Overview
You'll be the first dedicated CSM at Trellus, building their customer success function from the ground up. You'll own implementations of their parallel dialer and AI call tools, manage renewals, and drive upsells. You'll work directly with Suji and Ajinkya (the founders) and wear multiple hats since there's no CS playbook yet.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Founding CSM - building CS from scratch |
| Sales Motion | Post-sale retention and expansion |
| Deal Complexity | Consultative - technical product requiring hands-on implementation |
| Sales Cycle | N/A (renewals at contract end, upsells 3-6 months in) |
| Deal Size | Likely $5-20K ACV based on SMB sales tool pricing, upsells $2-10K |
| Quota (est.) | Probably measured on renewal rate (>90%), expansion ARR ($10-20K/quarter), and implementation speed |
Company Context
Stage: Post-YC (W22), likely seed-funded
Size: 7 employees total
Growth: Hiring across multiple GTM roles (CSM, AE, Content), suggests they have product-market fit and are scaling
Market Position: Competing in crowded sales tech space (dialers, AI call coaching) - differentiation is embedded integration with platforms like Clay, Salesloft, Outreach
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Implementations (40%) | Renewals/Check-ins (25%) | Upsells (20%) | Internal/Admin (15%)
Key Activities
- Customer Onboarding: Walk new customers through integrating Trellus with their sales stack (Salesloft, HubSpot, Apollo, etc.). Troubleshoot integration issues, train their reps on how to use the parallel dialer, set up their first campaigns. You'll probably be screensharing a lot.
- Building CS Processes: Create your own renewal calendar, usage monitoring dashboards, and escalation procedures. Nothing exists yet, so you'll spend time in spreadsheets and asking engineering for data pulls.
- Renewal Management: Track contract end dates, monitor product usage to identify at-risk accounts, run QBRs to show ROI. You'll need to calculate metrics like "hours saved" or "connection rate improvement" to justify renewals.
- Upsell/Expansion: Identify accounts ready for additional product lines (they have parallel dialer, AI bots, analytics - multiple SKUs to expand into). You'll need to understand usage patterns to know when to pitch the next product.
- Product Feedback Loop: You'll be the voice of the customer to the founders. Expect to spend time in Slack threads explaining why customers need feature X or why they're churning.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- No playbook exists: You're building everything - onboarding docs, renewal processes, expansion playbooks. If you need structure and established systems, this isn't it.
- Technical troubleshooting: Their product integrates with multiple platforms. When things break (and they will), you'll be the first responder, coordinating with customers and engineering to fix it.
- Wearing multiple hats: At 7 people, you'll do work that isn't "CSM" - answering support tickets, writing help docs, maybe even jumping on sales calls. No one will say "that's not your job."
- Churn will happen: Early-stage companies lose customers. You'll lose deals to budget cuts, feature gaps, or customers who just weren't a good fit. You can't save them all.
- Founder communication style: You'll work directly with founders. They move fast, priorities shift, and you'll need to be comfortable with rapid changes in direction.
What Success Looks Like
- Renewal rate above 90% (anything below that at this stage is a red flag)
- Expansion ARR from existing accounts (probably $40-60K in your first year)
- Implementation time under 2 weeks (faster = happier customers = better retention)
- Customer health score system that actually predicts churn (you'll build this from scratch)
Who Your Customers Are
Primary Users:
- SDR/BDR teams at SMBs and mid-market companies (10-100 person sales teams)
- Sales managers who bought Trellus to improve team productivity
What They Care About:
- ROI proof: They need to justify the spend. You'll be constantly pulling usage stats and connection rate improvements.
- Integration stability: Their reps depend on this tool daily. If it's buggy or breaks their workflow, they churn.
- Feature parity: They're comparing Trellus to competitors. Missing features = churn risk or blocker to expansion.
Requirements
- 1-2 years as an SDR/BDR (they specifically mention this transition path)
- Comfortable with sales tech stacks (Salesloft, Outreach, HubSpot, Apollo, Clay)
- Self-starter who's okay building processes from scratch without templates
- Technical enough to troubleshoot integrations and explain how APIs work
- Willing to work at a 7-person company (no corporate structure, benefits might be bare-bones, equity over cash)
- Can handle ambiguity and rapidly changing priorities