Klaviyo Was Rejected by Every $20K Accelerator Grant Program It Applied To
Andrew Bialecki · Andrew Bialecki: Is Klaviyo the Most Under-Priced Public Company? | E1170 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jun 26, 2024 · at 17:43
Andrew Bialecki is the co-founder and CEO of Klaviyo. He shares how early rejections from small grant programs convinced Klaviyo's founders to bootstrap the company.
“We'd applied to all these venture firms Had these kind of, you know, we'll give you 20,000 dollars and it's like, you know, no strings attached, no equity you know, for the summer. And so we applied to a bunch of these when we were about six months in, and at the time we had real users and customers were like, oh, we'll be a layup. We applied to two or three of these and not one accepted us.”
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