Mathilde Collin. She’s the CEO of Front, a SaaS company working on redesigning email for teams. She started with Y Combinator in the summer of 2014, and today has 20 employees and 1700 customers.
Famous Five:
- Favorite Book? – Zero to One
- What CEO do you follow? – Patrick Collison
- Favorite online tool? — Slack
- How many hours of sleep do you get?— 8 and a half
- If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “People that are struggling should be super motivated because that’s what everyone go through”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
- 01:04 – Nathan introduces Mathilde to the show
- 01:33 – Mathilde was in Episode 413 of The Top
- 01:43 – Back then, they had 1200 customers, $13M raised, around a million in revenue in 2015
- 01:53 – An average customer pays 200 a month leading to an MRR of $240K
- 01:58 – Gross churn was 3%
- 02:10 – Front now has 40 team members
- 02:13 – “We tripled our revenue”
- 02:15 – The number of customers didn’t triple because they had bigger companies using Front
- 02:43 – Current MRR is around $750K
- 03:02 – Front still has 80% of what they’ve raised last year
- 03:13 – Total capital raised was $14M
- 03:45 – Front is burning $250K a month
- 03:50 – Mostly from head count
- 04:29 – Churn has always been low
- 04:35 – Net churn has always been negative which -10% monthly
- 04:50 – User churn is around 3.5 - 4%
- 05:04 – MRR churn is low
- 05:30 – The teams that are paying Front more per month tend to be very sticky
- 06:10 – Gross margin is 88%
- 06:22 – Front APP is the easiest way to manage a shared inbox as a team
- 06:29 – A sample of shared inbox is support@contact or a social media account
- 06:37 – Front simplifies everything in one place
- 06:54 – For Front’s growth, they lend it and extend it
- 07:00 – Net negative churn is coming from existing customers
- 07:04 – Existing customers have been upgraded to new plans or added teams
- 07:10 – HubSpot started with 1 team and now they have 13 teams with Front
- 07:26 – Front now has a marketing team with 3 people
- 07:35 – Front has now done more advertising and content
- 07:41 – The most effective for Front is AdWords
- 07:52 – Monthly CAC is around $15K
- 08:03 – Front tracks sales qualified leads
- 08:26 – It takes 7 trials to get 1 new paying customer
- 08:38 – After the trial, the customer will be categorized as an enterprise or SMB and mid-market companies
- 08:50 – The goal is for the sales people to get the trial set up
- 09:02 – The sales cycle is 3 weeks
- 09:20 – 95% of the customer is going through 3 weeks than the offered 2 weeks
- 09:26 – People are using Front than Slack because Slack is usually for before synchronous communication
- 09:34 – Front is for a synchronous communication
- 09:40 – A synchronous is every communication that is done externally should have an upfront
- 09:49 – Slack messages can also be distracting with the team
- 10:13 – Front competes more with Intercom than with Slack
- 10:25 – Intercom is usually better for customer communication while Front is for general communication
- 10:43 – Front is an email client
- 11:40 – Customers are buying Front to replace email
- 12:12 – Mathilde won’t sell Front now even for $95M
- 12:25 – “I think I will sell when I’m not as confident as today”
- 12:37 – Front makes Mathilde happy
- 13:04 – Mathilde is now 28
- 13:15 – Front was launched in early 2015
- 13:29 – Mathilde wanted people to be happy at work so she made Front
- 15:07 – Mathilde has always been happy and confident that they can do a series B
- 15:56 - “I do have some inbound”
- 16:30 – Mathilde was part of an article in Entrepreneur.com
- 19:10 – The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
- Growth can be measured by several different metrics—the important thing isn’t the metric, it’s the important thing is consistency.
- Stay with what makes you and other people happy.
- People love reliability—if you can deliver that in a product or service you’re on to something.
Resources Mentioned:
- The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
- GetLatka - Database of all B2B SaaS companies who have been on my show including their revenue, CAC, churn, ARPU and more
- Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
- Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
- Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
- Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
- Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives