This 32-year-old French woman is one of the 10 women standing on the head of the unicorn. his startup Front, based in San Francisco, has raised more than $65 million by 2022. We met him during his recent stay in France. .
She gave birth to her second child just a week ago, but Mathilde Collin’s face showed no trace of sleepless nights. Who says you can’t do everything at once? The young CEO of Front, a tech startup based in San Francisco, impresses with his naturalness and his humility. The young woman, however, had a more than intense year in 2022. raised $65 million this summer, valuing her business at $1.7 billion and catapulting her to unicorn status… all while carrying a heavy pregnancy. , which forces him to return to France to follow. How to become a unicorn? “I was very lucky,” he smiles. This is a key factor that we often forget to mention when talking about company success. We took advantage of his presence in Paris to meet him and let him tell us his story.
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As happy on vacation as at work
For Matilda, entrepreneurship was not obvious, let alone a profession. Studying at Essec, he splits his time between the finance department at Bouygues and a London start-up. There, in this small structure, he discovers a feeling that will never leave him. “I began to prefer work to vacation,” he recalls. Create his business. the desire, the adrenaline is there, but the challenge seems insurmountable. As a young graduate, she opted for the reason option, the more traditional CDI, to pay off her student loan.
But the pernicious culture of large corporations undermines it. His meeting with investor and business angel Thibaut Elzier (founder of eFounders), who introduces him to his co-founder Laurent Perrin, changes everything. He offers the duo to finance a previously prepared project. software that allows all company employees to collaborate on customer or prospect messages thanks to a common and shared mailbox. The idea is to allow teams to work together to come up with more effective solutions to problems while avoiding repetition. “At Front, we have the opposite approach, where our technology fosters relationships with that human touch. We don’t want to replace humans with robots, so we dedicate AI to repetitive tasks with no added value, so that humans offer value by responding to customers. , says Mathilde Collin. The rest is written very quickly. Front launched in late 2013, and the following year joined the highly selective US accelerator Y Combinator in San Francisco. The two Frenchmen settle in the USA.
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“I’ve never been outside of Europe, so this experience was a culture shock for me, in a good way.” As soon as she arrived, Mathilde Collin was struck by the dynamism and open-mindedness of the Americans. “I was only 23 years old and no one knew about my business school,” he recalls. However, it was very easy to meet potential clients, partners or investors. Everything was moving very quickly.” While in France he is asked why the company trusts its e-mails and sensitive data to an unknown start-up, in the US he is received in a constructive spirit. Quickly, big names like Shopify, Airbnb, Hulu, and Lyft are trusting it.
In 2016, Front won its first fundraising of $3 million, which enabled it to triple its turnover the following year ($10 million). However, this moment is also one of the most complicated for Mathilde Collin. Its co-founder was diagnosed with cancer. He endures, takes it alone for a few months while he heals. he is now in remission. Looking back, she admits the episode also took a toll on her physical and mental health. She bounced back thanks to her strength of character, which she now tries to pass on to her peers. “I see that with equal skills, women lack self-confidence,” says the executive director. It is essential for them to surround themselves with the right people, those who will give them this confidence, push them to excel. But that doesn’t stop you from continuing to study.”
Take care of your mental health
Since the work of an entrepreneur is a real priesthood, he admits. “Sometimes it’s painful, we constantly go out of our comfort zone. Being an entrepreneur is like being in a washing machine. you have to constantly make decisions and learn. I’m even more in awe of people who are starting right now when the pandemic has added so much uncertainty. To face adversity and risk, “a leader has to know himself very well,” he explains, “that’s the first measure of managing and persuading even in a storm.”
Know yourself… and take care of yourself. Because entrepreneurship is a marathon that can be crushing. This is what Mathilde noticed and learned during her experience. today he is very dedicated to the mental health of entrepreneurs. “This topic is close to my heart. If you had told me a few years ago that I would do meditation or even hypnosis every day, I would never have believed it, he smiles. I am as demanding about the results of the company as I am about the satisfaction of my employees. One of my investors told me that my strength lies in this ability to find a balance between caring for others and maintaining company performance. We can be benevolent and inane when it comes to the death penalty. My role is to ensure that all stakeholders in the company can bring or discover more value every day. This is how we achieve the best results.”
Transparency, “caring” and lack of ego
He thus established the values of the Front in contrast to what he had been able to observe during his first professional experience. His choice? Transparency, “caring” (“taking care of others”) and lack of ego. These values inspire the entire organization and communication of the company. every month Mathilde holds an “all hands” meeting with the entire team where she reviews the past. He always shares boardroom presentations and leaves his calendar open for everyone to see. Another peculiarityslip of the month,” this monthly meeting where everyone can talk about a mistake they made and what they learned from it. “I’d rather that than him asking permission next time,” she says.
A rule of thumb for autonomy and progress that the CEO readily endorses at Front. She learned to perfect this principle of trust, as Mathilde recruited more and more senior officials as the Front developed; Front now has 400 employees in San Francisco, Chicago, Dublin and Paris. “The challenge is delegating without compromising performance, but also remaining accessible and attentive to everyone,” he explains. It is perhaps no coincidence that Front was named a “Great Place to Work” by Fortune magazine in 2022…
Constantly questioning
However, the last two years have not been easy for the company. Front lost a significant 10% of its turnover when its customers in the travel industry pulled out after Covid. But the start-up has seen an upswing, particularly thanks to the growth of financial services. “In the face of a recession, the strategy must be adapted to the macroeconomic context. I constantly have to question what I took for granted,” explains Mathilde Collin.
Its responsiveness allowed Front to complete a Series D fundraising in 2022 that doubled its valuation to $1.7 billion and made it a unicorn just before the economic downturn. Perfect timing, where the young shoot, with nearly 8,000 clients in 100 countries, was able to show its unique place in this market, but also defend its mission and values. A holistic approach to entrepreneurship that she hopes will inspire other women to start up and disrupt these still very male-dominated industries.
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Source: Le Figaro
