Front founder: What should startups focus on after achieving product-market fit?
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Front founder: What should startups focus on after achieving product-market fit?
Company is important, but life is more important.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsTranslated by: TechFlow
Note: This article is part of the TechFlow series "YC Startup School Chinese Notes" (updated daily), dedicated to collecting and organizing Chinese translations of YC courses. The nineteenth installment features Mathilde Collin, founder of Front, and her online course titled "After PMF: People, Customers, Sales."
*TechFlow Note: PMF (Product-Market Fit) refers to the degree of alignment between a product or service and the market demand it targets. PMF is a critical concept because it indicates whether a product or service is successful and commercially viable. Typically, PMF is measured through feedback and data from early adopters. If a product meets the needs of its target users and receives positive responses, it is said to have achieved PMF. Conversely, if it fails to meet user needs or gain traction, the product strategy must be reevaluated and adjusted.
After PMF refers to the phase following the achievement of product-market fit. During this stage, companies must ensure their product continues to meet user needs and deeply explore business opportunities while optimizing features based on a comprehensive understanding of the market and customer demands.
Introduction to Front
Front is a software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company offers a collaborative inbox platform designed for team communication and coordination. This platform allows team members to share email inboxes and centrally manage and respond to messages from various channels, including emails, social media, and customer support tools. Mathilde Collin is one of the co-founders of Front. She founded the company with Laurent Perrin in 2013, aiming to improve the efficiency of team collaboration and communication.
Transparency and Discipline
I always wanted to start a company, but I didn't have enough confidence to believe I could succeed. When I heard others say they would start a company, I longed to say the same, but I felt incapable. So I joined a startup working on contract management software. Although the job seemed boring at first, I found the world of software incredibly interesting and became passionate about it. Through my work, I realized we could build a product in just a few months that changes how people work and increases their productivity—and I found that deeply meaningful.
Our software actually changed people’s daily workflows, so when I spoke with users, they told me their lives had improved because of it. That gave me a strong sense of purpose, and it remains one of the most exciting things to me even today. However, the company culture was poor, which left me deeply dissatisfied. I believe as a founding team, you have a responsibility to create an environment where employees genuinely want to come to work.
Due to a lack of transparency and trust, I decided to leave after one year. That experience was one of the reasons I chose to start my own company. From my time there, I learned that transparency is one of the most effective ways to foster engagement and competence. If you want employees to feel the impact of their work, everything—from vision and goals to execution methods and progress—must be transparent. Everyone should know what's going on. This principle lies at the core of many successful companies.
For example, Paul mentioned Google’s culture, where everyone knows where they’re headed, feels passionate, and believes in the company’s vision. That shared emotion energizes the entire organization. Therefore, I believe it's crucial to share the vision, get your team to believe in it, and let them see how it’s being executed. Meanwhile, discipline matters more than vision or personal belief. It’s also one of the key reasons our company succeeded—we maintained focus and ensured everyone across the company understood that focus.
In the early days, we focused solely on building something people needed and tracking revenue closely to grow and achieve our goals. I sent daily emails to the team so everyone knew our revenue status and stayed aligned on priorities—this helped us stay disciplined and drive success.
Ultimately, I believe transparency and discipline are foundational to building a successful company. To make employees feel engaged and inspired, share the vision and show them how it’s being realized. Staying focused, ensuring everyone understands the company’s priorities, and maintaining discipline are essential to achieving success.
Luck in Entrepreneurship
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I was incredibly lucky to meet my co-founder. We met three months before founding the company and spent a lot of time having tough conversations—like what would happen if we had to fire each other or sell the company. Though we weren’t best friends, we aligned on most things, which gave us confidence to start the company together.
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I decided to leave my previous software job because I wanted to start a company in the email space. I knew I’d need funding, but I didn’t have a formal plan. When I found an angel investor willing to back us, I felt extremely fortunate.
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Starting a company is a huge risk, especially when all employees—and their families—give up their previous jobs and homes to join you.
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I met someone who later became my husband—he consistently encouraged me and made me believe I could do it.
Playing the CEO Role
Laurent Perrin is Front’s CTO, and he loves building products. Despite facing immense risks and challenges, and often disagreeing on things, we successfully launched the company.
In the early days as CEO, I handled nearly every role except engineering. Since I wasn’t an engineer, I took on roles as product manager, recruiter, sole marketer, sales rep, and support agent. My goal was to immerse myself in work I enjoyed and pass that enthusiasm to the team.
At first, I didn’t think to hire people to help me figure out things I didn’t understand. I only began hiring when I realized certain tasks could be done better by others. Before hiring anyone, I made sure to fully understand the role to avoid mistakes in the early stages.
In managing the company, I’ve always upheld high standards and valued transparency. I only hire people who are the best fit. Before bringing on new team members, I evaluate whether they align with our values and confirm the fit before extending an offer. To better understand market needs, I continuously engage with potential and existing customers to gather feedback—this has been one of the key drivers behind our early rapid growth.
I received a powerful piece of advice from CEO Patrick Collison: whenever you consider hiring someone, ask yourself if you’d want ten of them. Throughout interviews, I assess whether candidates align with our values and only hire those who are the best fit.
Pushing Yourself
Four years ago, when I came to YC, Kevin Hale approached me and asked what my company did. After I explained, he said our company was cool—and the coolest in that batch. Despite that, I often doubted myself and worried we didn’t have product-market fit. But I kept talking to potential and current customers to understand their needs and feedback. This allowed me to quickly learn about market demand and apply those insights to continuously improve our product.
I firmly believe that only by pushing yourself can you achieve success.
In the early days, I prioritized transparency because it boosts team engagement and shared purpose. I shared everything with the team—our runway, cash in the bank, board meeting notes—the full picture.
I met and spoke with nearly seven or eight people every day who had signed up for our product. This helped me rapidly gather insights into market needs and apply them to product improvements. Throughout this process, I stayed committed to transparency and constantly looked for new ways to truly meet customer needs.
Improving Trial-to-Paid Conversion
When we graduated from YC, we had 5,000 users, meaning around 130 companies were using our product. We hadn’t lost a single customer, so I frequently replayed our demo day video to reflect on my pitch—every new team member watched it too. One highlight was emphasizing that we’d never lost a single user. While we were proud of zero churn, unfortunately, our trial-to-paid conversion rate was very low. This was likely because the early version lacked key features the market needed. Over time, we added more features, gradually increased pricing, and adopted a freemium model charging $3 or $9 per user per month.
Publish Pricing Early
My advice is to publish your pricing early—even if you're not fully ready. You need to face market and customer feedback, and different people react differently. We gathered feedback in multiple ways: talking to users, publicly sharing our roadmap via Trailo, and sending quarterly emails to customers for input. We noticed freemium models exist, but without a clear plan to convert free users to paid ones, it can distract you. So we chose to gradually raise prices and add new features based on customer needs to boost conversion rates.
In sales, we've always emphasized honesty and precise positioning to ensure our product truly solves customer problems. We spend time understanding their workflows and needs—not just listing our features. We also encourage customers to contribute to the Trailo roadmap and send feedback requests to all customers every quarter.
Finally, it's important to recognize you won’t satisfy everyone. Focus on identifying your target market and use cases, and concentrate on solving those. By talking to potential and current customers, understanding their needs and feedback, and iterating accordingly, you can ultimately succeed.
Avoiding Product Drift
I believe the biggest danger isn’t churn—it’s letting your product drift in a direction you don’t want because you’re so focused on growing revenue that you blindly follow every customer request. This temptation is hard to resist, but we must ask thoughtful questions and listen carefully to feedback to truly understand customer needs and underlying problems. We should focus on serving our intended market and use cases, and present features appropriately—rather than chasing every customer demand.
As founders, we need good metrics and a solid product to grow. I’ve seen founders make excuses—saying they want to grow revenue, but then admitting they didn’t focus on it because they were rebuilding the website or doing something else. These are just excuses for lack of growth. They need to acknowledge their issues and use discipline to confront reality.
I recommend sending weekly emails to your team and monthly updates to investors to keep focus on key performance indicators. This is crucial—it helps maintain focus and alignment. At the same time, we must understand customer needs, but not at the cost of compromising our product vision.
Finally, we must acknowledge our problems and solve them—no excuses. Discipline and focus are essential to moving forward on the path to success.
The Company Matters, But Life Matters More
In December 2016, my co-founder was diagnosed with serious cancer. He underwent 18 months of treatment and has since recovered. This experience taught me that happiness and health are the most important things. While the company matters, life matters more. No matter what you do, while pursuing success, remember to prioritize your well-being and happiness.
I changed some personal and company practices, but I now share this belief with every new employee: happiness and health come first. We must never forget that.
I also started meditating and found it greatly beneficial. Every morning and before showering, I meditate for 10 minutes. It helps me stay calm and prevents work-related stress from overwhelming me.
Security and Privacy Issues
In enterprise sales, security and privacy are critical considerations. While we aren’t fully compliant yet, we’re actively working on these issues. We seek out companies willing to take on more risk and align with us. We conduct penetration testing to ensure our product is secure and share test results with potential customers.
However, we also clearly avoid certain industries or clients who might demand things beyond our capabilities. We must wisely balance and manage security and privacy concerns.
Advantages of Subscription Model
I believe the more users a product has, the greater the value each user derives. This is also how I see most competitors operate. Whether it’s health solutions or email products, most charge monthly or annually, billing each user individually.
The rise of subscription models seems justified—users benefit from them. If you need to raise prices, the best approach is to inform your users. I discussed this with a Federal Chair who advised me to be transparent: tell users prices will increase, even if the change happens much later. While users may be upset, it’s far better than surprising them with a sudden hike.
Another key to our success is offering both monthly and annual subscription options. We tell users that if they choose annual billing, they can lock in the current price for a year. It’s a win-win: customers pay less, and we retain them longer.
How to Set Sales Team Targets?
I can’t give a great answer on setting sales targets because I was the only one doing sales initially. Generally, a salesperson should generate revenue three to six times their salary. But this range doesn’t apply universally—if a rep brings in less than their salary, that’s a problem. The best approach is to build trust with your first sales rep and reassess targets monthly.
Using Tools to Improve User Conversion
To identify bounced users, tools like Clearbit can be helpful. But we focus more on users who sign up but never convert—they showed interest. Our website’s conversion rate may only be 3%, meaning there are many potential customers we’re missing and not paying attention to.
To test willingness to pay, we implemented Stripe early. When users sign up, we send an automated email asking if they’d like to purchase. I think this is a smart tactic—it shows us what people are willing to pay for our product, even if not money.
Content Marketing
Marketing has also been vital for us. Since I’m building an email product, I wrote all blog posts related to email—like what Slack says, or speculative topics like what email will look like in 20 years. Content marketing was especially powerful in our early days. I’m not sure how scalable it is long-term, but it definitely helped us acquire signups and attracted our first 3,000 private beta users.
How to Adjust Pricing Based on New Feature or Customer-Requested Features?
New features are often excellent sales tools. So I’m usually happy to launch new features under a new pricing tier, letting users try them for 30 days, after which they’ll pay double per user.
Two years ago, we took action on this. I wrote a blog post about it. We built a backend system that lets us iterate pricing strategies very quickly. If tomorrow I want to move a feature from enterprise to premium, I can easily do it. And new pricing doesn’t affect existing users—so it’s a great method. Just review your team’s input to decide where each feature fits best.
How to Decide What to Build?
I believe email is a major problem worth solving, so we needed a way to enter the market. Shared email addresses offered that entry point.
It’s easier to build, people are willing to pay for it, and it enables lightweight deployment within an organization—meaning not the entire company needs to adopt Front upfront. When I worked at that company, I noticed a pain point: we had all these support@ and sales@ addresses, and people kept asking me, “Did you reply to that email?” I’d say, “Yes, do you want me to CC you on every reply?” So I saw this as a perfect entry point.
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