Mathilde Collin

Co-Founder & Executive Chair, Front · 1 appearance on the record.

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founderexecutiveinvestor@collinmathilde ↗LinkedIn ↗front.com ↗

Mathilde Collin is the co-founder and Executive Chair of Front, a collaborative customer communication platform. She previously served as the company's CEO, scaling it to a multi-billion-dollar valuation.

12statements → 3claims → 0claims resolved → 4.33/5average certainty → 2.42/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 24said about them ↓

3 not checkable as stated how the 3 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

3 assertions · 6 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 3 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Mathilde argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

How they sound: speaking style how? →

238 words/min while actually speaking · 1.1 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Mathilde Collin: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 30 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 4,575 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Mathilde Collin is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 3/10

pushed back at the host 3/10

setup questions received 35%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 6:33“Does that mean that actually I'm wrong in asking that and how should then I think about and maybe change my approach in terms of engaging with startups on how they think about thei…” ▶ 19:35“How do you respond to this advice and how do you approach that relationship building with VCs?” ▶ 5:33“What makes you think that discipline and that kind of rules-based approach is important over vision in the early days, especially?”

What they said12 What others said24 Episodes1

Everything Mathilde Collin said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Disclosure

Collin Understated Front's MRR to VCs to Guarantee Growth Later

“I always talked about the one that was the best, but also I always said that, so let's, let's say I was at 30 KMR. I would say we're at 20 KMR. So I would always give a number that's below so that, you know, if I raise it in two months and for some reason thin…”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 21:14 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Insight

Collin: VCs Should Weight Founder Execution at 90% and Vision at 10%

“I think, you know, you can put a 10% weight, that's important, but 90% should be, okay, now how confident I am that the person can execute on this brand vision, because it's super easy to say, this is how big my company could be, and this is insanely hard to m…”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 6:42 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Insight

Collin: Employee engagement stems from trust and transparency, not relentless good news

“So I think there is some misconception about engagement being created by the energy of announcing good news versus engagement created by the trust and the transparency and the context that you will give to your employees.”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 16:42 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Collin: Evaluating enough candidates naturally yields a 50/50 gender ratio

“If you, let's take, for example, women versus men, if you spend the time to evaluate a lot of people, you should end up with fifty-fifty. If you don't, then you will probably not end up with that ratio.”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 27:06 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Insight

Collin: Early-Stage Startups Don't Need a Grand Vision From Day One

“I actually think it doesn't matter if you don't have a grand vision from day one, because as soon as you know that you're operating in a market that could be huge, then you'll have all the time you need to figure out what will be step two, step three, and then…”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 5:42 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Insight

Collin: Founders who send consistent investor updates make faster progress

“And I quickly noticed that the entrepreneurs who were sending the updates in the same format as At the same time of the whatever month, week or quarter were people that were making more progress than the people that would change the format all the time. Someti…”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 8:11 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Disclosure

Collin: Front Discloses Exact Revenue, Churn, and Expansion Metrics Weekly to Employees

“Yeah, so every week, all hands meeting, I show revenue. So, meaning every single week, they know exactly how much churn we've had, how much expansion we've had, and how much new business we've had, and we divide that by the different teams.”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 14:32 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Disclosure

Collin Reference-Checked Sequoia's Brian Schreier With 90% of His Portfolio CEOs

“When I chose Brian, Brian is actually one of the only investors during our series B that I didn't know much before. And so I hadn't built a relationship with him. And so I knew it was very important to understand if we would work well together. So I think I to…”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 25:54 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Collin: Front's Series B Pitch Vision Was Entirely Different From Seed

“So I can tell you very honestly that the vision up front I pitched during our Series B 18 months ago is very, very different from the vision I had pitched after my seed round or Series A round.”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 5:56 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Insight

Collin: Founders should not switch update metrics when performance drops

“The first one is you should choose the metrics that you will track and you should not change them. Too often I've seen entrepreneurs For example, track revenue, and then maybe revenue is not going as well as expected, so all of a sudden we'll switch to DAUs be…”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 9:32 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Insight

Collin: Founders should make specific, target-based asks to investors

“And advice number three is be very precise in the asks that you have for your investors. So for example, at the end of the day, every founder wants more customers and new hires. But if you're saying, do you know any backend engineer? And do you know any compan…”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 10:10 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Collin Has Missed Sending Front's Weekly Company Email Only Once

“And I've been doing that since I started France and I have only missed sending this email once, which was when demo day was happening, which was really crazy.”

Mathilde Collin May 24, 2019 ▶ 11:40 20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

The other half of the tape: Mathilde Collin's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 24 times in 11 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 18 Mamoon Hamid 5 Wasim Daher 1