Insight
Collin: Intercom creates silos by excluding sales from customer communication
“Intercom is good for customer communication, but what we're trying to do is having more of your communication, so customer success, product, sales on front, and on Intercom, you don't usually have your sales team. You'll use Yesware or ToutApp, which will make…”
Disclosure
Collin: Front's VC board members can advise, but I make final decisions
“I mean, the thing is, they can advise whatever they want, but at the end of the day, I'll make the decisions, right?”
Insight
Mathilde Collin: Co-founders should split equity equally to prevent frustration
“And so I would recommend that to every founder, even the one that maybe will join a few months after. If you look at the beginning of the company, it seems like it makes a difference. Maybe someone is investing a little bit more money, more time is joining a b…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Front has always maintained net negative revenue churn
“But then our revenue churn has always been negative. Because we have a model where we have to lend and expand. Yeah, exactly. In new teams. And so that's always higher than the downsells.”
Assertion Contradicted
Collin: 100% of acquired email startups get shut down
“But also a hundred percent of those companies who have been acquired shut down.”
Prediction Not publicly verifiable
Collin: Front targets $10M ARR in 2017
“Yeah, and then ten million in, in 2017.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Front still holds 80% of Series A capital one year after raising
“We raised exactly a year ago and we still have 80% of what we've raised.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Front maintains a negative 10 percent monthly net revenue churn
“So we track net churn, and it's always been negative, and so it's remained negative and. How negative? Minus 10%.
Annually?
Monthly.”
Insight
Collin: Slack is for internal synchronous chat, Front for external communication
“Slack is good for synchronous communication. So I want to tell you, ah, do you want to have lunch with me? Then Slack is great, but Front is better for asynchronous communication. And asynchronous means every communication that you're having externally, so not…”
Disclosure
Collin: Series B will be the moment to take personal secondary liquidity
“Right now, I'm confident at least that we can do a series B. With, and I think that's probably the moment when I'll think about putting some money aside.”
Disclosure
Collin: Front delays Series B to test enterprise scalability despite inbound
“Yeah, no, I do have some inbound. I have a lot of inbound, but I think we can still do better, and so I'd rather wait till probably the end of the year and make more progress and prove more things. For example, enterprise is new for us, and so I want to see if…”
Insight
Collin: Press drives candidates and investors, but rarely drives new customers
“I think with press, people expect that they will have customers and people going to their website, et cetera. What we see is it triggers the interest of candidates and investors. That was, that's what press is good, at least for us.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Cisco uses Front across teams of hundreds of people
“We have so we have companies of two users, and then we have companies as big as Cisco using the product and so teams of hundreds of people.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Collin: Front can become default business email client within 10 years
“Our mission is to reinvent email for companies and to be the default business email client. It's very ambitious, and I think it would take a hundred years without funding to achieve that, and hopefully just 10 years with funding to achieve that.”
Disclosure
Collin: Front must always maintain several years of cash runway
“I think now it's my responsibility to always have a few years of runway. Otherwise I would not sleep well.”
Disclosure
Collin: Front has no marketing team and relies entirely on organic content
“So right now to be perfectly honest, we have no marketing team. So growth has been organic. So it's, I don't know if you've noticed, but I write personally a lot of content and that's how we acquire users.”
Disclosure
Collin: Front will aim for an IPO over an acquisition
“So first to make money for the investors, I think going public is a better bet. So we'll try to do that.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Fast core feature changes are Front's top churn driver
“And so number one would be people that dislikes how fast we've changed core features.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Front doubled headcount to 40 and tripled revenue in 11 months
“So I think, so we doubled the team. We're 40 now. We tripled our revenues.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Front sees 3.5 to 4 percent monthly customer logo churn
“We track user churn, and that's always been around three and a half, four percent. Monthly. So number of customers divided by, the churn divided by number of total customers.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Front operates at an 88 percent gross margin
“Yeah, 80 88.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Over one-third of Front's growth comes from existing account expansion
“I think over a third of our growth net of churn is coming from existing customers that have either new plans or just adding new teams.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: HubSpot expanded from one to 15 teams using Front
“HubSpot started with one team on front, their customer success team, and now they have about, I don't know, 14, 15 teams on front.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Collin: Historically, 95 percent of Front customers close within three weeks
“Historically, 95% of our customers close in three weeks.”
