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 11s

In this episode of 20 Minutes VC, Harry Stebbings interviews Matilde Collin, the CEO of Front, a company revolutionizing email inboxes for better collaboration and efficiency. Matilde, having raised over $79 million in funding, discusses the importance of discipline over vision for founders, the value of internal and investor communication, and the significance of maintaining work-life balance. She emphasizes transparency within her company and the impact of regular updates and check-ins on employee engagement. Additionally, Matilde shares her fundraising strategy, focusing on building relationships with investors and the timing of raising capital. Her approach to scaling involves a disciplined, consistent growth mindset, and she advises founders on investor relations and the challenges of scaling a SaaS company.

• Harry Stebbings introduces the episode and his guest, Matilde Collin, founder and CEO of Front.
• Matilde Collin is recognized as an emerging thought leader in leadership skills and tactics for new CEOs.
• Front is a company that reinvents the email inbox to enhance workflows and collaboration, having raised $79 million in VC funding.
• The company has over 4,500 customers and more than 100 employees across Paris, San Francisco, and Amsterdam.
• Harry recommends Matilde's writing, which can be found at twentyminutevc.com.

"And so with that, I'm thrilled to welcome back to the hot seat today, Matilde Collin, founder and CEO at front, reinventing the email inbox with new workflows and efficient collaboration so people can accomplish more together."

The quote introduces Matilde Collin and her company, Front, highlighting the innovation in email collaboration and the company's growth and success.

• Crunchdex is a new company signal database for discovering fast-growing tech companies.
• Stripe provides resources for starting, running, and scaling technology companies, with guides written by experts.
• Harry's favorite guide from Stripe is about scaling engineering organizations.

"Crunchdex is the first company signal database on the market. It allows you to discover the world's fastest growing tech companies before anyone else."

The quote explains the purpose of Crunchdex, emphasizing its value for investors seeking to identify rapidly growing tech companies early.

• Intercom has developed messaging-first products to help businesses grow across the customer lifecycle.
• Intercom is used by leading companies, with 84% of Y Combinator companies using their messaging or live chat tool.
• Intercom serves over 30,000 customers, including both large and small companies.

"Intercom offers a new and better way to acquire, engage and retain customers."

The quote summarizes Intercom's mission to provide businesses with innovative tools for customer interaction and growth.

• Matilde started Front with the goal of creating a happy workplace for herself and others.
• She met her co-founder in Paris and moved to San Francisco due to most of their customers being there.
• The move to San Francisco was gradual, starting with a three-month program at Y Combinator.
• The decision to move was collaborative, making it an easier transition.

"I wanted to create a place where I would be happy to come to work every day and hopefully other people would be happy to come to work every day."

The quote reveals Matilde's foundational motivation for starting her company, Front, centered on workplace happiness and satisfaction.

• Matilde values discipline over having a grand vision from the beginning.
• She believes that operating in a potentially huge market allows time to develop a grand vision.
• Consistency in execution is seen as key to success, which she attributes to discipline.
• Matilde suggests VCs should assess a founder's ability to execute on their vision rather than the vision itself.

"I believe that success will happen only if you're consistent. I've not found any other way to be consistent than a ton of discipline."

The quote emphasizes Matilde's belief that consistent execution, driven by discipline, is crucial for startup success.

• Matilde discusses the challenge of assessing discipline in entrepreneurs and hires.
• She observes that founders who send investor updates regularly and in the same format tend to make more progress.
• Discipline may manifest differently across various roles within a company.

"One thing that I found very interesting as an entrepreneur is I started investing in startups maybe two years ago. As I was doing that, I started receiving inventory updates, and I quickly noticed that the entrepreneurs who were sending the updates in the same format at the same time of the whatever month, week, or quarter, were people that were making more progress than the people that would ch"

The quote illustrates Matilde's personal observation that discipline in communication correlates with entrepreneurial progress.

• Discipline varies across roles and is assessed by observing specific behaviors.
• For founders, discipline can be seen in the consistency and transparency of investor updates.
• In sales, discipline is reflected in pipeline management and the use of sales tools.
• Product discipline involves the process of writing specs, communicating about them, and tracking results.
• Soft signals in meetings, such as answering questions directly, can indicate a person's discipline.

"Now, for sales, I think there is a ton of discipline around pipeline management and the tools you use and how you use them. For product, I think there is a ton of discipline around how to write sex and how do you communicate about them and how do you track results."

The quote emphasizes the importance of discipline in sales through pipeline management and utilization of tools, and in product development through specification writing, communication, and result tracking.

• Founders should select consistent metrics to track and be transparent about their growth.
• Monthly updates are recommended, as weekly is too frequent and quarterly is too infrequent.
• Founders should make precise requests for assistance from investors, providing specific names and companies for better engagement.

"So pick a metric and make sure it grows, and have no excuse for this metric not to grow. And if it doesn't grow, just be very transparent about the fact that it's not growing and just show what you're doing in order for this metric to grow."

This quote advises founders to stick with a chosen metric for growth, remain accountable, and be transparent with investors about the status and efforts to improve that metric.

• Company-wide communication includes weekly emails and all-hands meetings to keep everyone informed.
• Direct reports receive weekly emails outlining the leader's priorities, which helps guide their focus.
• One-on-one meetings are used to address work and personal happiness, with structured questions sent in advance.

"So 10:00 a.m. Every Monday morning they receive an email explaining what my priorities for the week are. Because usually their priorities are somewhat correlated with my priorities."

The quote describes a practice of aligning the team's priorities with those of the leader through weekly emails, ensuring everyone is focused on the most important tasks.

• One-on-ones are a key tool for building a great culture and are divided into weekly work-related and monthly happiness-focused meetings.
• Monthly one-on-ones include pre-meeting questions about happiness, challenges, and feedback, which must be answered in advance.
• These meetings help in understanding employee engagement and identifying common issues across the team.

"And what I found is I think it's really great for me because I learn a lot and I have the peace of mind that every month we'll be able to talk about how you're feeling at work."

The quote highlights the value of monthly one-on-one meetings for both the leader and the employees, as they facilitate open communication about job satisfaction and concerns.

• Weekly revenue updates during all-hands meetings provide transparency and focus on key performance indicators.
• Sharing the context for revenue growth or shortfalls helps employees understand the business's current state and not panic.
• Transparency is a core value, but it can be challenging to maintain, especially when sharing bad news.

"And I think sometimes it's hard to do them because sometimes you are not hitting your goals. And every single week you are saying, okay, we've not done our goal again last week, but I think that's the only way for people to work on the exact right things."

The quote underlines the difficulty of consistently sharing revenue updates, especially when goals are not met, but stresses the importance of doing so to keep the team focused and informed.

• Transparency is a fundamental value but challenging to practice, particularly in sharing negative updates.
• Trust in the company, rather than constant good news, drives employee engagement.
• Employees should be aware of both successes and challenges to direct their efforts effectively.

"But what I found is people in the team will be engaged because they trust the company, and that's why they will work hard."

This quote asserts that the key to employee engagement lies in the trust built through transparency, rather than merely presenting positive news.

• Scaling transparency and trust is not perceived as difficult by Speaker B if there is discipline.
• Regular communication outlets such as WIP (Work In Progress) emails and dashboards are used.
• Monthly data sharing and quarterly board decks are sent to everyone.
• As the company scales, methods evolve to maintain transparency.
• Anonymous Q&A sessions during all-hands meetings were introduced to adapt to growth.

"I'm not constantly thinking, how am I going to scale this transparency and or what additional information can I share?"

This quote emphasizes that Speaker B doesn't find it challenging to maintain transparency as the company grows because of the structured communication processes already in place.

• The difficulty of scaling increases as the company grows.
• Early growth requires significantly less compared to later stages where doubling or tripling growth is more complex.
• The assumption that raising money or hiring executives will make things easier is a misconception.
• The reality is that with growth, challenges become more complex and frequent.

"It just gets harder because in the early days you just need one customer every week in order to grow 10% week over week, and then now in order to double, triple every year the amount of things that need to go right from the people we hire to new strategies we implement."

Speaker B illustrates the increasing complexity of scaling a business, noting that growth targets become more challenging to achieve as the company's scale increases.

• Speaker B disagrees with the commonly given advice to only meet VCs during fundraising periods.
• Building relationships with investors is crucial and can't be rushed during compressed fundraising timelines.
• Speaker B suggests investing in a few key relationships so that the focus can be on business and metrics during actual fundraising.

"I'm not saying you should meet every month with ten investors, but I think you need to invest enough in a few key relationships that you think can pay out so that then you can raise in a very, very short period of time."

The quote reflects Speaker B's strategy for building relationships with investors, which involves a balance between regular contact and focusing on a select few meaningful relationships.

• Sharing some information with investors is necessary even when not actively fundraising.
• Speaker B advises sharing the most favorable metrics but presenting them conservatively to allow for a buffer in case of future unpredictability.

"I always talked about the one that was the best. But also I always said that, let's say I was at 30k. MRR, I would say we're at 20k. MRR."

By sharing metrics conservatively, Speaker B creates a safety net to show growth to investors even if immediate performance dips, demonstrating a strategic approach to investor relations.

• Speaker B uses three criteria to decide when to raise capital: feeling confident in the business, reaching a significant milestone, and the funds being useful for achieving a new milestone.
• The entrepreneur's confidence and state of mind are critical factors.
• The capital raised should help the company scale or enable new strategic initiatives.

"You need to be in a good state of mind, because that's something that's hard to fake."

This quote emphasizes the importance of the founder's confidence and timing in the fundraising process, suggesting that personal readiness is as important as business metrics.

• Speaker B believes that simply scaling existing milestones may not be sufficient to justify raising large amounts of capital.
• Demonstrating predictable business and a plan for accelerated growth trajectory can be more compelling to investors.
• The rationale for raising more funds should include the potential for changing the company's trajectory, not just scaling what already works.

"But if you want to ask for more money, then what I found being successful is to be able to say, on top of this, we can change our trajectory and accelerate our growth by doing XYZ."

The quote suggests that for larger fundraising rounds, it's important to present investors with a vision for how the additional capital will enable significant changes and growth beyond the current trajectory.

• Speaker B seeks a balance between challenging and caring investors.
• They want investors who can call them out on their shortcomings but also show genuine care.
• Speaker B's choice of investor Brian for their Series B was based on conversations with CEOs he had worked with, to ensure a good working relationship.
• The speaker emphasizes the importance of due diligence on investors, similar to hiring employees, but with the difference that investors cannot be 'fired'.

"Now that I've worked with a few investors, I realize that what I'm looking for is a combination of someone that's very challenging and demanding and someone that's very caring."

This quote highlights the speaker's preference for investors who provide both critical feedback and emotional support, reflecting the dual needs for growth and resilience in a business relationship.

• Speaker B's favorite book is "The Power of Now" for its recipe to happiness.
• They advocate for more diversity in tech and Silicon Valley and suggest that deliberate efforts and broad evaluations can achieve better gender balance.
• Speaker B agrees with the principle of "hire fast, fire fast."
• A good investor provides support and resources; a great investor is hands-on and actively works for you.
• Speaker B wishes they had known that the journey with their company, Front, would always be hard and that this is normal for everyone.
• They have a support system including founder friends, mentors, a therapist, and their spouse who works at Front.
• Work-life balance is essential, and the speaker has learned to prioritize happiness and health in their leadership after a personal experience.
• Speaker B has ambitious goals for Front, focusing on growth while maintaining a great culture.

"Super great."

Speaker B's concise response to the quickfire round indicates readiness and enthusiasm to engage in rapid, insightful dialogue.

• Speaker B reflects on the increasing challenges as their journey progresses.
• They stress the importance of realizing that difficulties are a normal part of the entrepreneurial process.
• The speaker values a support network for open and frank discussions about challenges.

"What I talked about earlier about the fact that it only gets harder and the fact that it's hard for everyone."

This quote underlines the speaker's insight into the escalating challenges faced by founders and the importance of recognizing this as a normal part of the startup experience.

• Speaker B emphasizes the importance of work-life balance and not letting the company become one's entire life.
• They advocate for a company culture that puts people's happiness and health first.
• The speaker's personal experience with their co-founder's health scare was a pivotal moment in realizing the importance of life beyond the company.

"I realized that life was greater than the company I was running."

This quote captures the speaker's epiphany about the significance of life outside of work, which has influenced their leadership style and company culture.

• Speaker B has high ambitions for Front, driven by the potential market and product opportunities.
• They plan to focus on growth without compromising the company's culture.
• The speaker looks forward to working with their current team and bringing in new talent to tackle future challenges.

"I have crazy ambitions for front, and that's one of the things that I think this country brought know."

The quote reflects the speaker's strong aspirations for their company, Front, and the influence of the entrepreneurial spirit they've encountered in their current environment.

• Speaker A praises Speaker B as a thought leader for the next generation of CEOs.
• They provide information on how to follow Speaker B and the podcast on social media.
• Speaker A promotes resources for scaling businesses, such as Crunchdex and Stripe's guides.
• They also highlight Intercom's messaging products as tools for customer acquisition, engagement, and support.

"I told you, a thought leader for the next generation of ceos."

Speaker A concludes by affirming Speaker B's influence and offering listeners additional resources to support their entrepreneurial endeavors.