Where to Start with Guy Nirpaz
Guy Nirpaz is a Silicon Valley-based Israeli entrepreneur and the CEO of Totango, one of the first customer success software platforms. He is a pioneer in the customer success movement, having helped establish the Customer Success Summit and contributed to shaping the field’s core ideas. His writing distills years of experience helping SaaS companies transition from acquisition-focused to retention-focused growth into clear, actionable frameworks.
Start here
Farm Don't Hunt: The Definitive Guide to Customer Success
Guy Nirpaz & Fernando Pizarro · 142 pages · 2016 · Easy
Themes: customer success strategy, recurring revenue, customer lifecycle, SaaS growth, retention metrics
Nirpaz’s core contribution to the customer success canon. The title says it all: stop hunting for new customers and start farming the ones you have. This concise guide lays out the intellectual framework and practical mechanics of customer success from the perspective of someone who built one of the field’s defining software platforms.
Why Start Here
This is Nirpaz’s only major book, and it captures his thinking on customer success in the most direct form possible. At 142 pages, it wastes no space. He covers the shift from traditional enterprise sales to subscription-based models, explains why retention became the most important metric, and walks through the customer lifecycle, health scoring, segmentation, and the organizational changes needed to make customer success work.
The farming metaphor is more than clever branding. It reflects a genuine shift in how businesses create value. Hunters extract; farmers cultivate. Nirpaz shows what that distinction means in practice, drawing on his experience building Totango and working with hundreds of SaaS companies making this transition.
What to Expect
A fast, focused 142-page read that delivers the essentials without padding. Written for SaaS founders, customer success professionals, and business leaders who want to understand the mechanics of retention-driven growth. The writing is practical and direct, making it an ideal complement to the more comprehensive treatment in Mehta, Steinman, and Murphy’s “Customer Success.”