A manifesto

We started with
three people complaining
about sales.

Ten years later, we're still having the same conversations. They just matter more now.

How it actually started

A hotel bar. A Sunday afternoon. Three CSMs who didn't know what they were doing.

In 2016, Saahil transitioned from Sales into Customer Success. He had no idea what a CSM actually did. Neither did most of the people around him. In 2016, nobody really did. CS as a function was still figuring itself out.

So he did what you do when you don't know something. He asked other people. He organised a meetup at the Hoxton Hotel in Amsterdam and invited anyone doing the job. Three people showed up. The meeting turned into a group therapy conversation about sales teams throwing unqualified deals over the fence.

The Hoxton, Amsterdam, where the first meetup happened
The Hoxton, Amsterdam. Where the first meetup happened, long before it had a name.

That wasn't CS Connect yet. It was just the seed: a few people wanting to compare notes and learn how others were figuring out the job.

"The community was quietly shaping my career more than any book, course, or manager ever had."

Over the next seven years, through meetups, webinars, panels, and casual meetups with CS folks in pubs, Saahil realised something. The community was quietly shaping his career more than any book, course, or manager ever had. The people he met in those rooms became mentors, hiring managers, hires, and friends. So in January 2023, he made it official. CS Connect became a thing.

2023 and 2024 were about listening. Who actually shows up? What do they need? What's missing from every other CS community? By 2025, we had an answer: what's missing is a small, curated, leadership-focused community that doesn't try to sell you something.

That's what we're building, in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Bucharest, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Prague, and Vienna, with more European cities on the way. One small room at a time.

What we believe

Seven beliefs we've earned the hard way.

01

CS leadership is a craft. And no one teaches it.

Most CS leaders got promoted because they were great CSMs. Nobody handed them a playbook. Leadership is a different skill, and it's learned in the room, with other leaders, not in a book or a course.

02

Isolation is the real problem, not knowledge.

We've interviewed dozens of CS leaders. The same theme keeps surfacing: stress drops, confidence rises, clarity returns. Not because they learned a new framework, but because they realised they weren't alone. Connection is the intervention.

03

Small rooms beat big ones. Every time.

A 500-person Slack group is not a community. A 100-person webinar is not a conversation. Real growth happens in groups of 8 to 10, where vulnerability is possible and silence isn't awkward.

04

Local matters, even when we're growing across Europe.

CS Connect runs chapters in eight European cities and counting. Every chapter runs the same way: small, in-person, curated. No amount of scale should erase what makes this work.

05

Everyone shares. Nobody sells.

The best rooms are the honest ones. People talk openly about what they struggled with and how they worked through it, so everyone else can learn from it. No pitching, no performing, no polished highlight reels. Just operators being straight with each other.

06

The CS space needs better content. Not more of it.

The feed is flooded with recycled posts, AI-generated summaries, and the same seven voices saying the same seven things. Maybe one percent of what CS leaders actually know ever makes it to LinkedIn. We bring operators together in person to talk shop, off the feed, and get at the other ninety-nine percent: the real notes, the honest lessons, the things people only say out loud in the room.

07

CS deserves a seat at the table. That starts with training the leaders who'll demand it.

CS is still treated as a cost centre at too many companies. That changes when a new generation of CS leaders, better trained and better connected, walk into boardrooms and make the case themselves. That's our job.

What we're not

There are plenty of things CS Connect doesn't do.

✕
500-person Slack groups.Those aren't communities. They're noise with a search bar.
✕
Passive webinars.You join, listen, forget. Nothing changes.
✕
Pay-to-pitch sponsorships.Nobody buys their way onto our stage.
✕
Four-figure membership fees.If it costs more than a professional subscription, we've overpriced it.
✕
AI hype for the sake of it.We only talk about AI where members are actually putting it to work, in practical terms they can implement on Monday. No buzzword theatre.
✕
Generic content, sold to leaders.Plenty of communities build for a broad post-sales audience, then market it to leaders as if it were made for them. We're built for CS leaders from the start. Nothing repackaged, nothing watered down.

"CS Connect fills a gap: a smaller, more intimate community for CS leaders. You're not just an anonymous attendee. There's real in-person connection in genuinely nice settings."

Madeleine Rowe · Director of CS, EMEA · Bynder
Who this is for

If you've outgrown the generic CS community, you might belong here.

CS Connect isn't built for everyone, and that's the point. We're specifically built for the people who are already leading, or about to.

Heads of CS & VPs of CSBuilding at speed, under pressure.
CS DirectorsLeading scale-up teams through change.
First-time team leadsNew to managing, figuring it out.
Solo CS leadersThe only CS person in the org.
New CS leadsJust stepped into the role, learning the job.
First-time Heads of CSLeading at the top for the first time.

If a generic post-sales community doesn't move you, and you don't see yourself in another Slack group, you probably belong here.

The humans behind it

A small team. A growing network.

Saahil Karkera
Saahil KarkeraFounder · Amsterdam

Saahil spent a decade in Customer Success before realising the thing that helped him most wasn't a course or a book — it was other people. He started CS Connect because he needed it, built it for seven years because others did too, and now runs it full-time because the need is bigger than ever. He also writes and records Retention, Reframed — a weekly newsletter and podcast on leadership, retention, and the human side of CS.

Lotte Damen
Lotte DamenCommunity & Operations

The person who keeps it running. Turns ideas into actual rooms, actual events, actual things you can join. If it happens at CS Connect, Lotte made it happen.

The chapter leads

Senior CS leaders who host and shape their local communities across eight European cities. These are the people who run the rooms.

Francesca Grilli
Francesca GrilliAmsterdam

CS Team Lead at Sendcloud. 8+ years in international SaaS, leading CSMs across the Italian, Spanish, and UK markets with a strong Voice of the Customer mindset.

Jennifer Peters
Jennifer PetersAmsterdam

CS mentor and strategic advisor with 12 years of experience, focused on customer journey management and monetization.

Anastasiia Romasiuk
Anastasiia RomasiukBerlin

CSM with 9 years across startups and scale-ups. Certified nutritionist and an all-round positive force.

Julien Le Terrien
Julien Le TerrienBrussels

Chief Customer Officer at Mobilexpense. 25 years across tech, delivery, and CS, leading a 70+ person org across five countries.

Alexandra Sagaydak
Alexandra SagaydakBucharest

Chief Customer Officer at PeopleForce. 9+ years scaling teams, mentoring women in CS, and championing customer-centric excellence.

Lara-Marie Rose
Lara-Marie RoseFrankfurt

Senior CSM at Seismic, helping enterprise and global customers drive adoption and long-term value. Career spanning luxury hospitality, sales, and SaaS.

Jennifer White Luera
Jennifer White LueraFrankfurt

CS and partnerships leader with 10+ years across SaaS, healthcare, and education. Former Salesforce and Boostlingo leader.

Noah Hallett
Noah HallettLisbon

Fractional Chief Customer Officer and founder of GoBoldr, helping startups turn customer chaos into scalable growth.

PP
Pedro PalhotoLisbon

Head of CS and Support at CloudCockpit, building the CS function with a strong technical background and a knack for win-win solutions.

Leoš Gerlich
Leoš GerlichPrague

Seasoned CS leader with 13 years across startups and corporate roles. Passionate about helping others unlock value.

Milada Osuska
Milada OsuskaPrague

Customer Lifecycle and Digital CS leader at Alma Career Czechia, leading a 7-person team across five HR-tech SaaS products.

Ragna Ghoreishi
Ragna GhoreishiVienna

CS leader focused on customer value and cross-functional collaboration. Director of the Customer Institute and a WomeninICT ambassador.

Anastasiia Tatsenko
Anastasiia TatsenkoVienna

Head of International Business Development at Poster POS. 8+ years across sales, CS, and growth.

Plus a growing network of chapter leads across Europe. CS leaders who host and shape their local communities in Amsterdam, Berlin, Brussels, Bucharest, Frankfurt, Lisbon, Prague, and Vienna. More to come. Bring CS Connect to your city →
The number we care about
1,000

Our goal is to positively impact 1,000 CS leaders.

Not page views. Not email subscribers. Not LinkedIn followers. One thousand CS leaders whose careers, confidence, or companies are better because they walked into one of our rooms.

If this resonates, there's a room for you.

The founding cohort is forming now. 50 seats across three tiers. The people who join first shape the community, lock founding rates for life, and walk in before public launch.

Apply for founding membership → See how it works

Not ready to apply? Read the thinking first. Retention, Reframed — Saahil's weekly newsletter on CS leadership, free.