In an increasingly competitive landscape, early-stage founders are finding that customer success can provide a crucial advantage when it comes to securing venture capital funding. As investors shift their focus from growth at any cost to sustainable revenue, improving net revenue retention is becoming a key factor for success.
Customer success isn’t just about keeping customers happy—it’s about driving revenue growth and ensuring long-term business sustainability. Recent insights from Gemma Cipriani-Espineira, founder of the angel investment group CS Angel, highlight how customer success can create a clear funding advantage for startups.
A Shift in Focus: Customer Retention Over Churn
Cipriani-Espineira’s journey into customer success began when she was working at a technology startup. As the company’s churn rate started raising concerns at the investment board level, Cipriani-Espineira was tasked with finding a solution. Her strategy? Implementing niche software that improved the efficiency of the startup’s customer success and post-sales teams.
“I realised that solving customer churn wasn’t just about fixing the problem on the surface; it was about transforming how we approached customer relationships,” she shared. “Once we focused on making our customer success team more effective, we saw an improvement in overall retention.”
Cipriani-Espineira’s experience led her to launch CS Angel, an angel investing group that focuses on early-stage technology companies building solutions to improve customer retention. Her unique approach, as both a SaaS executive and an operator, positions her to recognise opportunities in customer success-driven innovation, making her a key figure in the emerging trend of customer success as a growth lever.
Why Customer Success Is the New Advantage for Founders
For early-stage founders, customer success has become more than just a department—it’s a strategy. Companies that invest in their customer success processes can significantly improve net revenue retention (NRR), a key metric that’s now front and centre in many investor discussions.
“NRR is essentially the lifeblood of long-term success,” Cipriani-Espineira explains. “If you’re not expanding your revenue from existing customers while keeping churn low, your growth is stunted. Customer success offers a competitive edge, particularly when it comes to securing funding.”
For startups aiming to improve their NRR, focusing on customer success helps foster loyalty, customer advocacy, and even growth through expansion revenue, which refers to additional sales made to existing customers. Venture capital firms are increasingly prioritising businesses with a solid NRR, recognising that consistent revenue streams from loyal customers provide a more reliable return on investment than chasing new customers alone.
Three Customer Success Strategies for Early-Stage Founders
Cipriani-Espineira outlines three core strategies that can help founders leverage customer success to secure funding and grow their business.
1. Improve Net Revenue Retention
“Focus on building a product that delivers clear ROI for your customers,” Cipriani-Espineira advises. “If your product not only retains customers but also expands its value within their organisations, you’ve unlocked a key growth lever.”
This is where expansion revenue comes into play. Products that grow alongside their customers, providing additional services or features over time, can generate more revenue from existing clients than initial sales alone. Investors are increasingly looking for startups that can demonstrate both retention and expansion strategies, seeing them as critical for long-term growth.
2. Foster Cross-Functional Alignment
Customer success is not an isolated function. Companies that encourage cross-functional collaboration—particularly between sales, marketing, and customer success—see better outcomes in customer engagement and retention.
“Driving collaboration within your organisation will result in a more seamless customer experience,” Cipriani-Espineira notes. “When teams are aligned, they’re better equipped to prioritise customer needs and solve challenges before they become churn risks.”
Startups that successfully align their teams are better positioned to offer more cohesive customer journeys, which not only retains customers but also builds trust and loyalty.
3. Enhance the Customer Experience
In 2024 and beyond, customer experience (CX) is emerging as one of the most important differentiators for businesses. Cipriani-Espineira emphasises the need for early-stage companies to understand how their customers want to be engaged and to design experiences that meet these expectations.
“Whether you’re innovating a completely new experience or improving on an existing one, you have to measure the impact on your customers,” she says. “Invest in tools that allow your team to track and enhance customer interactions over time.”
Startups that focus on delivering a personalised and engaging customer experience are not only more likely to retain clients but also to benefit from word-of-mouth recommendations and customer advocacy—factors that can directly influence revenue and, ultimately, funding opportunities.
The Future of Customer Success in Startup Growth
As startups look to secure funding in an increasingly competitive market, focusing on customer success offers a clear path to improving both retention and revenue. With venture capitalists paying closer attention to NRR, customer success is no longer just a nice-to-have—it’s a critical factor for long-term success.
Cipriani-Espineira’s work at CS Angel highlights this shift, as she continues to back startups that prioritise customer retention through innovative solutions. “The startups that will thrive in the coming years are those that realise customer success is a business advantage—not just a department,” she concludes.
For early-stage founders, the message is clear: investing in customer success today could be the key to securing the funding needed to grow tomorrow
