Front pitch deck (2016)

What's in the Front pitch deck

All 21 slides, in order.

1. 

   Slide 1 · Cover

   The Front name and one line, all your company's external communications in one collaborative inbox.

   How to write this slide
2. 

   Slide 2 · The Problem

   Email is the most important business channel, with 215 billion emails sent per day and 54% of them business emails, but it was built for personal use, so it is not collaborative, slows people down and is error-prone.

   How to write this slide
3. 

   Slide 3 · The Solution

   Rebuilding email for business, described in three columns, collaborative, integrated and unified, and summed up as a multichannel email client where every conversation reaches the right people.

   How to write this slide
4. 

   Slide 4 · Competitive Landscape

   A two-axis chart, consumer to business ready and bad to good messaging experience, with Front alone in the business ready and good experience corner, away from Zendesk, Hootsuite, Gmail and Outlook.

   How to write this slide
5. 

   Slide 5 · We Have a Head Start

   A bar chart of shared inboxes managed in Front, led by hello@ and contact@ (624) and help@ and support@ (521), with the line that shared inboxes were the perfect wedge.

6. 

   Slide 6 · Select Customers

   Logos of eight customers, including MailChimp, General Assembly, Verizon, Expensify, Y Combinator, Docker, HubSpot and onefinestay.

7. 

   Slide 7 · Customers Are Very Satisfied

   Four short customer quotes, each tagged with the company and its number of seats, such as Wouldn't go back to Gmail if you paid me.

8. 

   Slide 8 · Consistent Organic Growth

   MRR and number of companies from June 2014 to March 2016, with the caption MRR grew 5.4 times in the past 12 months.

   How to write this slide
9. 

   Slide 9 · Low Churn

   User churn, MRR churn and net MRR churn by month, with about 3% monthly user churn and negative net MRR churn.

10. 

    Slide 10 · Our Focus to Date

    A section divider.

11. 

    Slide 11 · The Product Comes First

    We're our first users, 60% of payroll is engineering, zero support agents, and one product sold as licences.

12. 

    Slide 12 · Acquisition Channels

    Three channels. Organic growth brought 70% of 2015 leads, sales reps get 40 qualified demos a month with 28% post-demo conversion, and marketing has content and co-marketing playbooks.

13. 

    Slide 13 · We Land and Expand

    A monthly cohort table of MRR retained, with notes on the Homejoy shutdown and a Stripe error, and the caption 150% annual expansion.

14. 

    Slide 14 · We've Been Capital Efficient

    $1.3M spent in 18 months to reach $1.4M in ARR, $1.8M left from the seed round, $90K monthly burn, and 5 months to be profitable.

15. 

    Slide 15 · The Ask

    A divider slide, raising a $10M Series A to accelerate growth.

    How to write this slide
16. 

    Slide 16 · Team

    Co-founders Mathilde Collin (CEO) and Laurent Perrin (CTO), a head of sales from Box and Dropbox, a head of customer success from Dropbox, and six engineers under the line unfair access to a pool of excellent French engineers.

    How to write this slide
17. 

    Slide 17 · The Product Roadmap Is Clear

    Seven quarters of planned new platforms, integrations, channels and enterprise features, from Android and Messenger to SSO and advanced reporting.

18. 

    Slide 18 · Projections

    Expenses against MRR through November 2017, with ARR of $3M and 39 people in 2016, and $10M and 53 people in 2017.

19. 

    Slide 19 · Funding

    A $3.1M seed in September 2014 led by Softtech VC with angels including Paul Buchheit and Elad Gil, and the $10M Series A with Stewart Butterfield and Eoghan McCabe already committed.

    How to write this slide
20. 

    Slide 20 · The Opportunity

    Slack proved businesses will buy good communication tools for internal use, and Front will own external communications.

21. 

    Slide 21 · Thanks

    A closing slide.

What the Front deck does well

• ✓Slide 14 shows $1.3M spent to reach $1.4M in ARR, and Mathilde Collin wrote that investors called this capital efficiency one of the strongest points in the deck.
• ✓Slide 13 backs the land and expand claim with a full cohort table and even labels the bad months, a customer shutdown and a Stripe error, instead of hiding them.
• ✓Slide 20 borrows a company investors already knew, Slack, to make the market obvious in two sentences.

What founders can learn from it

• →If your numbers are good, let them carry the deck. Front spends slides 8, 9, 13 and 14 on growth, churn, cohorts and burn.
• →Prepare a real financial model before you pitch. Collin wrote that the projections on slide 18 were weak because she had no model behind them.
• →Explain how you will find customers beyond word of mouth. Investors pushed back on slide 12 because most growth was organic and its scale was unclear.

Questions about the Front pitch deck

How much did Front raise with this deck?

Front raised a $10M Series A in 2016. The round was led by Social Capital, with Slack's Stewart Butterfield and Intercom's Eoghan McCabe also investing.

How many slides are in the Front pitch deck?

The Front Series A pitch deck has 21 slides.

Is the Front pitch deck real?

Yes. Mathilde Collin, Front's co-founder and CEO, uploaded it to SlideShare herself in 2016 and wrote about it on Front's blog.

What did investors think of the Front deck?

According to Collin, investors liked the capital efficiency and land and expand slides, and found the acquisition channels and projections slides weak. She said she should also have added usage data, like daily active users, and a clear picture of the typical buyer.

More pitch decks

• AirbnbAirbnb pitch deck2008 · Seed · $600K
• UberUber pitch deck2008 · Seed
• CoinbaseCoinbase pitch deck2012 · Seed · $600K
• NotionNotion pitch deck2013 · Seed