Front Raises $65 Million Series D

SAN FRANCISCO &&num;8212&semi; Front, a communication hub for building strong customer relationships, has raised &dollar;65 million in Series D financing, led by Salesforce Ventures and Battery Ventures and with participation from PagerDuty CEO, Jennifer Tejada&period; Existing investors Sequoia Capital, Threshold Ventures and Uncork Capital also participated in the financing&period; This round values Front at &dollar;1&period;7 billion, bringing the company’s total funding to date over &dollar;200 million&period;&NewLine;Front’s leadership heavily skews female&colon; alongside co-founder &amp&semi; CEO Mathilde Collin, 80 percent of the executive team is female and 50 percent of Front’s managers are women&period; Private technology companies led by women are more capital-efficient, achieving 35 percent higher ROI, and, when venture-backed, 12 percent higher revenue than startups run by men, according to the Kauffman Foundation&period; Yet, according to PitchBook, female founders secured only 2 percent of venture capital in the U&period;S&period; in 2021, the smallest share since 2016&period;&NewLine;Front enables human relationships at scale&NewLine;Founded in 2013, Front is upending two of the largest and most deeply entrenched markets in SaaS&colon; email and customer support software&period; Businesses that rely on strong customer relationships to differentiate themselves are underserved by the incumbents&colon; Email is inefficient for teams, with no support for workflows, analytics or meaningful integration&semi; support software creates efficiencies, it makes customers feel like numbers&period; Front surrounds every high-stakes conversation with team collaboration capabilities and customer data&period; Its customers use it to ensure responses are always fast, accurate and deeply personalized&period; Unlike customer ticketing software, Front’s modern interface is inspired by email clients, which team members love because it’s familiar and easy to use&period;&NewLine;&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;When it comes to customer communication, technology rarely improves the relationships it’s designed to manage&period; Efficiencies tend to come at the cost of quality of service&colon; the so called smart bots, the deflection techniques, the cold ticket numbers and impersonal processes&period; In the long run, both customers and businesses lose out&period; Front has taken a contrarian approach&colon; we’re building technology that scales customer relationships without losing that human touch,” said Mathilde Collin, co-founder and CEO of Front&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;This investment round, coming in the economic environment as it did, is a validation of that approach&period; Front has the potential to become the communications layer for meaningful relationships across the entire enterprise, and investors want to help us get there&period;”&NewLine;Front has nearly 8,000 customers in over 100 countries, including five of the Fortune 25&period; The company has grown net new ARR by 120 percent YoY and is seeing strong traction in mid-market and enterprise with new business growing nearly 2X faster than other segments last year&period; Front’s Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) has averaged 98 percent in the past 12 months, and it has consistently been ranked one of the top 10 companies globally, according to Nicereply&period; Front consistently sees a level of engagement that’s far more common in consumer apps such as Netflix and Instagram than in B2B technology&colon; 75 percent of Front’s monthly active users are also daily active users&period;&NewLine;

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