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Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

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Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#31

Sorry for my low quality post but Outlook is just fine. It's crappy, crashy and bloated...but it's just fine. This outfit and app won't exist 365 days from now, I guarantee it.

This comment highlights the problem they will have to solve.

People who want to replace outlook, already did. ages ago. They have slack, jira, jive, gmail, etc, etc, etc, etc.

People who won't replace outlook, won't replace outlook.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#32
Does it have calendar functionality? Outlook is at least as much a calendar application as it is an email application for me.

I don't see any evidence of calendars in the article's screenshots.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#33
We use this product, and it is excellent. It is currently a collaborative team inbox with multichannel capability. Each person here who communicates with the outside world the company's behalf, can log into one place, and jointly be responsible for an incoming flow (and conversations) of email plus various social channels. (Plus website "chat", although that has some rough edges for now.) It also doesn't do a great job of handling people's individual email, and it will be nice to have individual email more fully integrated with the collaborative team in box concept.

But.

From the amount of the raise and the interview comments, it sounds like the product is headed elsewhere. Like it might loose focus on collaborative team and box features, and instead grow into (yet another) general purpose well-implemented email application, which then gets bought by one of the larger companies, then shut down, and then 10% of the features reappear a year later in the larger company's product. This would be a great outcome for the Front team, but not for Front customers.

(For those here that are questioning the price, the price isn't bad considering it typically would apply only to the smaller set of people in the company handling customer facing email, and it provides a bunch of value for that use.)

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#34

Sorry for my low quality post but Outlook is just fine. It's crappy, crashy and bloated...but it's just fine. This outfit and app won't exist 365 days from now, I guarantee it.

Yeah, I'm willing to take the over on that bet. Front is far more than a replacement for Outlook: it's an integrated service with email, chat channels, sales/support management, etc.

Did you not read the headline? YC Summer 2014 and just raised $66M. They're doing fine.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#35

Yikes. At ~60/u/mo for enterprise email & collaboration I would drop the "Replace Microsoft Outlook" line... unless you want people to start looking at what else they get beyond Outlook/Skype for Business from Microsoft for $20-$35/u/mo (E3 or E5 O365 license).

We pay for office365 basically because Excel has no serious alternatives. Founders use Powerpoint. And that's about it.

Also, Microsoft have gotten stupid and lazy with Office. Each app eats 2 gig disk, all from non-shared Resources/Fonts/crap. Users who just clicked default install ended up with 9g of disk space gone. Why is this a big deal? Apple's extortionate pricing on mbp disks and the inability to upgrade them for less than the price of an entire new computer. There's a hacky way to fix this.

https://aaronweb.net/blog/2016/01/office-2016-mac-decrease-d...

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#36
post #23
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your email and support productivity was increased 10x, really?

Definitely. Replying to emails as a team, handing off customers, reviewing contracts, all sorts of team discussions - it was happening all over the place before, and giving us a central place to go where conversations about an email thread can take place right underneath the thread was fantastic. You go from getting a reply from your boss about an email to actually sending that info to the customer in a matter of sec…

What does the customer see when you reply from Front? e.g. your individual email (youremail@company.com) or a team email (sales@company.com)

Sorry for the basic question -- I couldn't tell from the demo video and the free trial takes some setup. Trying to figure out if this fits existing workflows or would need new workflows to be built around it. Thanks for your help!

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#38

We use this product, and it is excellent. It is currently a collaborative team inbox with multichannel capability. Each person here who communicates with the outside world the company's behalf, can log into one place, and jointly be responsible for an incoming flow (and conversations) of email plus various social channels. (Plus website "chat", although that has some rough edges for now.) It also doesn't do a great j…

I learned about Front from this thread and I'm going to try it this week. Shared inboxes are a giant pita. Hopefully Front don't get distracted.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#39
post #35

Yikes. At ~60/u/mo for enterprise email & collaboration I would drop the "Replace Microsoft Outlook" line... unless you want people to start looking at what else they get beyond Outlook/Skype for Business from Microsoft for $20-$35/u/mo (E3 or E5 O365 license).

We pay for office365 basically because Excel has no serious alternatives. Founders use Powerpoint. And that's about it. Also, Microsoft have gotten stupid and lazy with Office. Each app eats 2 gig disk, all from non-shared Resources/Fonts/crap. Users who just clicked default install ended up with 9g of disk space gone. Why is this a big deal? Apple's extortionate pricing on mbp disks and the inability to upgrade them…

For basic spreadsheets, I've pretty much switched over to Google Sheets. Haven't touched Word in nearly two years and couldn't be happier about it

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#40
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We pay for office365 basically because Excel has no serious alternatives. Founders use Powerpoint. And that's about it. Also, Microsoft have gotten stupid and lazy with Office. Each app eats 2 gig disk, all from non-shared Resources/Fonts/crap. Users who just clicked default install ended up with 9g of disk space gone. Why is this a big deal? Apple's extortionate pricing on mbp disks and the inability to upgrade them…

For basic spreadsheets, I've pretty much switched over to Google Sheets. Haven't touched Word in nearly two years and couldn't be happier about it

I'm glad it works for you. I wish it did for me.

Most of enterprise needs a bit more that Google sheets.

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