20VC: Front's Mathilde Collin on Why Discipline Is More Important Than Vision, The Right Way To Approach Investor Updates and Director Reports & How To Effectively Structure 1-1s

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The Twenty Minute VC

Finance, Venturecapital, Tech News, News, Siliconvalley, Technology, Investing, Startups, Business

4.4 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2019

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mathilde Collin is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Front, reinventing the email inbox with new workflows and efficient collaboration so people can accomplish more together. To date, Mathilde has raised over $79m in VC funding with Front from some of the best in the business including Bryan Schreier @ Sequoia, Initialized, Uncork Capital, Boldstart and individuals including Andrew Chen, Elad Gil, Ray Tonsing the list goes on. With 4,500+ customers, and 100+ employees, in Paris, San Francisco and Amsterdam, Front is one of the fastest growing companies in SaaS and Mathilde has become a thought leader for the next generation of SaaS CEOs, read more on her blog here.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Mathilde made her way from product manager in Paris to founding one of the hottest and fastest growing companies in the world of SaaS in the form of Front?

2.) What does Mathilde mean when she says, "I would choose discipline over vision any day of the week"? What does discipline really mean to Mathilde? Why is it a priority in the early days? How can a VC stress test and determine the level of discipline a founder has in first meetings? What are the signs or leading indicators?

3.) Communications:

Investor Updates: What is Mathilde's biggest advice to founders when it comes to investor updates? What should they contain? How often should they go out? How should founders ask for help in updates? Where do founders often make mistakes?
Revenue Updates: Why does Mathilde do revenue updates with the team? Is there a danger of being too transparent? What are the benefits of this transparency? What is the structure of the update? Who is privy to it?
Direct Reports: How does Mathilde communicate with her direct reports? Why does Mathilde believe that CEOs should have their calendar public? What is the right cadence for these direct reports?

4.) How does Mathilde approach and think about fundraises with Front today? How can founders know when is the right time to raise? How does Mathilde think about building relationships with investors when she is not raising? How transparent should founders be when they are not raising? What are Mathilde tips for always overshooting her numbers? How does Mathilde conduct DD on potential investors in the company?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Mathilde’s Fave Book: The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mathilde on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I would love to hear your thoughts
0:03.8	and feedback on how we can make the show better for you, and you can do that on Instagram at
0:07.9	H. Stebbings, 1996 with 2Bs. I answer all messages there personally, but to the show today,
0:13.2	and a figure who is fast becoming a thought leader for leadership skills and tactics for the next
0:17.7	generation of CEOs, her writing is always a must-read for me, and so with that,
0:21.9	I'm thrilled to welcome back to the hot seat today, Matilde Collin, found and CEO at Front,
0:26.7	reinventing the email inbox with new workflows and efficient collaboration so people can
0:31.3	accomplish more together. To date, Matild's raised over $79 million in VC funding with Front,
0:36.7	from some of the best in the business,
0:38.3	including Brian Shrier at Sequoia, Initialized Uncork, Bold Start, and individuals including
0:43.5	Andrew Chen, Elad Gill and Ray Toncing, just to name a few. Today, with over 4,500,000 customers
0:49.3	and 100 plus employees in Paris, San Francisco and Amsterdam. Front is one of the fastest growing companies
0:54.7	in SaaS. And again, I urge you, Matild's writing is a must read, and links can be found on the 20-minute
0:59.9	VC.com. But before we dive into our episode to stay with Matild, any VCs listening? Yep. Well,
1:05.5	check out Crunch Dex. Crunch Dex is the first company signal database on the market. It allows you to
1:10.7	discover the world's fastest growing tech companies before anyone else.
1:14.3	Check this out.
1:14.9	CrunchDeck launched only two months ago, yet it's already used by world leading investors
1:19.1	who collectively manage over $8 billion worth of assets.
1:22.4	So if you want to stay ahead of the curve, check it out at crunchdex.com.
1:26.1	A lot of what we do on the 20 minute VC is discuss
1:28.3	scaling businesses, talk to experts, pick the brains of founders and investors who tell us about
	...

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