Building KlavX in a Quiet Country Town

Six months ago, I was juggling two developer calls, a Shopify agency backlog, and a toddler who had just spilled yoghurt on my laptop. That’s when KlavX was born — not from a pitch deck or a startup weekend, but from a real pain point I kept hearing from clients again and again:

“We use Lightspeed Retail X for our store and Klaviyo for our marketing. Why don’t they talk to each other?”

They didn’t. So we built the bridge.

KlavX started as a scrappy integration — a no-code-required sync between Lightspeed X and Klaviyo. It pipes in your in-store purchases and customer data straight into Klaviyo, making your segmentation and flows actually useful (finally). It takes two hours to set up, and once it's running, it just works.

Today, we have 10 real users. Ten stores using KlavX in the wild. Ten brave businesses trusting a small-town founder with their customer data and marketing lifeblood. And let me tell you: that number means more to me than any investor handshake ever could.

But here’s the truth behind the scenes…

The Reality Check

I live in Kyneton, a beautiful regional town in Victoria. Population: 5 thousand. We've got more cows than coworking spaces. I’ve got a partner, two young boys, and a mortgage. And while building KlavX is exciting — electric even — it doesn’t pay the bills. Yet. mwhhahah evil laugh, not sure why.

Supporting a family on a Shopify agency wage while funding and building a SaaS startup is harder than I imagined. Every feature we ship, every demo I record at 11 PM, every bug we squash between daycare drop-offs… it’s all a tightrope walk between security and risk, stability and belief.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s crazy to build a tech startup from the back of a shop in a small town. But then I look at the people KlavX is helping — and I feel it in my bones:

This is going to work. (hold back evil laugh…)

Why I’m Betting on KlavX

The big platforms — Shopify, Klaviyo, Lightspeed — aren’t going to build this. It’s too niche, too unsexy. But that’s the opportunity. KlavX sits in that weird but powerful intersection where retail data meets automation — and nobody else is doing it right now.

We’ve got:

• A working product

• Early users giving glowing feedback

• A massive addressable market (thousands of retailers using Lightspeed X + Klaviyo)

• And a roadmap that could change how physical retail does digital marketing

I’m not building this to flip it. I’m building it to last. KlavX is part of a bigger dream: recurring revenue, creative freedom, and mornings where I can take my kids to the river without checking Slack or more likley discord.

What’s Next?

We’re growing slowly but surely. I’ve got a list of improvements we’re working on: deeper Klaviyo event syncs, analytics dashboards, and even a DIY onboarding wizard. I’m also experimenting with cold outreach, content marketing, and partnerships with agencies who serve omnichannel retailers and writing articles on Indie Hackers.

But honestly? I’m still just one founder trying to do it all — grow the app, run an agency, be a dad (watch out last of us season 2), and somehow stay human in the process.

If you’re reading this and you:

• Work with retailers using Lightspeed + Klaviyo

• Know someone who needs this integration

• Or just want to back a founder doing it the long, honest way

I’d love to hear from you.

—

Tim Sullivan
Founder, KlavX
Built in Kyneton. Run with heart.