Founding Account Manager

Strella•New York, NY

About The Position

Strella is seeking a driven Founding Account Manager to own and grow customer relationships as the company scales. This high-impact role will build the Account Management function from the ground up, overseeing customer retention and upsells, nurturing customer relationships, and developing repeatable processes and playbooks. The role serves as the senior point of contact for key accounts, develops a deep understanding of customer research goals and success criteria, and proactively supports customers throughout their lifecycle. It owns renewal outcomes, retention and net revenue retention targets, and account expansion, while collaborating with Sales, Product, Engineering, and Marketing. The Founding Account Manager will also establish account health metrics and dashboards and help shape Strella’s customer success function, with potential to grow into a broader CS leadership role.

Requirements

6–8+ years of experience in customer success, account management, or a related customer-facing role.
Prior experience owning renewals and expansion revenue.
Strong track record of exceeding retention and growth goals.
Ability to create onboarding, QBR, and renewal processes from scratch.
Excellent written and verbal communication, curiosity, and business acumen.
Commercially minded and comfortable directly making renewal and upsell asks.
Able to work with minimal oversight and demonstrate strong ownership.
Customer-first approach and willingness to go above and beyond for customers.

Nice To Haves

Early-stage startup experience.
Familiarity with research, insights, or B2B SaaS industries.
Growth mindset, including taking initiative to develop oneself and one's team.

Responsibilities

Serve as the senior point of contact for key accounts and build trusted, long-term relationships with customer champions and executive stakeholders.
Understand each customer's research goals, use cases, and success criteria.
Proactively nurture accounts through regular check-ins, business reviews, and value-recap touchpoints.
Own renewal outcomes, forecast risks early, and develop mitigation plans.
Identify and execute upsell and expansion opportunities, partnering with Sales as needed.
Own retention and net revenue retention targets for assigned accounts.
Develop repeatable playbooks for onboarding, adoption, QBRs, renewals, and expansion.
Establish account health metrics and scores and build dashboards to track them.
Continuously refine playbooks based on results across the book of business.
Work with Sales to ensure a seamless handoff from close to onboarding.
Share customer insights and product feedback with Product and Engineering to inform the roadmap.
Partner with Marketing on customer stories, case studies, and reference programs.