Built by practitioners.
For practitioners.
Customer Success from the Ground Up exists because the resources we wished we'd had when we started — simply didn't exist. So we built them.
Meet
Mike Marshall.
Mike spent nine years at Adobe, starting as an individual contributor before becoming Head of Customer Success for Europe. He then moved to WalkMe as an individual contributor and Head of CS Europe, and has spent the past year leading post-merger integration following WalkMe’s acquisition by SAP.
His perspective is the operator’s lens — he’s built and led CS functions from scratch, inside real budget and headcount constraints, and knows what it actually takes to get a function taken seriously.
Listen to the podcast
10+ years in Customer Success across Adobe and WalkMe. Co-founded the CS Leadership community and the CS from the Ground Up podcast and newsletter.
Connect on LinkedIn →When I'm not building CS.
You'll find me here.
Triathlon
I've been training and racing triathlon for the past year. There's nothing like the feeling of conquering your fears with it (the swimming still isn't my strong point).
Travel
This year I went to the Tour de France in Alpe d'Huez, rode up the mountain, then watched the racing in the beautiful French Alps.
Live Music
I love a gig or a festival, there's nothing better.
Meet
Deborah Knight.
Deborah brings deep CS consulting experience to the community and podcast. As founder of Captive CX, she's spent years working with startups and scale-ups to build customer success functions that actually work — not just on paper, but in the messy reality of under-resourced, fast-moving companies.
She co-hosts the podcast and helps shape everything we share with the community. Her perspective is the practitioner-consultant lens — she's seen inside dozens of CS functions at different stages, which means she knows what separates the ones that compound from the ones that stall.
Listen to the podcast
CS consultant and practitioner with deep experience building customer success functions inside startups and scale-ups. Has worked across SaaS, fintech, and professional services — always focused on the gap between CS theory and what actually works when resources are limited and the pressure is on.
100+ CS professionals.
All building from scratch.
The community started as a CS leadership network — and has evolved into something more specific and more valuable: a group of CS professionals at every stage of building, from first CS hire to Head of CS, who share the same challenge.
We run monthly online panels and workshops, regular face-to-face events in the UK, and an always-on space for the questions you can't ask publicly. Not a networking group — a peer group.
Ready to stop
building alone?
Join the community, podcast and newsletter built for CS professionals who are figuring it out from scratch.