Lead Customer Success Manager (CSM), reports to CEO

About Knoetic: Our mission is to build the “Second Brain” for every Chief People Officer & their HR team. We're backed by $50MM from Accel, EQT, Menlo, and 100s of legendary angels (Adam Grant, Shreyas Doshi, etc).

Our “right brain” (CPOHQ) crowdsources the best practices, playbooks, and templates of the world’s smartest leaders. Our ”left brain” (People Analytics) gives companies millions of data points, analytics, and insights to run better companies.

We're a beautiful blend of consumer + enterprise product that serves 1000s of C-level execs from companies like Figma, Box, Notion, and OpenAI.

TLDR: Drive adoption, renewals, and expansion for an AI-first product suite. Scale Customer Success with agents and automation, not headcount, shape the roadmap with Product & Eng, and turn mid-market customers into power users. In-person NYC 4-5 days at Hudson Yards. 1-person army.

✨ Overview

Our CEO, Joseph, is hiring for a formidable, 1-person Customer Success Lead/Principal capable of doing whatever it takes to succeed at a startup. This is the perfect role for someone who:

1. Wants impact on our product roadmap and GTM strategy.

2. Believes the future of Customer Success is scaling agents & AI, not headcount.

3. Is default ambitious, and can deliver against against goals others would find “unreasonable” and you just find inspiring.

4. Is thrilled to partner with 100s of the world’s top tech companies and their C-level execs.

This is only an in-person role (4-5 days/week) in NYC. We have a beautiful office in a 1,000+ ft skyscraper in the heart of Hudson Yards, New York.

✨ About you & the role:

• Lead CSM, 1-person army. You’ll be the operating core of Customer Success and a force multiplier across the organization.

• Book of business. Start hands on with 30-50 accounts , scale toward 100+ as we grow and as we build supporting systems.

• Segment. Primarily mid-market (250-1500 employees).

• Product-obsessed. You love product, think like a PM, and earn roadmap influence by bringing customer insights, data, and taste.

• Hands-on. You bias to action, ship fast, and use minimum viable process to create repeatable results and scale.

• Executive presence. You can work directly with C-level executives in 1-1s, QBRs, and build deep executive relationships with the entire C-suite.

• AI-first, sophisticated with tech tooling. You’re dangerous with tools, analytics, and AI workflows.

• North stars you’ll drive

  • Depth of usage: how many people use Knoetic 3+ days/week .

  • Breadth of usage: how many users across diverse departments .

  • Revenue: GDR, NDR, etc.

  • Better decisions with people: How do our customers use Knoetic to just make better decisions about people, for hiring, retention, management, and more?

✨ 7 Examples of Projects

A blend of past, present, and future planned bizops projects):

1. Onboarding at scale. Build a 1-week, 2-week, and 30-60-90 onboarding that reliably lands integrations, training, and first value.

2. Training blitz. Deliver hands-on trainings at high velocity - e.g., 50 distinct CPO/account sessions in 4 weeks (2-3 per day) - then codify the playbook.

3. Time-to-value. Cut time to value with clear “go-live” criteria (integrations live, X dashboards shipped, Y execs active).

4. QBR engine. Stand up a QBR system you can prep in ≤2 hours that drives adoption and concrete expansion hypotheses.

5. Scaled CS. Partner w/ product to drive in-product guides, automated nudges, webinars, and CPOHQ community activation to lift breadth of usage.

6. Reference flywheel + roadmap influence. Produce reference stories and partner with Product to ship 2-3 adoption-driving improvements/month across workflows, content, and integrations.

7. + dozens more

✨ Candidate criteria

• 4-10 years in high-intensity customer success or adjacent roles (product, success engineering, solutions, consulting). We’ve also seen success with

• Exec presence with C-suite. You can lead a CPO through a QBR, a training, and a renewal conversation in one afternoon.

• Product + GTM fluent. You write a crisp deck, spot activation blockers, and propose concrete UX or workflow fixes that actually get built.

• AI-native operator. You use AI and automation to get 10x leverage.

• You’re a positive, inspiring, happy influence on every team you’ve been on.

• Seen growth. Ideally you’ve lived the ride from single-digit to double-digit millions and know what “good” looks like at each step.

• Analytical. Comfortable with product analytics and spreadsheets; can define metrics and instrument funnels.

Hard filters: if you come from a purely transactional support background, have no executive exposure, or a bias for process over outcomes, this will not be a good fit for you!

✨ WHAT WE BELIEVE + FURTHER READING

• In this era of AI, we can (and will) build a billion-dollar company with a few dozen employees. This means that every spot on this ship is sacred, and we will have an intensely high bar on recruiting (no hire > mediocre hire).

• Outlier work ethic = outlier results. You work smart and hard; they’re not mutually exclusive.

• The bar is always rising. In today’s rapidly evolving world, what’s good today isn’t good enough tomorrow.

• This is our moment. Once you meet us and see some of the new things we’re building, you’ll see it’s the right team, right place, right time. We’ll do whatever it takes to seize the moment.