Daphne Costa Lopes

Who they are

Daphne Costa Lopes is Global Director of Customer Success at HubSpot — and founder of 'This is Growth!', a podcast on CS, growth, and technology she launched in 2022.

Person

Daphne joined HubSpot in October 2022 when it was already a large public SaaS company with over $1B ARR and thousands of employees — she came in as Principal Manager of Customer Success and has since moved up through Director to her current Global Director role. Before HubSpot she ran Customer Transformation at Retail inMotion, then moved to WNDYR where she held three roles in succession: Customer Implementation Manager, Head of Operations, and Head of Customer Success Partnerships — a pattern of someone who earns scope quickly. She holds both a Post Graduate Degree in Product Management and a Master of Science in Technology, both from Technological University Dublin, which grounds her CS practice in systems and product thinking rather than pure relationship management. She founded 'This is Growth!', a podcast on Customer Success, growth, and technology, in 2022. She also runs Unconventional Growth, a weekly newsletter covering CS leadership, AI in CS, outcome-based pricing, and scaling CS organisations. The through-line is building CS as a revenue and strategy function — not a support function — and she's one of the more visible voices doing that in public, with speaking slots at CX Current, Arrows' Onboarding Therapy, CSN Cafe Dublin, and HubSpot's own P-Club leadership event in May 2026.

Company

HubSpot's most recent notable move was updating its terms of service in July 2026 — then retracting the changes after customer trust concerns, publicly committing to user data control. On the product side, the Spring 2026 Spotlight brought several agentic launches: Prospecting Agent (April 2026), which identifies in-market companies via buying signals and sources contacts through ZoomInfo or Apollo; HubSpot AEO, now available without a Marketing Hub subscription; and Answer Engine Optimization in public beta, tracking brand presence in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. Q1 2026 financials showed $881 million in revenue, up 23.4% year-over-year, with $3.45 billion in ARR and 299,458 paying customers. HubSpot also introduced Working Capital powered by Stripe in mid-2026, offering pre-qualified funding directly inside the platform for US and UK customers.

Market

HubSpot holds approximately 5.20% of the CRM platforms market, well behind Salesforce at 25.29%, but is the fastest-growing major CRM vendor — growing revenue at roughly 20-25% year-over-year versus Salesforce's 8-11%. In marketing automation specifically, it sits third globally at 7.76% share behind Mailchimp (18.11%) and Klaviyo (9.43%). The biggest structural pressure is OpenAI's move into application software, which triggered a 7.2% stock decline in October 2025 and prompted a major hedge fund exit in 2026 over concerns about HubSpot's seat-based model and AI competition.

Network

Daphne's visible professional network skews toward the HubSpot leadership orbit — she posts regularly about HubSpot's culture and practices, and has soft engagement signals with CEO Yamini Rangan and Co-Founder Dharmesh Shah. She is also a member of CS Angel, a Boston-based customer success community, which connects her to CS practitioners beyond HubSpot.

Yamini Rangan· CEO, HubSpot
Dharmesh Shah· Co-Founder and CTO, HubSpot

How they likely show up

Rapid internal progression at HubSpot (Principal Manager → Director → Global Director) → earns scope quickly and likely moves fast once she has context.
Three roles at WNDYR in ascending order before moving on → methodical about mastering a function before expanding it, not a job-hopper.
Runs both a weekly newsletter (Unconventional Growth) and a podcast (This is Growth!) alongside a demanding global role → high output, comfortable context-switching between practitioner and public thinker.
Public speaking consistently centres on AI's role in CS and demonstrating CS value in downturns → outcome-oriented framing, not relationship-first framing — she argues for CS as a revenue function.
Post Graduate in Product Management on top of an MS in Technology → likely applies systems and product thinking to CS design, not just people management instincts.
Posts frequently about HubSpot's culture and transparency practices → comfortable being publicly identified with her employer's values, not just her own brand.

Conversation tips

→ Reference a specific episode or issue from Unconventional Growth or This is Growth! — she'll know immediately that you've done more than a LinkedIn skim.
→ Ask about outcome-based pricing in CS — it's a recurring theme in her writing and a substantive debate she's clearly thought hard about.
→ Engage with the AI-in-CS angle specifically: she spoke at CX Current on how AI makes CSMs more valuable as strategic advisors — come with a point of view, not just curiosity.
→ She operates at global scale across a large public company — match that frame when discussing CS strategy; SMB or startup-scale examples may not land.
→ Don't treat CS as a cost centre in conversation — her entire public thesis is about CS as a revenue and growth function.

Toolbox

Openers

Open on the July 2026 HubSpot terms-of-service reversal — she posts regularly about HubSpot's transparency values, so this is a live, textured moment she'll have thoughts on.
Mention the Arrows Onboarding Therapy episode on 'The AI Wake-Up Call for Customer Success Teams' — she named it a wake-up call, which is a stronger claim than most CS leaders are willing to make publicly.
Reference Unconventional Growth by name — it covers outcome-based pricing specifically, which is a contested topic in CS right now, and naming her newsletter signals you've gone beyond the LinkedIn profile.

Discovery questions

You've argued AI makes CSMs more valuable as strategic advisors — where are you seeing that argument fail internally, where CSMs default to the old motion?
Outcome-based pricing keeps coming up in your newsletter — what's the biggest structural blocker you've seen for CS teams trying to actually implement it?
HubSpot's Spring 2026 launches are heavily agentic — how is that reshaping what your CS team actually owns in a customer relationship versus what the product now does automatically?

Avoid

Don't frame Customer Success as a retention or support function — her entire public body of work argues against that framing, and leading with it will signal you haven't engaged with her thinking.

Make it yours