Race to the Front of the Pack

French entrepreneur Mathilde Collin founded Front in 2013, just one year after graduating from University. In less than ten years, she has built the company to a $1.7 billion valuation.

She is a badass entrepreneur with a lot to teach us. Today, we are going to focus on how she built her network, created allies, and developed a reliable set of mentors to call upon.

Step one, execute. This gets overlooked in the world of networking. If you want a seat at the table, bring something to it.

She sold. She recruited. She built it in public.

Step two, raise capital. Sequoia, the bluest of blue chip VCs, led her series B. If you continue to grow and hit your numbers, it is a foregone conclusion that a great VC firm will follow on for a subsequent round, if needed.

This is where Mathilde mixed things up. For her Series C, she chose to bring on a ton of angel investors. This is a move you usually pull at a seed round or when you don’t have many options. But, Mathilde had vision.

She knew Front’s best customers were already using enterprise software systems. She also knew that there were entrepreneurs who could open doors for her, bring clarity to the market, and had capital to invest.

So, in her Series C, she raised money from Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes, Atlassian President Jay Simons, Okta cofounder Frederic Kerrest, Qualtrics co-founders Ryan Smith and Jared Smith, and Zoom CEO Eric Yuan.

Did this take more time and effort than going back to Sequoia and asking for a check to cover the whole round? Yes.

Is Front now integrated with all those major B2B Saas platforms (and many more)? Yes.

Get the right people in your corner. Give them some skin in the game and you’ll go further together.

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