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
- 11:46 – In other cases, Front replaces helpdesk solutions like Desk, Zendesk, Freshdesk, Help Scout, etc
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

739: How Has She Has 3x'd Revenue to $700k MRR in Just 11 Months?

SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders