Page 48 - Forbes - USA (March 2020)

The Vault

GOING, GOULD, GONE!
In the late 1800s, Jay Gould amassed a fortune worth Mail. Expecting profound feedback, she instead
a billion-plus in current dollars through railroads and
telegrams—the 19th-century equivalent of emails— received a simple message: Follow your growth.

after seizing control of “There was something about her, a competitive-
Western Union. At the start
of the 20th, son George ness and assuredness, that spoke to us,” says

Jay stopped “climb[ing] to- Geoff Ralston, Yahoo Mail’s creator, who is now
46 ward the summits of busi- president of Y Combinator. “It was counterintui-
ness success” and instead
“plunged headlong into tive. Really, email? That’s the thing that’s going to
the gayeties,” squandering create a new billion-dollar company?” HOW TO PLAY IT
N his old man’s money on po-
O nies, mansions and yachts. It’s well on its way, thanks to investors—but by Jon D.
I —September 15, 1917 also loyal followers. At Edge Logistics in Chica- Markman
V A T go, president William Kerr says he needed a full-
From smarter
O Long Live Email Cont. time employee to manage emails before he dis- email to intranet
N chat, enterprises

N together, the seven-year-old firm has 5,500 cus- covered Front. Now the company can automati-
I are desperate to
tomers, and revenue has quadrupled since 2017 cally distribute inbound requests for quotes even-
• improve produc-

Y to an estimated $32 million last year. ly across its reps, who compare notes and reach tivity. The best
G It’s tiny, but its elite backers, including Sequoia consensus on rates within the email before an as- way to play this
O trend is Service-
L Capital and founders of software leaders Atlas- signed salesperson responds. “In my business, a Now, a maker of
O cloud-based en-
N sian, Qualtrics and Zoom—and even email kill- lot of times you can win the job just by being the terprise software.

H er Slack—are betting on Front. They have poured first guy to quote it,” Kerr says. “Over the course

C Its Now platform
E nearly $140 million into the San Francisco–based of 60,000 or 70,000 jobs a year, it makes a really brings employ-
T ees, customers
company, most recently boosting its valuation to big difference.”

and networked
more than $800 million in January, four times its Collin and Perrin’s eventual goal is to undercut devices into a

figure just two years earlier. Gmail and Outlook while connecting more pro- single system.
It connects
Unlike others who have been quick to declare ductivity apps to Front so its collaborative emails
customer service,
the “death” of email—Slack rode a mission to re- become an employee’s central hub. Analysts re- HR, IT and secu-
place it all the way to a stock debut last year— main skeptical that it can challenge the duopo- rity, and gives
developers tools
Collin and her cofounder, Laurent Perrin, 38, be- ly. Both companies bundle their email products to integrate cus-
lieve that the problem with the years-old proto- with suites of other tools—G Suite for Google, Of- tom applications.
col, dominated by Microsoft Outlook and Google’s fice 365 for Microsoft. “Many startups have found Everything is ac-

cessible with an
Gmail, is in the packaging, not the product. opportunities under the noses of Microsoft and internet browser
The French cofounders met via eFounders, a Google,” says Daniel Ives, a managing director at or mobile device.
Companies are
startup studio in Paris, in 2013. Collin, who stud- Wedbush Securities. “But I view email how most
eager to sign up.
ied mathematics and entrepreneurship at HEC consumers view napkins at a restaurant: They’re Fourth-quarter
Paris business school, had quit her job over disil- not paying for it.” subscription sales
were $899 million,
lusionment with its culture. An engineer, Perrin Patrick Collison, CEO of customer Stripe, says up 35% year over
was looking for a new gig after nearly four years he recognizes in Front a similarity to his pay- year. The gross

as CTO of a French online radio service. After ments business, now worth $35 billion: a will- profit margin was
83%. Shares are
some brainstorming, the pair determined that a ingness to tackle an industry others shunned. To up 55% in the last
collaborative shared inbox—think any email you Collison, the question isn’t whether Front can 12 months. Buy
pullbacks.
receive from a company whose address starts carve out a market, but how big it will be. “It’s as
with “info” or “help”—would serve as their tick- likely that Mathilde figures that out as any other Jon D. Markman

is president of

et into a company’s workflows. early-stage CEO I’ve met,” he says. Markman Capital
Before Front, one customer inquiry could set Collin is betting on herself. Recently, some of Insight and the
author of

off a flurry of emails inside a business as col- tech’s biggest CEOs have reached out, she says,

Fast Forward
leagues copied each other and forwarded feed- including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Sales- Investing.
back in order to come up with one answer. With force’s Marc Benioff. To Collin, their motives are

Front, users got access to a shared email that clear. She says she has no interest in selling: “We
would treat incoming messages like living docu- are at .0001% of what we could do.”
ments, appending notes, tagging colleagues and
drafting responses without sending any emails. JAY GOULD BY HISTORIC COLLECTION/ALAMY
FINAL THO U GHT
With about a dozen test companies onboard,

the cofounders flew to California to interview for “SOMETIMES THIS
HIGH-TECH WORLD CALLS
prestigious startup accelerator Y Combinator’s
FOR LOW-TECH SOLUTIONS.”
summer 2014 program. Collin got to pitch part-
—Christopher Moore
ners including the creators of Gmail and Yahoo

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