Case Study
How Sunset scaled its customer success team with Contrario
Sunset went in looking for one customer success hire and came away with two. Here's how Contrario closed a search stalled since January in weeks.
Arya Marwaha
Co-Founder & CEO
May 16, 2026
2 hires
from a single opening
80%
of first candidates worth interviewing
51 days
from opening to hire
Sunset helps venture-backed startups wind down, handling the legal, tax, and operational work of shutting a company down so founders can move on to what's next. Founded by Brendan Mahony and Grant Rheingold, the company was scaling to keep pace with rising customer demand.
Vishnu Thyagarajan, Director of Customer Success at Sunset, owned the search for a customer success role that had sat open since January.
Sevie Browne
Client Success Manager
Mariama Jalloh
Client Success Manager
The Problem
Months open, high volume, no quality
Sunset had spent months working through other agencies and recruiting platforms without a hire to show for it. The issue was that the volume of candidates came without the quality, and the recruiters could not calibrate to what Sunset actually needed. Vishnu ended up doing much of their job himself.
Customer demand was high, and with the seat empty, engineers were pulled off building the product to cover customer success themselves.
The Solution
Boutique recruiting, delivered through technology
Contrario paired high-quality recruiters with a real technology platform, and that combination is what set it apart. Contrario's recruiters calibrated quickly to Sunset's bar, while the platform, with its Slack integration, ATS sync, and AI tooling working behind the scenes, kept the process moving.
The quality showed up immediately. Of the first ten candidates Contrario submitted, Sunset wanted to interview eight.
"Their technology is better than any company we've ever worked with. They have high-quality recruiters who know what they're doing, empowered by AI tooling."
— Vishnu Thyagarajan, Sunset
Contrario invested in the relationship directly, too. Arya Marwaha visited the team in New York, met the new hires in person, and spent an hour with founder Brendan Mahony.
The impact
One opening, two hires
Sunset had set out to fill a single role. The candidates were strong enough that they hired two, expanding the opening rather than letting either go.
"We set out to hire one and ended up hiring two. They were both too strong to lose."
— Vishnu Thyagarajan, Sunset
Both hires closed in under two months, after a search that had been open since January. With customer success finally staffed, Sunset's engineers went back to building instead of covering support.
The partnership is now expanding well beyond that first search. Sunset plans to run more than 15 roles through Contrario across go-to-market, including account executives, SDRs, BDRs, and growth marketers, along with engineers both in person and remote.
Contrario will continue to partner with Sunset across its go-to-market and engineering hiring as the company scales.
Sunset
Startup Wind-Down & Dissolution
Industry
B2B Consulting Services
Headquarters
New York City
Employees
10+
Stage
Series A
FOUNDERS
Jaisal Kothari
Founder
Roles Hired via Contrario
Client Success Manager
x2
1+ roles ongoing…
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PRODUCT
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