Margarita Barysheva

Margarita Barysheva joined Stream Security as the company’s first Customer Success hire. There was no function, no playbook, no inherited customer relationships, and no team. Her customers were CISOs, Directors of Security, and SecOps leaders — one of the most demanding and least forgiving buyer groups in enterprise technology. She built everything from that starting point.
Two years later, Stream Security’s CS and Support function is a structured, measurable organization with clear processes, defined renewal and upsell motions, and a team Barysheva hired, onboarded, and developed herself. The outcomes are specific: 114% net revenue retention in 2024, a CSAT score of 9.65 out of 10, and churn below 8% — a figure that stands out sharply for a SaaS startup operating in a competitive, technically complex market where customers leave quickly if they fail to see value early.
The 114% NRR figure deserves particular attention. It means existing customers expanded their spend faster than any revenue was lost — a result that came directly from a renewal process and upsell motion Barysheva designed and owned end to end, including the commercial conversations. For a founding CS hire with no senior support and no existing infrastructure, that is an unusually clean outcome.
The external recognition adds a layer of validation that goes beyond company metrics. In 2024, she was named to the Top 100 Customer Success Strategists list by SuccessCoach/CShacker. In 2025, she received the Customer Success Rising Star award from Customer Success Collective — one of five recipients globally, alongside professionals from Cisco and Salesforce. In 2026, she was nominated for the Top 100 Customer Lead Growth award. Three consecutive years of peer and industry recognition across different programs is a consistent signal, not a one-time result.
Beyond Stream Security, Barysheva published a practical framework for building CS from scratch in Customer Success Collective, contributed to CS Insider, and spoke at Jumpin and Gvahim — including a panel on tech careers for new immigrants. The work she does inside her company and the knowledge she shares outside of it reflect the same orientation: substance over positioning, outcomes over process theater.
Building a Customer Success function from zero inside a Series B cybersecurity startup, with a technical enterprise buyer group, and delivering 114% NRR and a 9.65 CSAT while doing it — that is what this recognition is for.