
Front (YC S14) Raises $66M - julien_c
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/24/front-raises-66-million-to-replace-microsoft-outlook/
======
mathouc
I’m Mathilde, CEO and co-founder of Front. To give more context about our
shared inbox, we started by trying to solve the pain points around responding
together to group emails like contact@ info@. Email isn’t collaborative; it’s
unclear who is supposed to respond to a group email, forwarding/reply all/CCs
are messy, and you can’t even internally discussion an email in the inbox.
But, it’s still the main communication tool for businesses, so that’s why
we’re tackling the team email inbox problem first.

We expanded Front for multi-channel use (live chat, SMS, Facebook, Twitter)
because even more teams (customer support, success, operations, marketing,
etc) need a centralized communication tool that brings all their emails,
channels, apps, messages into one place. It’s been interesting to see the many
new use cases that we now support as a result of this change.

Ultimately, our longer term vision for Front is to create a platform that
helps to break down the silos between teams that are using various specialized
tools/apps and make collaboration easier within an entire company. And I think
we can use the inbox to be that central platform. But, we’ve got a long way to
get there and things to consider over time (like our pricing). You can see our
public roadmap on Trello
([http://frontapp.com/roadmap](http://frontapp.com/roadmap)) and submit your
ideas to help us get there.

I wrote some thoughts on my vision on Medium if you’re interested:
[https://medium.com/@collinmathilde/to-new-beginnings-
announc...](https://medium.com/@collinmathilde/to-new-beginnings-announcing-
our-series-b-fcbc3392dc81)

~~~
robhunter
Front is probably the most valuable SaaS tool our team has.

When I told our CS team about the Series B, they said “Good. They deserve it.
We would cry without it.”

Front was transformational for our CS department and I would highly recommend
it to everyone.

------
crsv
Best of luck to them. Written communication and digital communication in
general is a wide open market. I think the Slacks, Discords, Gsuites of the
world will all be players in this market. Cracking large enterprise will be
where the money is made, but you can't help but wonder if the growing vastness
of service providers will introduce a certain race to the bottom effect. At a
66MM raise, they're probably valued somewhere around 350~450MM, so they'd need
to roll in 115M ARR to be worthy of a 4X topline multiple of that valuation.
That's a lot of growth required in a hyper competitive saturated market with a
super dominant player that's not exactly planning to stop fighting.
Interesting bet to take.

------
madenine
Yikes. At ~60/u/mo for enterprise email & collaboration I would drop the
"Replace Microsoft Outlook" line... unless you want people to start looking at
what else they get beyond Outlook/Skype for Business from Microsoft for
$20-$35/u/mo (E3 or E5 O365 license).

~~~
unabst
They are expensive, and we'd be paying already had they been closer to 10
mo/user. But it seems they're going the customer service tool route, and this
is a pain point businesses are willing to pay for. In this area I'd say their
#1 rival is zendesk, which does a better job of justifying their pricing on
their site (which had me return to Front for what they do better).

But Front won't be replacing anyone's free web mail at any price point. I
can't believe they don't have a free plan.

~~~
plehoux
I'm the co-founder at Missive[1], an email client for teams. Our vision is to
become the communication hub for any business, by both replacing email client
and chat app.

A lot of people compares us to Front, but we are more focused on the
email/chat experience than customer support experience.

Thus our pricing reflects this vision, where we charge ~$8-$12/seat/month.

[1] [https://missiveapp.com/](https://missiveapp.com/)

~~~
unabst
If you had said you were replacing outlook, I'd be less surprised. You seem
more email focused.

Front's front page slogan is "The shared inbox for teams." I'm always puzzled
when they attack modern email in their PR. They should just stick to
"universal team inbox".

When I see missive, I see "team email with chat." Well, we chat on Discord
already, so that's not the pain point.

Front's main appeal to me at least was their multi-channel inbox. Customer
support these days is not just email but social media and even texting. It can
all be done through email, and even that can all be done through gmail, which
is what we're doing now, and what I suspect a lot of people are doing.

But removing inefficiencies in this day to day process immediately cuts costs
when you're paying people for this work. Hence zendesk and their no free plan
position, except, they're not multi-channel, and I was never impressed by them
being on the customer end of a zendesk using company. I'd always think
"crutch" when I saw an email from a business that didn't bother to re-brand
their zendesk (assuming it's possible, if not, I guess they did well for
themselves and my impressions were unimportant).

PS. Your logo reminds me of men's underwear. I thought twice about mentioning
it, and I know others would too. Not that I'd hold it against you, but (I do
logo design, is my excuse for mentioning it).

~~~
plehoux
> When I see missive, I see "team email with chat." Well, we chat on Discord
> already, so that's not the pain point.

Pain point here is when you start to have those internal conversations spread
across many silos.

There is beauty and simplicity to manage all your conversations whether email,
chat or mixed of both in a one convenient place.

> PS. Your logo reminds me of men's underwear.

Firs time I hear that one. :)

~~~
unabst
> email, chat or mixed of both in a one convenient place.

No, exactly. But you are always at risk of being just another channel. So you
need to beat the rest. Or be above them. Or at least consolidate a few.

Front does a better job of marketing themselves as such (not the outlook
argument, their inbox argument).

If you could pull in "channels" or have an open API for adding custom channels
where users can participate in helping build your catalog, I think that would
help.

The beauty of discord is with webhooks. Slack has "integrations" but they
needed 1st party support. And I'd use Zapier to bridge the gaps. But most API
sets have webhook support. And Discord allows for postings via webhooks. So I
have a simple REST webhook processor page that takes incoming webhooks and
posts to discord and everything else.

Not that webhooks are your answer, but just an example of a common chat app
setup with a drastically better/easier feature set than their major
competition.

> Firs time I hear that one. :)

It's the combination of white and the curves. Reminds me of boxer briefs every
time. An easy fix would be to sharpen the rounded corners, but it's none of my
business.

Either way, I have nothing but respect for you and your business. I wish you
only the best ;)

------
codezero
I’ve used front at Heap for about three years.

I’ve been extremely happy with their direction over the years. It started as a
seemingly simple shared inbox. What attracted me also was the hot key setup
was the same as gmail. This made switching from a rather hardcore gmail config
to Front really easy.

At the time I predicted we’d outgrow it when we hit 10 people but we haven’t
yet and the thing that will likely cause us to outgrow it are our customers.

The main thing that Front is missing for me, and it’s ok if they don’t service
my specific needs, is a lack of ability to easily automate things based on
information in either: our webapp, or our salesforce accounts/opportunities.

Being able to route conversations automatically based on external stuff we
don’t have in front yet is becoming essential.

In fairness, if we had the resources we could implement a lot of this
ourselves with their API, so it’s not even a very strong complaint against
front.

The app is electron I believe, but it’s bloody fast. I care about my teams
productivity and happiness a lot more than bells and whistles and Front is a
pleasure to use day in and day out. I’ve sent something like 30000 emails in
the past three years with Front (I know because Front also provides decent
analytics!) and have never been frustrated because of Front. The same was not
true for Zendesk, Desk, Helpscout, etc...

~~~
ericcholis
Thanks for this high-level overview. I'm evaluating Front vs similar apps in
the space. I think the big value add for Front is that it augments service
related email, whereas the others like Zendesk replaces it.

~~~
codezero
If you want to chat more about this let me know.

------
strictnein
To misquote The Princess Bride:

> You fell victim to one of the classic blunders - the most famous of which is
> "never go head to head with Microsoft Outlook"

~~~
imglorp
I think the key there is not outlook but all its friends that get dragged
along like cobwebs. First there's Exchange, then AD, then the whole CALs
thing, then you need spam and malware filtering, then there's archiving and
backups, and don't even talk about client compatibility and upgrading all the
desktops and _THEIR_ licenses. Or you skip all that and pay the other hand
with 365 seats.

So it's not just Outlook, because it's designed to be not just Outlook.

------
kylecordes
We use this product, and it is excellent. It is currently a collaborative team
inbox with multichannel capability. Each person here who communicates with the
outside world the company's behalf, can log into one place, and jointly be
responsible for an incoming flow (and conversations) of email plus various
social channels. (Plus website "chat", although that has some rough edges for
now.) It also doesn't do a great job of handling people's individual email,
and it will be nice to have individual email more fully integrated with the
collaborative team in box concept.

But.

From the amount of the raise and the interview comments, it sounds like the
product is headed elsewhere. Like it might loose focus on collaborative team
and box features, and instead grow into (yet another) general purpose well-
implemented email application, which then gets bought by one of the larger
companies, then shut down, and then 10% of the features reappear a year later
in the larger company's product. This would be a great outcome for the Front
team, but not for Front customers.

(For those here that are questioning the price, the price isn't bad
considering it typically would apply only to the smaller set of people in the
company handling customer facing email, and it provides a bunch of value for
that use.)

~~~
x0x0
I learned about Front from this thread and I'm going to try it this week.
Shared inboxes are a giant pita. Hopefully Front don't get distracted.

~~~
mathouc
We won't I promise.

------
Cenk
We used Front at Wheelys (YC S15), and I consider it absolutely essential for
good email teamwork. Definitely 10x’d our email and support productivity.
Congrats on raising such a huge round, Mathilde!

I just wish they had the front.com domain, everyone around the office always
called the product "Front App" because their domain is frontapp.com

~~~
watty
Your email and support productivity was increased 10x, really?

~~~
Cenk
Definitely. Replying to emails as a team, handing off customers, reviewing
contracts, all sorts of team discussions - it was happening all over the place
before, and giving us a central place to go where conversations about an email
thread can take place right underneath the thread was fantastic. You go from
getting a reply from your boss about an email to actually sending that info to
the customer in a matter of seconds.

~~~
vm
What does the customer see when you reply from Front? e.g. your individual
email (youremail@company.com) or a team email (sales@company.com)

Sorry for the basic question -- I couldn't tell from the demo video and the
free trial takes some setup. Trying to figure out if this fits existing
workflows or would need new workflows to be built around it. Thanks for your
help!

~~~
Cenk
Both is possible. You set up separate mailboxes (either team-wide or private)
for specific email addresses, and by default you reply from the address they
wrote to.

------
CPLX
Does anyone have feedback on the product itself?

I'm an old person, and still use Outlook for Mac as my main email program,
though I keep webmail (Google Apps) open at all times for searching mail.

I'm still a hardcore believer in standalone desktop apps for email, and I'm
not particularly excited about Outlook, and I have a busy office full of
people, so this is interesting.

Is it any good? Who is it ideal for?

~~~
qubex
I’m not an aged codger but beyond that I agree with you wholeheartedly: I
_expect_ , nay _demand_ , desktop and mobile native applications for email in
particular, and just about anything in general. All this “go through a
browser” stuff with its lack of locata storage, overlaid interfaces (browser
chrome above web-designer's UI), and muli-tasking metaphor breaking (switch
between apps to go to browser, and then select the tab you want) drives me
insane. Yes, it's a uniform platform and it _needs_ to exist in case somebody
wants to access through the web, but they shouldn't be forced to use only the
web-interface.

------
Analemma_
You can’t just “replace Outlook”, you need to replace Office 365, which is a
much steeper hill to climb.

~~~
longerthoughts
I was thinking this as well. If they're fully focused on email right now their
best case outcomes are getting acquired by somebody who offers a full suite
(email, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.), or using email as their proof of
concept to raise more money and expand their offerings.

------
ssaunier_
We have been using Front since 2014 at Le Wagon. The goal was to be able to
handle our contact@lewagon.com inbound email as a team (3 seats in 2014, 7
now). I considered Zendesk but it felt a bit too overkill for our usage.

You can view Front as a shared Gmail Inbox where you can assign messages to
teammates and have private discussions on top of email threads.

They recently added Front Chat which we used to replace the Intercom Chat on
[https://www.lewagon.com](https://www.lewagon.com) \- This way the team only
uses one tool (Front) to handle incoming chats or emails.

We've been a customers for 3+ years and are really happy! Congrats on the
Series B!

------
newman8r
people seemed lukewarm on the original ShowHN
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7869726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7869726))
- I guess the lesson is to not get too discouraged if initial feedback on a
project isn't as amazing as hoped

------
TheRealDunkirk
Heh. I hope they can make a dent. I was driving my son somewhere, and pulled
up to a light on the left side of a police cruiser. In it, there was a laptop
mounted high in the passenger area, and the officer was clicking on Outlook.
This caused me to launch into a several-minute-long tirade about how awful the
interface is. Buttons EVERYwhere. DOZENS of pages of options. USELESS search.
I'm content with Mail on my MacBook, but Outlook on my work lap-concrete-block
is a daily bane.

Front's product looks heavenly. My guess is that if one of these sorts of
startups starts making any serious inroads against Microsoft, they'll release
an "Outlook Lite" to stifle the threat. Of course, this simplified version
will support plugins, and the world will wind up making enough "mods" to make
Outlook "Lite" just as heavy as the original. (Just like what's happening with
VS Code.) But it will be enough to hamper serious competition.

And, if they do, then we'll have months of posts on here about how Microsoft
is "new," and "adaptive," and "enlightened," etc., et. al., ad nauseam.

~~~
jbob2000
They already have "Outlook lite", it's called the Outlook Web App and it has
what you want.

I don't think Microsoft would be threatened by this at all. Nobody chooses to
use Outlook, it's what you get if you work for a big corporation or if you
purchase Office 365. It's not a standalone product, I can't just use Outlook.

I think it's not doing Front any favours to compare themselves to Outlook.
Outlook is an enterprise product, my company has customized the crap out of it
and it's hooked up to our global credential/access system. That's not even
close to what Front is offering (a better multi-inbox tool).

~~~
rubidium
Seconding the outlook web interface. It's not perfect, but it's pretty dang
good. That plus all else you get with office 365 and I don't think anyone is
going to put a serious dent in Microsoft's enterprise office dominance for
quite some time.

------
agopaul
It seems they're seeing their customer adopting Front for more than a "simple"
shared inbox and so they're grasping the opportunity to expand the scope of
the product and reach its untapped potential as a "communication hub" for
companies. Good for them.

Even though this is David vs Goliath kind of situation, it's more than fair to
give it a shot

------
debt
It's crazy how far we've come but things like email/voice/video conferencing
somehow are still so essential yet completely broken.

But then have we come that far if those things are still broken? idk but good
job Front!

~~~
curiousDog
I wouldn't say they're broken, they're bloated. When you build something that
has to fit the multitude of Fortune 500 requirements, localize to 200
countries, you'll end up with a lot of complexity that is unnecessary to most
users.

------
orliesaurus
I remember this product from the early inception. If anyone was in London back
in 2014 - Front was even pitched at the Don't Pitch Me Bro event. Having used
Front in the early days it was a breath of fresh air. Being able to handle
support/sales inboxes, as a team, like a boss! I haven't used Front since
2015, but I wish the best of luck to everyone involved - not sure about that
replace Outlook, more like get acquired by a big co that works in support-
first with heavy email workflows. (zendesk and all the alternatives used by
big telcos etc )

------
jonwachob91
Possible acquisition spree coming soon...

Polymail, MailTime, Slidemail, Taskpipes, and maybe a few other YC companies
look like they have email technology that could help replace Outlook. Any
others?

~~~
ProAm
Im surprised at the push to overturn Outlook. For business it's useful and has
a lot of features that dont cause issue. If anything I could see more
opportunity to replace Gmail.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Indeed. I use the latest version of Outlook at a large enterprise, and I
prefer it to Slack and Gmail UX.

------
horsecaptin
Front's current scope and future scope are going to have a big fight and
destroy the company.

------
cleeus
So they want to build seamless interop with MS Exchange including all calendar
features, oh and compat with that plugin the workers' council really needs?
... let the investor money burn ...

~~~
john_moscow
They are likely betting on non-technical methods of getting acquired by
Microsoft at a premium.

------
0xffff2
Does it have calendar functionality? Outlook is at least as much a calendar
application as it is an email application for me.

I don't see any evidence of calendars in the article's screenshots.

------
kwindla
We use Front and it's great. Mathilde Collin is a super-impressive founder.
She spoke at one of the Tuesday night dinners when we were in YC.

------
ramoq
Front is probably doing 7MM ARR (I highly doubt more than that)

~~~
austenallred
...what is this estimate based on?

~~~
zbruhnke
I'm not the original poster of this but its both possible and (probably)
unlikely - Article says they have 2500 customers - so if their average price
per user was $25 and their average customer had 10 users that would be ~7.5MM
ARR - this is obviously just some back of the napkin math

------
fs111
Why do they raise so much money if they do not need it?

~~~
tommoor
The best time to raise money is when you don't NEED it ;)

------
chewyland
Sorry for my low quality post but Outlook is just fine. It's crappy, crashy
and bloated...but it's just fine.

This outfit and app won't exist 365 days from now, I guarantee it.

~~~
gcbw2
This comment highlights the problem they will have to solve.

People who want to replace outlook, already did. ages ago. They have slack,
jira, jive, gmail, etc, etc, etc, etc.

People who won't replace outlook, won't replace outlook.

------
iamleppert
Can it even dye my eyes to match my gown? Jolly good e-mail client!

------
dingo_bat
Android app screenshot looks very similar to Outlook. The main problem with
Outlook is the desktop app. Everything else is good enough for me.

