• by Ray Schultz , April 8, 2019

Email service provider Klaviyo has closed a $150 million series B financing round led by Summit Partners, CEO Andrew Bialecki announced in a blog on Monday.

The company apparently plans to use the money to expand beyond email.

"So far, we’ve focused our attention on email, the most important owned channel," Bialecki writes.

He claims that the firm delivered emails that helped generate "1% of all ecommerce sales on Black Friday." But he adds that "there is still 99% of the pie we’re not helping with."

The problem is that "big pieces of that pie are through channels brands can never own because they’re dependent on ad networks and marketplaces that may change their rules or not be there someday," Bialecki says.

The company plans to hire engineers, designers and "customer-first folks," he says. In the coming months, clients can expect more features, new products and maybe a new partner or two, Bialecki states, hailing Summit as a "great new partner."

Bialecki adds that the Boston-based company didn’t seek financing at the outset because "we didn’t want to be one of the startups that raises a $1M, builds a product, finds some customers, never gets profitable and gets acquired by some bigger company for $10M."

In addition, he says "we came from families that started small businesses from scratch and ran them for decades."