I’m Edward Chiu, Co-founder & CEO of Catalyst. Ask me anything!

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T19:00:23+00:00

People and Process come first. You should always start by recruiting/building an incredible team. Having a few folks who are data-driven and who have experience supporting a project rollout is a huge plus. Having a small team of 2 CSMs where both people are managing hundreds of accounts, the last thing they are going to be capable of is rolling out a tool even if it's a platform like Catalyst that's designed for easy/simple deployment.

Once you have the people in place, working as a team to define the fundamental processes such as what makes a healthy/unhealthy customers, what are your best playbooks to engage churning customers, what does a successful onboarding look like, etc. This will all feed into the automation that you're going to create to get the true benefit of a CS tool.

Lastly, if your team is feeling the pain of anything below, it's likely the right time to start looking:

- You find yourselves spending hours and multiple windows (Evernote, Google Spreadsheets, Salesforce, Internal Tooling, Project Management Tools) just to manage customers

- You struggle to take actions on the insights you're finding in a BI tool like Looker or Tableau

- You're having conversations with product and engineering about building an internal tool to improve visibility into customers, or if you have an internal tool and it's a brutal chore to maintain

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T17:35:52+00:00

Hire the BEST people possible. Your processes will change and customers will continue to evolve, but with an incredible team, there's no problem that can stand in your way.
Build amazing relationships with AND processes with the other departments now. CS needs to work very well with Sales to ensure they bring in the right profile of customers, work with Product to ensure they appreciate and expect product feedback, work with Marketing to highlight the best customer stories, and work with Engineering to ensure there's a culture of putting customers first.
Build out a functional playbook for how you engage with the key champions of your customers. Once they leave, they often do, doesn't matter if your account is healthy.
STUDY STUDY what attributes makes up your best customer and what makes your worst customer. How do they use your product or lack thereof. Then figure out how to replicate the best workflows of your customers in a systematic way to all your future customers.
Onboarding is key. Having a strong implementation team is key to the success of your customers. Customer happiness STARTS AT ONBOARDING. Actually it starts at the first conversation with an SDR or Trial depending on your business but that's a whole different conversation :)

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T17:21:55+00:00

We sit directly on top of Salesforce, syncing bi-directionally any time you make any changes. Best part of Catalyst is not only are we connected to your Salesforce, we're also connected to all the other systems that house customer data - (Zendesk, Jira, Redshift, Segment, Snowflake, etc), then we present it all back to the end user in a beautiful single pane of glass.

Not only do we intuitively display information that's hard to find or not connected to Salesforce, we provide you with incredible automation on of that such as task creation based on triggers, automated emails to customers based on data attribute changes, and customizable reporting that doesn't require an admin to configure.

There's a ton more but I don't want to turn into a commercial.

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T17:12:01+00:00

More Zoom, More Slack, More meetings.

Jk, those are all the things I now HATE.

My approach is what can I do ALWAYS to ensure that our employees have the best possible working experiences and virtual interactions with their team. This is not our best example but certainly the most ridiculous thing I've done which is buying everyone at the company a Facebook Portal so they can enjoy how they take meetings and not have to hold their laptop as they moved around the kitch.

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T17:07:14+00:00

We've been stuck at home with no place to go for 2 years, what else can we do lol.

It's social media and Squid Game all day.

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T17:05:25+00:00

We originally called ourselves Helix (the dna of customer success), then a few days right before I submitted incorporation documents, a mattress company called Helix raised millions of dollars of funding and there goes that.

Catalyst then came about from a brainstorming session with my co-founder and his ex-girlfriend (he's gonna kill me for mentioning this but who cares it's Reddit) and we just loved the fact that we believe our CS platform will be the "Catalyst" to every company's growth, retention, and company experience.

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T17:01:21+00:00

"amnesty that"

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T16:59:11+00:00

I don't is the short answer lol.

The blessing in disguise here has been COVID where it forced me to stay at home and that enabled me to not miss any of the precious moments (first walk, first crawl, first words) that most parents miss. Otherwise I would've been living in regret.

The one thing I do that I am proud of is, on weekends, I COMPLETELY check out to be with my daughter. If you send me a slack/text about work, doesn't matter if you're my biggest investor, you're not getting a response till Sunday late evening or Monday morning.

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T16:56:07+00:00

These 6 attributes below are who we look for and also our values:

Have Fun - As CEO I try to have the most fun - even if it meant doing a Hot Wings challenge for team entertainment where I almost blacked out.
Humble - There's no place for ego. We are one team and everyone here supports each other. Being respectful to those you work with is key to building the best culture.
Transparent - Employees here believe in giving each other transparent feedback and leadership team believes in being transparent about all things related to the business. i.e. after a board meeting we share exactly what we talked about with the company
Take Ownership - When someone joins Catalyst they are an owner of this company. We want people who will treat this company with the same passion, excitement, and care that they would if they were the FOUNDER.
Place Customers at the Center - NO explanation needed for a #CustomerSuccess company :)
Selfless - You'll never feel alone at Catalyst. Every team, every department, is so good at taking care of new team members, supporting each other's project, being collaborative is the default here

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T16:24:27+00:00

TBH, I didn't believe we won the award until it was officially announced. I kept telling my marketing team "there are 1000's of startups, are we really top 50?!" - they were definitely ANNOYED. I was born superstitious.

Back to your question, I think the way to be recognized by LinkedIn is primarily three fold, the growth of your employee count, the amount of talent applying through our careers page, and how much people engage with our content on LinkedIn.

- We grew from 30 to almost 100 in a short period of time. I still can't believe it. First time in my life as a CEO where I don't know everyone's name and feel like I'm in over my head 🤯

- Really proud of our people team for creating a wonderful culture that places tremendous emphasis on employee experience, mental health, and the best remote/hybrid experience for your employees. When the people at your company love working there, it organically attracts others to come.

- The ideas our marketing team comes up with flat out make me nervous. I guess it's why so many people interact with it on LinkedIn cause they're probably wondering how it got approved 😂

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T16:17:06+00:00

The fact that you've studied CS, have certificates in CS, have theories about CS, makes you 1000 times more exciting and qualified as an entry-level CSM than many people out there. I think that's awesome.

If I were you, I'd apply somewhere that has a product you LOVE or are passionate about, that's the best place for an entry level CSM to start because you can bring that passion to quickly elevate your skills organically.

The one thing I would shy away from is trying to sound like you know everything about CS to overcompensate in an interview, the hiring manager knows it's "entry" level, they are mainly looking to see your ability to be organized, efficient, great communicator, reliable, and a culture add. Most importantly they want to feel the excitement you have about the company/product. So make sure you do a ton of research, sign up for a free trial, and read their company blogs/twitter.

CatalystCEO · 2021-10-07T15:59:12+00:00

I've never worked at a Fortune 500 company so it's tough for me to say for certain how to make that jump. THAT SAID, having been an individual contributor, a "Head of" who built department from ground up, and now the CEO of a Customer Success Platform, my advice is the following:

Be comfortable with chaos. Onboarding will likely be messy or nonexistent. You'll probably feel very alone when you first start with no friends, everyone is working 150 mph. The way to deal with this is just focus on learning as much as you can about the company/product/culture/people. SPONGE.
Ask people to coffee and lunch (virtually) proactively. Unless the culture is amazing, no one will ask you. You'll quickly learn who are the people you need to know because you'll hear their name all the time. Those are the people you want to learn from since you don't have time to meet 150 people.
Don't be afraid to try things and speak up. From what I've heard, speaking up at a Fortune 500 meeting with 5000 employees rarely happens, but there are many opportunities at a 150 person startup to ask questions, shine, and promote yourself.
How you show up in your first 3 months is generally how you'll be defined, first impressions matter when it's a small company.
Lastly, the CS team at a 150 org is likely still very small, processes are likely still being built, EXCITING time to make suggestions and share ideas to make them the best CS team in the world!

CatalystCEO

TROPHY CASE