Opening Keynote

FROM KLAVIYO'S CEO, ANDREW BIALECKI

Andrew Bialecki
CEO, Klaviyo
Klaviyo Boston

Andrew Bialecki (@abialecki) discussed the evolution of Klaviyo's building $3 billion in "owned revenue" (which consolidates revenue generated through email, websites and mobile purchases) with some backstory.

In 2011, Andrew as a Boston software engineer, started RunningSneaks on the side, to enable visitors to register for upcoming races. In interviewing prospects, he identified a lot of interest among race event organizers in better online registration tools. He knew that the longer he spent connecting with prospects, the better his business prospects became. However, especially as a part-timer, he simply couldn't scale himself and, as an engineer, became obsessed with the problem of scaled marketing.

He eventually launched Klaviyo in 2012 because email was the best way to scale marketing. Owned revenue turned out to be typically between 15 and 60% of total revenue. With easy-to-scale email, this slice of owner revenue can grow.

Due to the massive investment made in high-tech platforms today, a lot of companies accept that their business must be built on somebody else's platform, but now the pendulum is swinging back to companies owning their own platform, in this case their email list.

When you build your revenue based on a platform you control, you can be yourself easier. As an exercise, Andrew asked Klaviyo employees to introduce themselves with an email and saw a tremendous variety of subject lines, imagery and storytelling.