of a divide-and-conquer approach. Andrew and I invest heavily in that relationship because everything flows from it for the company.
Chano’s Background
As you can tell from my accent, I am European Spanish. Professionally speaking, it’s been mostly enterprise software and SaaS for the majority of my career.
I spent over a decade at SAP in global field leadership roles, and then joined Workday and stayed there for almost 10 years. My last role there was co-CEO during a massive period of scale. I saw the company grow from $350 million to over $6 billion in revenue. So my career has been entirely in enterprise, helping companies go from promising to dominant in their categories. I’ve been blessed with having those growth and learning opportunities.
What Attracted Chano to Klaviyo
I started at Klaviyo as a board member. Before joining operationally, I was on the board for over two years, and that gave me an opportunity to get to know the company.
It is one of those companies that is truly product-led with a great market fit, where the customer base actually loves the product and loves the company—and that was always super appealing to me. Having the opportunity to jump in, learn, and try to apply that to help the company scale in a predictable manner was really exciting.
In this market, data and personalization are only becoming more critical, and we are creating those stunning experiences as the AI B2C CRM for our customers. Lastly, the founder energy and ambition that Andrew brings is infectious. So that kind of closed the cycle for me.
Why Now Is a Great Time to Join Klaviyo
If you think about Klaviyo’s culture, we are great in terms of providing opportunities for people to try things out and really innovate. We’re very innovative, but at the same time, we’re very curious. We provide an environment for people to become the best versions of themselves.
At the same time, we’re building these core AI products on top of our infrastructure for this market. If you join, you’re going to have the opportunity to:
- Be part of building those amazing products that deliver tons of value to our customers through AI.
- Use the cutting-edge tooling available in the market and think about how to internally amplify yourself as a human being with AI.
Whether you grow here for years because of our amazing culture and the opportunities of a growing company, or you take those assets with you wherever you go down the path in your career, I think it’s an amazing time to join Klaviyo.