For the 184th episode of The VentureFizz Podcast, I interviewed Andrew Bialecki, CEO & Co-Founder of Klaviyo.
Klaviyo is one of the fastest-growing companies in the tech industry, but the path to their current scale is a fascinating story. It’s a story of a company that remained lean and bootstrapped for a long stretch of time. For the first three years of the company, it was just Andrew and his Co-Founder, Ed Hallen, handling everything.
Even as they started to scale, it was a different philosophy versus what most startups decide to do in terms of rushing to raise venture capital as soon as possible. Instead, they focused on building a solid foundation for the business by iterating the platform to the point where they were solving critical problems for companies.
Klaviyo did eventually raise a modest amount of venture capital over the years, but it wasn’t until last year when they raised a major growth round of $150M to add some high octane gas to the fire.
Today, Klaviyo has over 400 employees and its platform helps growth-focused eCommerce brands drive more sales with super-targeted, highly relevant email, Facebook and Instagram marketing campaigns.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover:
- Andrew’s thoughts on space travel, the recent SpaceX launch, and the possibility of landing on Mars
- The early foundational years of Andrew’s career.
- A deep dive into the story of the early bootstrapping days at Klaviyo and how they started to get traction.
- Why they finally decided to raise funding.
- Lessons learned around scaling a company to over 400 employees.
- Why resumes should be in chronological order - not reverse chronological.
- Advice for founders on how to stay organized and productive
- And so much more.
Keith Cline is the Founder of VentureFizz. Follow him on Twitter: @kcline6.
