Episodes  · Season 99  · Episode 75  · 44 min

Andrew Bialecki: Be Themselves at Scale

Andrew Bialecki, co-CEO and co-founder of Klaviyo, on building a B2C CRM from two people to a Nasdaq-listed company while staying bootstrapped, why clearing the support inbox before any other work was the discipline that shaped the product, and why every brand should be able to treat every one of its customers as if they are the only customer.

Apple Podcasts Spotify
 ·  The Business of Marketing  · S99 E75  · 44 min
Read the interview

"Every morning you were not allowed to start other work until we had cleared the support inbox. That shaped everything we built."

The Conversation with Justin Cooke

Why bootstrapping to IPO while clearing the support inbox first every morning shaped Klaviyo into what it became

Andrew Bialecki and his co-founder Ed stayed just the two of them for three years, building Klaviyo into a product used by thousands of brands while personally clearing the support inbox every morning before doing anything else. This discipline, combined with using Klaviyo's own product to answer the questions that kept appearing in that inbox, shaped the product into what it became: the leading B2C CRM now used by brands from Glossier and Liquid Death to Mattel.

In this conversation Bialecki explains the consumer CRM mission, why bootstrapping was a deliberate choice rather than a necessity, how the support inbox discipline produced both product insight and customer loyalty, and why the brands that were profitable when they went public in the 1970s and 1980s, Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, showed him that building a real business before IPO was possible and desirable.

Key Takeaways

  • Every customer deserves to be treated as if they are your only customer. That is the mission. Technology enables it at any scale.
  • Every morning, clear the support inbox before anything else. That discipline produced more product insight than any user research programme.
  • Bootstrapped to IPO. The companies that were profitable when they went public in the 70s and 80s showed us it was possible. Why couldn't we do the same?
  • Two people for three years, thousands of brands, using our own product to scale our own customer communications. That is eating your own cooking.
  • Empower the world's independent builders and creators to be authentically themselves at internet scale. That mission has not changed since day one.

Topics Covered

  1. 01 The B2C CRM mission: treating every customer as if they are the only customer
  2. 02 Why bootstrapping was a deliberate choice rooted in admiration for profitable IPOs
  3. 03 The support inbox discipline: clear it before anything else and use it to improve the product
  4. 04 How Klaviyo used its own product to scale customer support across thousands of brands
  5. 05 Empowering independent business builders: Klaviyo's mission beyond the product

Key Exchanges

05
01 Tell us about Klaviyo and the mission.

Klaviyo is the B2C CRM. We started about 14 years ago. Brands from entrepreneurs just starting out to global iconic brands, Glossier, Liquid Death, Mattel. The mission: give every business the technology so that for every single customer experience, whether it is marketing, service, or website, it is tailored to every customer as if that business was treating that individual as if they were their only customer.

The founding mission stated with the precision of someone who has articulated it thousands of times.

02 Tell me about the support inbox discipline.

When we started, it was just the two of us for three years. We had this rule that when you woke up in the morning you were not allowed to start any other work until you had cleared the support inbox. Some days it took an hour. Some days it took most of the day. And I just remember thinking: the only way to solve this is to build the product to answer more of these questions. Or use Klaviyo itself to build automations that answered them proactively.

The discipline that simultaneously improved the product and scaled the business.

03 Why did you choose to bootstrap?

I had a lot of admiration for the tech companies founded in the 70s and 80s. Oracle, Apple, Microsoft, all of those companies were profitable when they went public. That was not the norm in the 2010s and 2020s. But we looked at that and thought: they were able to build a real business, why can't we do the same?

The historical reference that shaped a contra-conventional decision.

04 What happened when the support inbox drove product improvement?

Customers would write in asking about best practices. We would actually build messaging, marketing automations to those customers using Klaviyo itself. Oh, here are the first five things to do. And it was scalable. Years later I still have customers who tell me Klaviyo has some of the best onboarding material they have ever seen. That all came from the inbox discipline.

Eating your own cooking as the origin of product-market fit.

05 What does the mission of empowering independent builders mean to you?

Every brand should be able to be authentically themselves at internet scale. Not a one-size-fits-all communication. Not a template. The specific brand voice, the specific relationship with each customer, delivered at the scale that technology enables. That is what Klaviyo exists to make possible and it is what every builder who uses the platform deserves.

The philosophical foundation beneath the commercial product.

S99 E75Season & Episode
44 minDuration
14yr Since Andrew Bialecki and his co-founder started Klaviyo
2 Co-founders who stayed just the two of them for three years while building for thousands of brands

"The brands that were profitable when they went public showed us it was possible. Why couldn't we do the same?"

Hear Andrew on
The Business of Marketing
Season 99 Episode 75 44 min
Apple Podcasts→ Spotify→ Andrew's full profile→ Andrew on LinkedIn→
SEO & AI indexed Read the full transcript 4 turns
Lightly edited for readability.

Host Tell us about Klaviyo and the mission.

Bialecki Klaviyo is the B2C CRM. 14 years old. Glossier, Liquid Death, Mattel. The mission: give every business the technology so every customer interaction is tailored as if that customer is their only customer. Authentic, at internet scale.

Host Tell me about how you built it.

Bialecki Two of us for three years. Every morning, clear the support inbox before anything else. Some days an hour, some days most of the day. The only solutions: improve the product or use Klaviyo to answer questions proactively with automations. Both happened. We bootstrapped to IPO because Oracle, Apple, and Microsoft were profitable when they went public. Why couldn't we do the same?