Cover Image for CSE Winter Learning Series: Customer Retention as a Growth Strategy
Cover Image for CSE Winter Learning Series: Customer Retention as a Growth Strategy
Avatar for Chicago Startup Events
16 Went

CSE Winter Learning Series: Customer Retention as a Growth Strategy

Zoom
Registration
Past Event
Welcome! To join the event, please register below.
About Event

​Founders Only | Virtual | Cameras On

​CSE founder learning sessions are designed exclusively for founders building a scalable product, platform, or tech-enabled company.

​These sessions are not designed for professional services, agencies, or consulting-based businesses.

​To be a fit for this session, you should be building:

  • ​A product-first startup (physical product or live product demo)

  • ​A SaaS or tech-enabled platform solving a problem at scale

  • ​A company where retention depends on product onboarding, usage milestones, or renewal mechanics

​This structure allows for a focused, peer-driven working environment.

​___

​Customer Retention as a Growth Strategy

​Early traction doesn’t come from more customers — it comes from keeping the ones you already worked so hard to earn.

​Join fellow founders for the kickoff of the CSE Winter Learning Series with Parul Bhandari (CustomerXSuccess), a 10+ year leader in customer success, retention, and cross-functional growth for early-stage startups. This session is built for founders who want to turn early users into renewal-ready, reference-ready customers without a big CS team or complex tooling.

​This is not a webinar.
This is a hands-on, working session where you’ll build the early retention mechanics your company needs right now to survive and scale.

​___

​What You’ll Walk Away With

​Your Early Customer Journey Map
A simple, founder-friendly system to define the first “success milestone,” identify churn risks early, and execute onboarding that actually drives outcomes.

​A Weekly Alignment Ritual
One lightweight, founder-run process that keeps Sales, CS, and Product rowing in the same direction — even if you’re a team of 1–3.

​A Realistic Retention Strategy for Lean Teams
Learn how to design for renewals, not replacements, and how to operationalize CS before your first hire.


​This Session Is Perfect For

  • ​Bootstrapped, pre-seed, and seed-stage founders

  • ​Founders working toward first revenue

  • ​Technical and non-technical founders building their first CS or RevOps motions

  • ​Early teams operating without dedicated CS resources

  • ​Anyone who wants to reduce churn and strengthen early customer traction


​Format

​✔️ 60 minutes
✔️ Short talk + guided working session
✔️ Live Q&A
✔️ Cameras on — this is an interactive, founder-focused room

​You’ll leave with tools you can use immediately — not theory.


​About the Speaker

​Parul Bhandari — Founder, CustomerXSuccess

  • ​10+ years leading startup CS teams (onboarding, success, support, product marketing)

  • ​10+ years in business ops + HR consulting focused on building teams from the inside out

  • ​Delivered countless sessions on retention, CS, RevOps, and cross-functional alignment

​She has worked directly with first-time founders, technical and non-technical founders, and early-stage SaaS companies across AI, SaaS, mobility, sales tech, and more.

Avatar for Chicago Startup Events
16 Went