Natero

Natero developed a data-driven customer success platform specifically for B2B SaaS companies, founded in 2012 by Craig Soules and Garth Goodson. Both founders brought backgrounds in big data and distributed systems to the venture. Craig Soules, who served as CEO, previously led R&D at HP Labs, while Garth Goodson, a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, had been a Senior Engineer at NetApp and focused on data storage and databases. Their combined expertise was central to creating a platform that addressed customer retention challenges through data analytics.

The company's core offering was a unified platform combining predictive analytics, customer intelligence, and workflow management. It was designed to help customer success teams reduce churn, increase account expansion, and manage a larger number of customers more efficiently. The platform worked by aggregating data from various sources like CRM, support tickets, and product usage to create a comprehensive view of each customer. Using machine learning, it generated customer health scores to predict behavior, alerting teams to accounts at risk of churning or those ripe for upselling. Key features included automated task management, customer segmentation, usage tracking, and customizable dashboards. This allowed businesses to proactively manage customer satisfaction and maximize lifetime value.

Natero operated on a subscription-based revenue model, with pricing tiers typically based on the number of users and the volume of data processed. This made the platform accessible to a range of clients, from small businesses to large enterprises. The company successfully raised $3.33 million in a Series A funding round in April 2014, with backing from investors including Merus Capital, Y Combinator, Andreessen Horowitz, and Salesforce. A significant milestone in Natero's history occurred in May 2019 when it was acquired by Freshworks. The acquisition integrated Natero's technology into the Freshworks suite, enhancing its customer engagement offerings by adding a dedicated customer success component, subsequently known as Freshsuccess.

Keywords: customer success management, predictive analytics, B2B SaaS, churn reduction, account expansion, customer lifetime value, customer health scoring, workflow management, data-driven customer success, Freshworks, Craig Soules, Garth Goodson, Y Combinator, customer intelligence, subscription model