Gozde Gorce

I help career-pivoters break into Customer Success - and I built the curriculum on what I actually used to hire CSMs at hyper-growth SaaS startups for 10+ years.

I'm the founder of The Success Path, a course and coaching practice helping people from teaching, operations, healthcare, finance, project management, and other non-CS backgrounds land Customer Success roles. Students have landed at companies including Level Access, Finquery, and across the SaaS ecosystem.\

I built The Success Path because I noticed the same pattern in every CS team I led: the highest-performing CSMs almost always came from non-traditional backgrounds. Operations people who knew how to systematize. Teachers who knew how to translate. Recruiters who knew how to close. The talent is there. The map to get in is what's missing. So I built the map.

Before going full-time on The Success Path, I spent 10+ years building and scaling Customer Success, Onboarding, and GTM functions at hyper-growth SaaS startups across API, Fintech, Ad Tech, and Martech - including roles at Apollo, Lob, Traackr, and Twitter. My work focused on:

⚡ AI-native operations - integrating AI tools and agents into post-sales workflows to redirect human time toward strategic work

📈 Scale without bloat - doubling ARR coverage without proportional headcount through automation and process design

🎯 Metric-driven culture - driving 120%+ NRR and consistently exceeding retention and expansion targets

🚀 Team development - building CS functions from scratch, scaling teams 2x in under 6 months, and developing CSMs into senior leaders

This is the operating experience I distilled into The Success Path. The course doesn't teach what some CS certification thinks the job is. It teaches what hiring managers at hyper-growth startups actually look for.

Open to conversations on: → Coaching for career-pivoters trying to break into CS - DM "COURSE" for The Success Path details → Speaking, podcasts, partnerships in the Customer Success / GTM ecosystem → Advisory or board opportunities with SaaS companies scaling post-sales → Collaborations with other CS career creators

📍 San Francisco, CA