20+ Years Building World-Class Teams

DOUG VALENTE

Scaling teams, growing revenue, and turning customer relationships into lasting competitive advantage — from seed-stage startups to global enterprise.

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20+
Years of CS &
Operations Leadership
$13M+
ARR Growth
in a Single Role
$90M
Annual Savings
Delivered at Valve
1.5M+
Support Tickets
Managed Annually
About

Leader. Builder. Operator.

I'm a Customer Success and Operations executive with over 20 years of experience scaling teams and driving revenue growth across early-stage startups and enterprise SaaS companies — from Seed to Series B and from growth-stage to global enterprise.

My work lives at the intersection of people, process, and profit. Whether rebuilding a customer health program, unifying disparate teams into a cohesive org, or crafting a go-to-market strategy from scratch, I bring a relentless focus on retention, expansion, and operational excellence.

Based in Issaquah, WA — with a career spanning Valve, DreamBox Learning, Glassbox, and SoundThinking — my consistent thread is turning ambiguity into alignment and customer relationships into durable revenue.

Customer Success
Retention & Expansion NDR Improvement Churn Reduction NPS Programs Onboarding Design
Leadership & Operations
Team Building P&L Management OKR Frameworks Cross-functional Alignment Recruiting
Revenue & GTM
ARR Growth GTM Strategy Expansion Revenue Enterprise & SMB
Certifications
CISSP Pavilion CCO School Pavilion CRO School
Impact

Career Highlights

A career built on measurable outcomes — growing revenue, retaining customers, and building teams that perform at every stage of growth.

📈
$13M
ARR Growth — Glassbox
Grew ARR from $45M to $58M and closed $12.8M in expansion revenue as VP Global Customer Success, while improving Net Dollar Retention from 1.20 to 1.37 leading a fully remote global team of 14 CSMs.
Revenue Expansion NDR Global Leadership
95%
Faster Onboarding — DreamBox
Built a scalable CS organization from scratch and redesigned onboarding to cut time-to-value by 95%. Grew ARR to over $60M through direct account management and NPS-driven improvement programs.
Process Optimization Onboarding EdTech SaaS
🛡️
$90M
Annual Savings — Valve / Steam
Led Customer Operations handling 1.5M+ tickets annually across 13 languages. Reduced account fraud by 60% and cut chargeback rates from 20%+ to under 2%, delivering $90M in annual savings.
Operations at Scale Fraud Reduction Cost Savings
🔄
6mo→30d
Time-to-Value — Accredible
Redesigned onboarding to slash time-to-value from six months to under 30 days. Grew ARR from $10M to $12M and improved NDR from 1.20 to 1.48 while keeping logo churn under 5%.
Time-to-Value Churn Reduction Retention
Innovation

AI Projects

Hands-on exploration of how modern AI tools can transform operations, customer success, and how work gets done.

🤖
AI-Powered CS Playbooks
Built automated playbook generation tools using LLMs to create tailored CSM workflows, escalation paths, and health-scoring logic — reducing manual documentation time by hours per week.
Claude API
📊
Customer Health Intelligence
Prototyped an AI-assisted customer health monitoring system that synthesizes product usage signals, support activity, and sentiment to surface at-risk accounts before they churn.
LLM + Automation
✉️
Executive Briefing Automation
Developed an AI workflow that automatically synthesizes customer data, support trends, and expansion signals into concise executive-ready briefings — reclaiming hours of weekly prep time.
Workflow Automation
🔍
AI-Assisted Recruiting & Screening
Applied AI tools to streamline candidate evaluation, generate structured interview frameworks, and draft role-specific onboarding plans — compressing hiring cycles without sacrificing quality.
AI Tooling
💡
GTM Strategy Assistant
Built AI-powered prompting frameworks to accelerate GTM planning, ICP definition, and sales collateral development — used during the Impakt IQ transition from consulting to SaaS product.
Prompt Engineering
🌐
This Website
Designed and built entirely in collaboration with Claude AI — from concept to code — as a practical demonstration of how AI tools can accelerate and enhance even creative, non-technical work.
Claude + Cowork
Career

Experience

2025 — Present Current
Vice President, Customer Success
SoundThinking  ·  Fremont, CA

Leading Customer Success at SoundThinking, a public safety technology company. Driving retention, expansion, and customer health programs across the portfolio.

2024
Chief Operating Officer
Impakt IQ  ·  Seattle, WA

Oversaw day-to-day operations across finance, sales, and client delivery at a sustainable business intelligence SaaS startup. Developed GTM strategy and introduced OKR-driven performance culture as the company transitioned from consulting to product.

2022 — 2024
Vice President, Global Customer Success
Glassbox  ·  Seattle, WA

Led a fully remote global team of 14 CSMs serving Enterprise Healthcare, Banking, and Financial Services. Grew ARR from $45M to $58M, closed $12.8M in expansion revenue, and improved NDR from 1.20 to 1.37.

2021 — 2022
Vice President, Global Customer Success
Accredible  ·  Seattle, WA

Led a 22-person global team across Account Management, Customer Success, and Support. Grew ARR from $10M to $12M, improved NDR to 1.48, and cut time-to-value from six months to under 30 days.

2019 — 2021
Vice President, Customer Success
Tideworks Technology  ·  Seattle, WA

Unified four disparate teams into a cohesive 30-person global CS organization. Generated over $1M in new professional services revenue and deployed Zendesk as the company's core support platform.

2014 — 2018
Chief Customer Officer / Chief Operating Officer
EvengX  ·  Issaquah, WA

Co-led operations of a cybersecurity SaaS startup — overseeing fundraising, recruiting, sales, and client delivery. Achieved a 90% sales close rate and ~3% churn managing a fully remote team of 30.

2012 — 2014
Senior Director, Client Success
DreamBox Learning  ·  Bellevue, WA

Built a scalable Customer Success organization from scratch, selecting tools and setting KPIs. Grew ARR to over $60M through direct account management of key accounts, introduced NPS surveys, and cut onboarding time by 95%.

2004 — 2012
Vice President, Customer Operations & Support
Valve Corporation  ·  Bellevue, WA

Built and led Valve's customer-facing operations as Steam scaled to $1B+ in annual revenue. Managed 1.5M+ support tickets annually across 13 languages. Reduced account fraud by 60%, cut chargeback rates from 20%+ to under 2%, saving an estimated $90M per year.

Get in Touch

Let's Talk.

Whether you're looking for a CS or Operations leader, exploring a collaboration, or just want to connect — I'd love to hear from you.