Last Friday, two Venture capital backed companies applied for IPO. Grocery delivery service Instacart, along with Klaviyo, a Boston-based marketing software company, has stopped filing the S-1 form.
We looked at the Instacart filing on Friday, but didn’t have time to look at the Klaviyo IPO filing as well. We’re going to do that today because the moment of Klaviyo’s IPO is perhaps more important than at any other time.
Here’s a look at Klaviyo’s origins, how it’s grown over the years, the compromises it’s made, how email marketing is evolving, and more:
The Klaviyo EC-1
Sure, Klaviyo has raised hundreds of millions of dollars and was last valued at nearly $10 billion, but what this IPO does for other companies may prove more important than the money it brings for Klaviyo itself.
The American IPO market has been dying for about 18 months and is generally stuck in a quagmire. Falling tech valuations on the stock market and changing investor sentiment are putting IPOs on hold. Meanwhile, the venture capital market, particularly the late-stage venture capital market, shrank, putting unicorns under pressure and their investors unable to cash out.
Everyone says that tech companies need a successful IPO to get things going again and be inspired by them. But in view of the great uncertainty on the market, nobody wanted to take the first step.
It needed a champion. A company with enough strength and steadfastness to go public first and pave the way for other companies to follow. Instacart only partially met these requirements, being more of a delivery company than a pure software company. However, Klaviyo is a shockingly efficient software company that’s profitable and growing fast.
This company could be the torchbearer that tech startups have been waiting for. Let’s take a look at this morning’s IPO filing to find out how the company has grown.
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