Klaviyo Adds Co-CEO To Get Back To Product. The Dream, But Does It Work?

Andrew Bialecki, co‑founder and CEO of Klaviyo, announces a co‑CEO arrangement with Chano Fernandez (ex‑co‑CEO of Workday).

He’ll focus on engineering, product, and long‑term vision, while Chano will run GTM, operations, and G&A.

Does this actually work in practice?

First, let’s look at what Klaviyo is doing

Klaviyo is crushing it, but at a time when change is ripping through the industry. They just crossed $1.2 B in revenue run rate, growing 32 % year‑over‑year. They have 183,000+ customers and powered $3.8 B in attributed revenue from 22 billion messages on Black Friday/Cyber Monday alone. Market cap is around $9 B. No vendor is more beloved in the Shopify ecosystem.

Bialecki sees a massive horizon: AI agents exploding in e‑commerce. He wrote that “LLMs and the current wave of AI were going to create a step change in how businesses defined customer experiences.” Instead of users configuring marketing campaigns, AI agents will draft, execute, and optimize them automatically.

That’s a product bet. To make that bet, Bialecki wants to be in the product all day, maybe even in the code, not in finance meetings.

Enter Chano Fernandez

Chano was co‑CEO of Workday from 2020‑2022 alongside Aneel Bhusri, after serving as co‑President before that. Across his nine years at Workday, he helped scale revenue from $469 M to $6.2 B. Prior to that: McKinsey, SAP, Infor. He’s been on Klaviyo’s board for two years. Bialecki says they’ve shared “lunches and dinners in Boston and London” and developed “deep respect for each other’s intensity and intellect.”

A man in a brown shirt and jacket standing on a stage in front of a screen that says Workday Rising

The Dream: Founder Gets to Go Back to Product

Every technical founder who’s scaled past $50 M ARR has fantasized about this. At $10 M, you’re still in the code sometimes. At $100 M, you’re managing managers. At $1 B, you’re running a small country.

The pull to “get back to product” is real. It’s where the magic is, where founders feel most alive, and where they add the most differentiated value. Nobody knows the customer, the problem, and the vision like the founder.

Except it often doesn’t work. It is risky.

“There Can Only Be One CEO”?

The thing I hear repeatedly from public‑company CEOs: there can only be one CEO.

Not because of ego, but because of reality. When a crisis hits at 6 am, who picks up? When two executives clash, who makes the final call? When the Street demands a strategy, who owns it? When a $500 M acquisition needs a yes/no in 48 hours, who signs?

The CEO role isn’t divisible the way a founder might hope. Product and GTM aren’t two separate companies; they’re deeply intertwined. Pricing is product. Positioning is product. Sales feedback shapes the roadmap, and the roadmap shapes what sales can sell.

Every gray area—hundreds per week at a $1 B company—needs a tiebreaker. If both co‑CEOs think they’re the tiebreaker, you get paralysis, politics, or both. This is why many co‑CEO arrangements end with one person leaving within 18‑24 months; the model is rarely stable.

The Graveyard of Co‑CEOs

SAP: Tried co‑CEOs multiple times. Christian Klein and Jennifer Morgan lasted six months. SAP said “the times we live in require companies to act quickly and decisively. This requires a clear leadership structure.”
Salesforce: Marc Benioff tried it twice. Keith Block was co‑CEO for 18 months before leaving “to pursue the next chapter.” Bret Taylor lasted about a year. Benioff is back as sole CEO.
Oracle: Had Safra Catz and Mark Hurd as dual CEOs under Larry Ellison for years. It worked… but Ellison never really left. After Hurd’s death, Oracle didn’t replace him; Catz is now sole CEO.

One Cloud Wars analysis put it bluntly: “If pigs had wings, they’d be eagles. If companies were meant to be led by co‑CEOs, we’d see that model everywhere instead of nowhere.”

Personally, I think it can work with truly equal co‑founders. For an outside hire? It can be tough.

One Huge Advantage: A Force Multiplier With Customers

Customers love to talk to the CEO. It’s the ultimate trump card in enterprise sales. When a $2 M deal stalls, when a renewal is at risk, when a strategic account needs love—nothing unsticks it like CEO involvement. The problem is there’s only so much CEO time.

With two co‑CEOs, you have a force multiplier. Chano can be in London closing a major European account while Andrew is in Boston meeting a key partner. Both conversations carry the weight of “CEO.” Both customers feel they got the top person.

At Workday, this was a real advantage. Bhusri could focus on product‑centric customer conversations—roadmap, vision, technical deep‑dives—while Chano handled business conversations: contracts, expansions, executive relationships. Two CEOs meant twice the customer coverage at the highest level.

For a company like Klaviyo with 183,000+ customers and aggressive enterprise ambitions, this matters—a lot.

When It Actually Works

Workday—where Chano Fernandez comes from—is probably the best example of the co‑CEO model actually working in enterprise software.

Aneel Bhusri and Dave Duffield ran Workday as co‑CEOs for years. When Bhusri needed to focus more on product and strategy, Chano stepped up as co‑CEO. The split was exactly what Klaviyo is proposing: Bhusri on product and innovation, Chano on customer relationships and GTM. And it worked.

Workday went from ~$700 M to over $6 B during Chano’s tenure.
Netflix is another example. Reed Hastings brought in Ted Sarandos as co‑CEO, then Greg Peters. Hastings moved to executive chairman; the company never missed a beat.
Atlassian’s co‑founders Mike Cannon‑Brookes and Scott Farquhar were co‑CEOs for 20 years.

The 5 Things That Make Co‑CEO Work

Clear, non‑overlapping domains. Product vs. GTM is a clean split. Strategy vs. execution is not. If both co‑CEOs think they own “strategy,” you’re dead. Klaviyo is doing this right: Andrew owns product, engineering, design, vision. Chano owns GTM, ops, G&A.
Deep personal trust built over time. Bialecki and Chano have known each other for two years; Chano’s been on the board. Trust takes time, but they have a foundation.
Ego checked at the door. Two qualified CEOs must genuinely believe the company is better with both of them than with either alone. Chano has spoken about “shared responsibility meant that ego had to be set aside.”
The founder stays in the room. The model fails most often when the founder uses it as a stepping stone to leaving. If Bialecki remains deeply involved in product and AI, it works; if he’s merely moving toward an executive‑chairman role, it doesn’t.
Complementary skills, not overlapping. Bialecki is a technical founder who built the product. Chano is an enterprise sales and ops exec who scaled a $6 B company. That’s complementary. Two product CEOs or two sales CEOs would be a disaster.

The COO Alternative

Many founders try to solve this with a COO instead of a co‑CEO. The thinking is: same benefits, clearer hierarchy.

But as Reid Hoffman wrote about his experience at LinkedIn: “The kind of person who has the capacity to be a great leader usually wants to be CEO, not COO.” Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook is the exception, not the rule.

To attract someone of Chano’s caliber—former co‑CEO of a $60 B market‑cap company—you probably have to give them the co‑CEO title. A COO role wouldn’t have gotten him.

Why This Moment Matters for Klaviyo

Bialecki isn’t doing this because he’s burned out or because the board pushed him. He’s doing it because of the radical change AI is bringing to marketing and commerce.

“We’ve hit a critical stretch where an agentic layer that can drive our B2C CRM is no longer a research project, it’s production grade,” he wrote. “We have the opportunity to make rapid progress, usher in this new era… and lead it.”

That’s a founder bet. To make that bet, he needs to be building, not managing.

Klaviyo already launched Marketing Agent and Customer Agent—AI tools that can autonomously build marketing plans and handle customer service. They’re not messing around.

A High‑Conviction Move

This is one of the highest‑conviction co‑CEO moves I’ve seen.

Chano already did this exact job at Workday, with the exact same split. He’s not learning on the job.
Bialecki isn’t stepping back—he’s leaning into a massive product bet during a generational AI shift.
The company is crushing it at $1.2 B+ revenue with 32 % growth. This isn’t a turnaround or a crisis.
They have two years of relationship building before making the move.

But I’ve also seen enough of these fail to know the risks:

Decision‑making can slow down when two people must align.
External stakeholders (investors, press, partners) may not know who’s really in charge.
Personal conflicts, even small ones, can metastasize.
If the AI bet doesn’t pay off, “I was focused on product” becomes “why weren’t you managing the business?”

The co‑CEO model works maybe 20 % of the time. When it works, it really works. Workday is proof.

Klaviyo has the right ingredients. Let’s see if they can cook.

The Dream. Just Make Sure It Works in Reality

Every technical founder at $100 M+ has dreamed of hiring someone to handle “all the other stuff” so they can get back to building. Most of the time, it doesn’t work. Most public‑company CEOs will tell you flatly: there can only be one.

But it is worth thinking about more in the Age of AI.

Klaviyo is doing this the right way:

They found someone who’s done the exact job before.
They have clear domain separation.
They have a relationship foundation.
The founder is staying fully engaged, just on a different part of the business.
They’re doing it from a position of strength, not desperation.

If you’re a founder thinking about this move, ask yourself: do you have all five ingredients? The clear domains? The deep trust? The ego checked? The commitment to stay in the room? The complementary skills?

If not, the COO or President title is probably safer. Or just accept that being CEO means doing the whole job.

If you do have all five… maybe it’s time to make the call.

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