And WTF Does “Forward Deployed” Mean?

I need your help with the survey!

👉 The Survey: https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/LXSdtTOS

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This week’s post on incentives in Customer Success in an AI-native world struck a nerve. That was intentional.

I wrote it as a cliff hanger because the truth is: we don’t actually know yet what the modern Customer Success role looks like—let alone how it should be staffed, comped, or modeled in a P&L when AI is doing more of the “work” and humans are increasingly forward-deployed to prove outcomes.

And that’s the point.

We’re in the middle of a transition from buying software to hiring software. That shift is breaking old GTM assumptions:

Where Customer Success sits. What counts as sales vs. R&D. How many people you need—and what success even means.

My friend CJ Gustafson, who writes the excellent Mostly Metrics newsletter, just published a piece called “How AI Is Changing GTM Org Structures — And WTF Does ‘Forward Deployed’ Mean?” and, more importantly, launched a short survey to help us all answer the real questions operators are wrestling with right now:

• How should Customer Success be paid?

• Where should it live on the P&L?

• What ratios still matter—and which ones are obsolete?

• How big should these teams actually be in an AI-native world?

Rather than pretending we already have the answers, CJ did the advice I give founders most often: he asked the market!

If you work in Customer Success, finance, GTM, or leadership—and especially if you’re feeling the tension between old SaaS playbooks and what’s actually happening on the ground—I’d strongly encourage you to take this survey. It’s quick, anonymous, and CJ will publish the results later this month.

👉 Take the Mostly Metrics Customer Success Survey here:

https://mostlymetrics.typeform.com/to/LXSdtTOS

And if you’re not already subscribed to Mostly Metrics, you should be. CJ consistently does one of the best jobs out there translating messy, first-principles GTM shifts into clear operator thinking.

We’re all trying to figure this out in real time. This is one of the better ways to do it—together.