Tech Firm Klaviyo Slashes 140 Jobs Months After Receiving $100M Investment

Klaviyo has become the latest technology company to diminish its workforce. The Boston-based tech business provides data-driven marketing tools to companies to better understand consumer behavior and grow on their own terms.

The company cut 140 jobs Wednesday, accounting for approximately 9% to 12% of its workforce. Founded in 2012, the company has more than 1,500 employees worldwide.

After being laid off, Lucy Acevedo, a customer success manager who was employed at Klaviyo for two years posted on LinkedIn: "We were quickly told in a 15-minute meeting that 'after careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to reduce our overall workforce in an effort to reduce redundancy and recalibrate Klaviyo's areas of investment for the future.'"

Heartbroken over being called redundant, Acevedo added the conversation gave her perspective on "where we should find our value." She further announced she's taking time off to reconnect with family, friends and community before taking up another job.

Klaviyo's public relations director Lacey Berrien issued a statement after the layoffs, noting that the company was focusing on "supporting the departing Klaviyos who made meaningful contributions to the company," BostonGlobe reported.

Months ahead of Wednesday's layoffs, the company received a $100 million strategic investment from Shopify.

Co-founded by entrepreneurs Andrew Bialecki and Ed Hallen, the company provides an extensive email and SMS marketing platform that is used by over 100,000 notable brands, as per Klaviyo's website. With the help of Klaviyo's predictive analytics and communication tools, e-commerce companies can set up trigger messages to customers about products in their virtual carts, recommend deals and much more.

Revenue driven in Billions during BFCM 2022

Rewind to last November, the company announced that it drove $2.2 billion in revenue during Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2022, up 46% YoY. The previous month, the team had curated 778 stats to help businesses understand the shopping behavior of customers, claiming that inflation was going to affect purchasing decisions for over 90% consumers.

Total email and SMS order count through Klaviyo during BFCM 2022 was 13.1 million, up 34% YoY, and 10.7 billion messages were sent by companies through the platform's SMS and email marketing tools.

"On Black Friday alone, Klaviyo generated 32.2M customer lifetime value predictions!" the company said in a social media post in November 2022.

Funding through the years

Klaviyo has raised $778.5 million in funding seed, Series A to D, corporate round and secondary market funding since 2015. Their latest funding was raised in September 2022 from a secondary market round. However, details about the number of investors, lead investor and funds raised haven't been made public, CrunchBase reported.

The company's total valuation, post-money, was above $10 billion as of August 2022, when the Shopify investment came through.

Acquisitions

Months after Shopify's investment, Klaviyo announced its first-ever acquisition of Napkin.io, which helps "create and deploy serverless cloud functions instantly, all from the browser."

Speaking about why they chose Napkin, Hallen said, "Last year a few members of our team discovered Napkin.io and were immediately impressed with the power of the software, clear user interface, and unique feature set which are all Klaviyo-level quality," adding that its founder Nick Sypteras, "shares our vision and DNA as a builder and creator – and he is passionate about the developer experience. We're excited to see what we can build together," according to a press announcement.

Sypteras mirrored the sentiment, saying, "As code continues to eat the world, it's only right that we have a more powerful way to support the ideas brands have to better serve their customers. I'm thrilled to become a Klaviyo and work alongside the team to build best-in-class solutions for our customers."