Podcasts Business SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders 739: How Has She Has 3x'd Revenue to $700k MRR in Just 11 Months?

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

Published: Aug. 2, 2017, 9 a.m.

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Mathilde Collin. She\\u2019s 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? \\u2013 Zero to One
  • What CEO do you follow? \\u2013 Patrick Collison
  • Favorite online tool? \\u2014 Slack
  • How many hours of sleep do you get?\\u2014 8 and a half
  • If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? \\u2013 \\u201cPeople that are struggling should be super motivated because that\\u2019s what everyone go through\\u201d

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Time Stamped Show Notes:

  • 01:04 \\u2013 Nathan introduces Mathilde to the show
  • 01:33 \\u2013 Mathilde was in Episode 413 of The Top
    • 01:43 \\u2013 Back then, they had 1200 customers, $13M raised, around a million in revenue in 2015
    • 01:53 \\u2013 An average customer pays 200 a month leading to an MRR of $240K
    • 01:58 \\u2013 Gross churn was 3%
  • 02:10 \\u2013 Front now has 40 team members
  • 02:13 \\u2013 \\u201cWe tripled our revenue\\u201d
  • 02:15 \\u2013 The number of customers didn\\u2019t triple because they had bigger companies using Front
  • 02:43 \\u2013 Current MRR is around $750K
  • 03:02 \\u2013 Front still has 80% of what they\\u2019ve raised last year
    • 03:13 \\u2013 Total capital raised was $14M
  • 03:45 \\u2013 Front is burning $250K a month
    • 03:50 \\u2013 Mostly from head count
  • 04:29 \\u2013 Churn has always been low
    • 04:35 \\u2013 Net churn has always been negative which -10% monthly
    • 04:50 \\u2013 User churn is around 3.5 - 4%
    • 05:04 \\u2013 MRR churn is low
  • 05:30 \\u2013 The teams that are paying Front more per month tend to be very sticky
  • 06:10 \\u2013 Gross margin is 88%
  • 06:22 \\u2013 Front APP is the easiest way to manage a shared inbox as a team
    • 06:29 \\u2013 A sample of shared inbox is support@contact or a social media account
    • 06:37 \\u2013 Front simplifies everything in one place
  • 06:54 \\u2013 For Front\\u2019s growth, they lend it and extend it
    • 07:00 \\u2013 Net negative churn is coming from existing customers
    • 07:04 \\u2013 Existing customers have been upgraded to new plans or added teams
    • 07:10 \\u2013 HubSpot started with 1 team and now they have 13 teams with Front
    • 07:26 \\u2013 Front now has a marketing team with 3 people
    • 07:35 \\u2013 Front has now done more advertising and content
    • 07:41 \\u2013 The most effective for Front is AdWords
  • 07:52 \\u2013 Monthly CAC is around $15K
    • 08:03 \\u2013 Front tracks sales qualified leads
    • 08:26 \\u2013 It takes 7 trials to get 1 new paying customer
  • 08:38 \\u2013 After the trial, the customer will be categorized as an enterprise or SMB and mid-market companies
    • 08:50 \\u2013 The goal is for the sales people to get the trial set up
    • 09:02 \\u2013 The sales cycle is 3 weeks
    • 09:20 \\u2013 95% of the customer is going through 3 weeks than the offered 2 weeks
  • 09:26 \\u2013 People are using Front than Slack because Slack is usually for before synchronous communication
    • 09:34 \\u2013 Front is for a synchronous communication
    • 09:40 \\u2013 A synchronous is every communication that is done externally should have an upfront
    • 09:49 \\u2013 Slack messages can also be distracting with the team
  • 10:13 \\u2013 Front competes more with Intercom than with Slack
  • 10:25 \\u2013 Intercom is usually better for customer communication while Front is for general communication
  • 10:43 \\u2013 Front is an email client
  • 11:40 \\u2013 Customers are buying Front to replace email
  • 12:12 \\u2013 Mathilde won\\u2019t sell Front now even for $95M
    • 12:25 \\u2013 \\u201cI think I will sell when I\\u2019m not as confident as today\\u201d
    • 12:37 \\u2013 Front makes Mathilde happy
  • 13:04 \\u2013 Mathilde is now 28
  • 13:15 \\u2013 Front was launched in early 2015
  • 13:29 \\u2013 Mathilde wanted people to be happy at work so she made Front
  • 15:07 \\u2013 Mathilde has always been happy and confident that they can do a series B
    • 15:56 - \\u201cI do have some inbound\\u201d
  • 16:30 \\u2013 Mathilde was part of an article in Entrepreneur.com
  • 19:10 \\u2013 The Famous Five

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3 Key Points:

  1. Growth can be measured by several different metrics\\u2014the important thing isn\\u2019t the metric, it\\u2019s the important thing is consistency.
  2. Stay with what makes you and other people happy.
  3. People love reliability\\u2014if you can deliver that in a product or service you\\u2019re on to something.

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Resources Mentioned:

  • The Top Inbox \\u2013 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 \\u2013 Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
  • Hotjar \\u2013 Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you\\u2019re 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 \\u2013 Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
  • Host Gator\\u2013 The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
  • Audible\\u2013 Nathan uses Audible when he\\u2019s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books

Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

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