In Depth

A crash course on founder-led customer success — Sydney Strader’s lessons from Catalyst & InVision


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Today’s episode is with Sydney Strader, VP of Customer Success at Catalyst. Prior to joining Catalyst, Sydney was the VP of Customer Success at InVision.


In our conversation we focus on founder-led customer success, an area of early company building that’s often overlooked. Here’s a preview of her tactical advice:


  • How to structure early customer check-ins, plus a framework to help surface more specific feedback. 
  • The most impactful questions that founders and customer success managers should ask all their customers.
  • Why everyone at the company owns the net revenue retention metric — not just the customer success function.
  • How to make your first customer success hire, from the ideal profile to structuring the interview process and setting comp. 

  • You can follow Sydney on Twitter at @sydneystrader. You can email us questions directly at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.

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