Want to hear from past customers? For inspiration?

This is how my customers will feel about your product:

This is how my customers will feel about your product

CTO, Appfluence

Pablo Diaz Gutierrez

"I am delighted to recommend Bella Fojut, whose tenure at Appfluence was distinguished by her customer success skills and her ability to foster connections within the startup community. Bella's role in our company went far beyond her work in driving sales and implementing strategies for enterprise expansion. What set Bella apart was her natural talent for identifying and nurturing relationships that proved pivotal for our company's growth. Her approach to community engagement helped us uncover and seize valuable opportunities, leading to partnerships that have had a lasting impact. Bella's dedication to customer success was evident in her meticulous management of a large portfolio of accounts, and her initiative in training new team members. Her ability to communicate effectively with C-Suite executives and her proactive development of customer success plans contributed greatly to our success. Her legacy of community connections continues to benefit us long after her tenure. Bella is undoubtedly an asset, and I am confident that she will bring the same level of excellence, strategic thinking, and community insight to any new venture she undertakes."

CEO, SafebeatRX

Kunj Patel

"Bella was a superstar coordinator of the StartX community. She was responsive to feedback, and ran a great operation on a rather small budget - so embodies the elements of resourcefulness and being scrappy. Highly recommend!"

CEO, Lief Therapeutics

Rohan Dixit

"As a community champion and operator, Bella was fantastic! She dug deep into the details of your individual challenges, helping you leverage the support you needed in real-time, while taking the opportunity to better understand the big picture and uncover new opportunities for the team to make the most impact for all founders."

Founder, Samay Health

Maria Artunduaga, MD

"As a StartX founder, I found Bella invaluable. From the very beginning, she has been a trusted supporter, going out of her way to help me learn how to navigate the community as productively as possible. She is a true problem solver, finding the issues that matter most and soliciting founder input as she iterates to provide better results in a more streamlined way. She approached her work with a true founder’s mentality and we were lucky to be the recipients of that focus."

Founder, Avela

Greg Bybee

"StartX isn't a traditional accelerator - it's a community of founders organized around a shared goal of helping each other. But in a fully remote, mostly decentralized world, community can be hard to build. Bella made it possible. Even before Covid-19 forced the world to scale culture remotely, Bella organized hundreds of entrepreneurs into a self-governing online community, mostly through message boards and email. From the initial interview and onboarding process through the resources and events, Bella was delightful to work with and would be a tremendous asset to any company or community."

CEO, Turing

Jonathan Siddharth

"I was highly impressed by Bella's work at StartX. In addition to being an analytical problem-solver who got stuff done and a great communicator, she was highly attuned to your individual founder experience and how it related to the health of the larger community. Highly recommend her as an operator and champion!"

Founder, Stealth

George Gregory

"I worked with Bella at StartX for 4 years. She is the ultimate professional and could solve any problem that we had. She has exceptional communication and problem-solving skills. A pleasure to work with. She is goal-oriented and can get things done. It would be amazing to have on any mission-critical project. Highly recommend."

Partner, Newfund

Henri Deshays

"I worked at StartX until 2017 and remain close to the organization as a mentor and investor. Bella embodies what is best at StartX, she quickly became a super connector and a go-to resource for StartX entrepreneurs. The goal of the organization is to become a self-sustainable community of entrepreneurs, thanks to Bella StartX got closer to it."

Founder, PlusPlus

Marko Gargenta

"StartX is the primer community for Stanford and Silicon Valley founders. And at the cornerstone of that community was its manager, Bella Fojut. Being a busy founder, I heavily relied on Bella for all the key events that I wanted to attend. And, when I had a session to host, Bella ensured all the moving parts are in tact. She was the linchpin of StartX community running smoothly."

CEO, Urban Mobility Tech Co.

Krisada Kritayakirana

"Given that we are a StartX team from abroad, Bella helped us feel warm and integrate into the StartX community, even though we are halfway around the world! Bella was prompt to respond and proactive to reach out to us."

CEO, Anifie

Yohei Iwasaki

"StartX was a better community because of Bella's scrappy attitude. She was always willing to take on new challenges and do whatever it took to get the job done. But beyond her impressive work ethic, Bella was also a genuinely good person. She was always there to offer concrete support, and she never hesitated to go above and beyond."

CEO, Riff

Kara Katz

"Over the past four years, my interactions with Bella have always been great! She has an exceptional talent for building connections and always prioritized making my time at StartX as worthwhile as possible."

CEO, Imprimed

Sungwon Lim

"Bella was a great person to know in the StartX community. Constantly championing the values of trust, support and earned respect, she truly lived out the vision of helping founders learn how to sustainably navigate the community and multiply results together. Throughout her time at StartX, she was involved in so many parts of the organization, and her impact was highly visible. On top of this, she was genuinely kind and skilled at making groups of people comfortable!"

Swipe left 👈

Customer Operations Lead | 05/2024 – 01/2025 (RIF)

Supported 3 operations managers and 50+ team members; improved coordination between program leads and operations.
Partnered with OpenAI product and research teams, enhancing data delivery and quality of 95% of the training data used to build Sora.
Designed and launched a quality assurance dashboard from historical and new task data, giving account leadership unprecedented visibility.
Delivered data-driven insights during WBRs and QBRs, influencing client data needs and delivery team priorities.
Implemented systems that improved training participation, learning outcomes, and efficiency, while keeping L&D within required limits.
Coached team leads and staff to improve communication, consistency, and stakeholder-facing performance.
Created Hope, Dreams & Wants Slack channel to surface operational issues and increase psychological safety for feedback.

Customer Success & Experience Consultant | 10/2022 – 05/2024

Designed customer journey frameworks to align internal teams around retention and engagement goals.
Created self-service knowledge bases that reduced support volume and improved satisfaction.
Built in-app onboarding checklists that guided new users through setup and improved adoption.
Managed speaker logistics for a virtual healthcare summit, ensuring smooth execution and high contributor satisfaction.
Leveraged writing experience to create founder pitch decks that effectively conveyed value proposition and investment opportunities.
Managed outbound prospecting for trauma publication.

Head of Experience Design | 04/2021 – 10/2022

Led experience design and marketing programs supporting 2,000+ founders through onboarding, retention, and engagement initiatives.
Implemented service design framework for program experience; mapped layers to eliminate friction points.
Managed program experience for 40+ founders per cohort; designed 11-week program through 86 individual founder interviews.
Reintroduced in-person programming post-pandemic, rebuilding community engagement and stakeholder trust.
Hosted innovation visit from Kazakh dignitaries, opening the way to a multimillion-dollar collaboration with Nazarbayev University.

Sr. Community Manager | 09/2020 – 04/2021

Executed high-touch strategy complete with applicant help desk to drive application quality and submission success, surpassing tri-yearly growth marketing goals by 1.5X.
Built and scaled automated onboarding and communication systems that improved customer engagement and retention.
Orchestrated Stanford's largest entrepreneurship event (1000+ attendees); managed logistics, marketing, sponsorships, and execution.
Authored an account management playbook that became the internal standard for best practices.
Collaborated with Product and Engineering teams to translate feedback into platform updates.
Achieved 30% newsletter open rate within first 3 months (3x typical rates) and grew engaged community to 2000+ members.
Managed logistics and day-of success of 30+ events per year, from small founder coffee hours to Stanford Campus Demo Days (1000+ attendees).

Founder Enablement & Communications Lead | 01/2019 – 09/2020

Launched “StartX 101,” a webinar-based onboarding flow that improved adoption and reduced manual workload.
Founded female founder community with 400+ members; created safe space for peer support and challenges discussion.
Built a Founder Success Dashboard, visualizing engagement and retention data for leadership.
Maintained +88 NPS during sensitive customer communications through empathetic and clear messaging.
Exceeded growth OKRs through email campaigns and testimonial outreach.
Created founder personas for recruitment strategy and the highest converting marketing copy to date.

Sr. Customer Success Manager | 05/2018 – 12/2018

Managed 75+ SaaS accounts, overseeing renewals, expansions, and satisfaction.
Drove 8x conversion improvement through strategic demo delivery and discovery-based sales, closing $50K account expansion by mapping organizational dynamics and building key stakeholder relationships.
Developed digital customer success resources (video library, templates, guides) to support self-serve customer onboarding at scale.
Partnered with Product to integrate Voice of Customer feedback into roadmap priorities.
Trained new CSM and Sales hires in relationship management best practices.
Built channel partnerships with thought leaders in the IT space.

Customer Success Manager | 06/ 2017 – 05/2018

Contributed to company-wide GRR improvement from 60→80% and NRR from 95→110%.
Pioneered webinar strategy for trial customer engagement with technical webinars that resonated with C-level audiences.
Influenced company market pivot to B2B/IT vertical through discovery research and built first channel partner relationship with IT consultant.
Used analytics to identify risk signals and coordinate proactive retention efforts.

Technical Skills

Program management • Customer success operations • Systems thinking • Service design • Data analysis • Email automation & templating • Technical documentation • Dashboard creation • Webinar production & strategy • Process optimization • CRM/operational tools

Communication Skills

Strategic writing • Presentation design • Graphic design • Video narration & production • Stakeholder storytelling • Facilitating difficult conversations • De-escalation • Newsletter writing (30% open rate) • Translating between technical and non-technical audiences

People/Leadership Skills

Emotional intelligence • Discovery questioning • Relationship building • Trust-building • Conflict resolution • Facilitation • Mentoring/coaching • Understanding unspoken needs • Building psychological safety • Influence without authority • Organizational dynamics mapping

Supported 3 operations managers and 50+ team members; improved coordination between program leads and operations.
Partnered with OpenAI product and research teams, enhancing data delivery and quality of 95% of the training data used to build Sora.
Designed and launched a quality assurance dashboard from historical and new task data, giving account leadership unprecedented visibility.
Delivered data-driven insights during WBRs and QBRs, influencing client data needs and delivery team priorities.
Implemented systems that improved training participation, learning outcomes, and efficiency, while keeping L&D within required limits.
Coached team leads and staff to improve communication, consistency, and stakeholder-facing performance.
Created Hope, Dreams & Wants Slack channel to surface operational issues and increase psychological safety for feedback.