
Fire bad customers save great ones | Cassie Young
Run the Numbers
What makes a great executive
Cassie outlines four traits—P&L fluency, first-team leadership, macro awareness, and curated networks—that define exceptional execs.
Cassie Young brings hard earned lessons from a career spanning CRO roles, customer success leadership, turnarounds, and now investing as a General Partner at Primary Venture Partners. She talks about building and rebuilding go to market teams, why sometimes you should fire customers on purpose, and how churn is a lagging indicator that hides deeper retention issues. Cassie shares strong views on overrated metrics like NPS, the incentives that actually drive behavior inside a business, and the myth of finding one perfect KPI. She also brings signature Cassie isms like sunlight is the best disinfectant and the reminder that leaders often get stuck working in the business instead of on it offering practical insights for anyone trying to keep their SaaS metrics from going sideways.
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SPONSORS:
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LINKS:
Cassie on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cassyoung/
Primary Venture Partners: https://www.primary.vc/
CJ on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cj-gustafson-13140948/
Mostly metrics: https://www.mostlymetrics.com
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RELATED EPISODES:
Getting fired 4 times made me a founder | Sam Jacobs of Pavilion
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 Preview and Intro
00:02:30 Sponsors Aleph | Fidelity Private Shares | Sage Intacct
00:05:21 Returning From Pavilion & GTM Summit Takeaways
00:06:49 What Makes a Great Executive
00:11:07 The Importance of True P&L Fluency
00:12:17 First Team Leadership vs Functional Loyalty
00:13:33 Reading the Macro Environment and Market Forces
00:14:29 Sponsors Mercury | RightRev | Tipalti
00:18:26 Applying First Team Leadership in Practice
00:22:24 Churn as a Lagging Indicator
00:24:23 Finding Real Leading Indicators of Renewal
00:25:30 Customer Value as the Only Path to Enterprise Value
00:26:52 Product Adoption Perception and Retention
00:29:16 Price to Value Ratio as a Predictor of Guaranteed Churn
00:30:37 The Ultimate Question What Gets Your Customer Promoted
00:32:33 How NPS Is Actually Calculated
00:34:56 Sailthru’s Minus 26 NPS and What It Signaled
00:37:31 Rebuilding Customer Trust Through Transparency
00:40:24 Why Net and Gross Retention Must Be Paired
00:42:51 Aligning the Executive Team Through a Unified Bonus Plan
00:45:18 Firing Customers When Misaligned Segments Drain the Org
00:49:35 Carrot vs Stick How to Motivate a Modern GTM Org
00:52:31 Why MBO Plans Fail CSMs
01:03:51 Why Time to Value Matters More Than Ever
#RunTheNumbersPodcast #CustomerSuccess #ChurnPrevention #GoToMarket #VentureCapital
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cjgustafson.substack.com


