The challenge
Rapid growth exposes cracks in manual processes
During the beta phase, founders personally know every user and remember their feedback without writing anything down. Product ships features based on conversations recalled from memory, and customer support happens through founder email addresses that users save in their contacts. When the team grows to five people, knowledge starts fragmenting as engineers hear different feature requests than the founder handling support emails. By the time the startup reaches 15 employees, sales prospects ask questions that support already answered for existing customers, but nobody knows where those answers live. Hiring a head of customer success reveals that user data exists in three spreadsheets, two Notion databases, and approximately 40 email threads across founder inboxes. Investors ask for cohort retention metrics that require two weeks to compile manually because usage data, signup sources, and engagement touchpoints never connected.