Real talk.
No theory.
Honest conversations with CS practitioners about what it actually takes to build Customer Success from nothing. No generic advice. No enterprise playbooks. Just what worked — and what didn't.
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Hosted by Mike Marshall & Deborah Knight
Latest episode
Episode 5
Building CS at a Series A startup with no budget and no playbook
What do you actually do in week one when there's no process, no tooling, and a founder who expects miracles? Mike and Deborah break down the real first steps — and the mistakes most people make.
A few moments
worth 60 seconds.
“An AI agent should replace the work a CSM would be doing.”
Natasha Evans
VP Growth, Hook
“Always be curious.”
Jamie Levy
CS Director
“Every customer that raises a concern is giving you a gift.”
Alastair Doig
CEO, Tiller
Every conversation.
05
Building from scratch
Building CS at a Series A startup with no budget and no playbook
04
Leadership
What your first 90 days as Head of CS should actually look like
03
Stakeholders
How to get leadership to take Customer Success seriously
02
Onboarding
The onboarding mistakes that cause churn six months later
01
Foundations
Why most CS functions never get taken seriously — and how to fix it
Two practitioners.
One shared obsession.
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Mike Marshall
10+ years CS · Adobe, WalkMe (SAP) · Co-founder, CS from the Ground Up
Nine years at Adobe — individual contributor to European CS Leader. Then WalkMe, where he ran CS for Europe before moving into post-merger integration after SAP's acquisition. Mike brings the perspective of someone who has built CS from scratch multiple times, in very different environments, and learned what the generic advice gets wrong.
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Deborah Knight
Founder, Captive CX · CS Consultant · Co-founder, CS from the Ground Up
Founder of Captive CX, a CS consulting practice focused on startups and scale-ups. Deborah has been inside dozens of CS functions at different stages of maturity — she knows what separates the ones that compound from the ones that stall, and she brings the practitioner-consultant lens that makes the podcast more than one person's experience.
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