Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 86 posts

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#41

Post by unabst »

madenine wrote: post #25

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).

They are expensive, and we'd be paying already had they been closer to 10 mo/user. But it seems they're going the customer service tool route, and this is a pain point businesses are willing to pay for. In this area I'd say their #1 rival is zendesk, which does a better job of justifying their pricing on their site (which had me return to Front for what they do better).

But Front won't be replacing anyone's free web mail at any price point. I can't believe they don't have a free plan.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#42

Post by cleeus »

So they want to build seamless interop with MS Exchange including all calendar features, oh and compat with that plugin the workers' council really needs? ... let the investor money burn ...

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#43

Post by john_moscow »

cleeus wrote: post #42

So they want to build seamless interop with MS Exchange including all calendar features, oh and compat with that plugin the workers' council really needs? ... let the investor money burn ...

They are likely betting on non-technical methods of getting acquired by Microsoft at a premium.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#44

Post by chaostheory »

chewyland wrote: post #27

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.

They moved to a different contintent and they've survived for 4 years now. They have good leadership. I'm going to bet that they'll be around whether or not their product changes.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#45

Post by curiousDog »

debt wrote: post #8

It's crazy how far we've come but things like email/voice/video conferencing somehow are still so essential yet completely broken. But then have we come that far if those things are still broken? idk but good job Front!

I wouldn't say they're broken, they're bloated. When you build something that has to fit the multitude of Fortune 500 requirements, localize to 200 countries, you'll end up with a lot of complexity that is unnecessary to most users.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#46

Post by Fifer82 »

puranjay wrote: post #39
x0x0 wrote: 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 hate Google Sheets. Pasting X lines cause it to complain a minute later that "You don't have permission, and changes might be lost". Ok fair enough... I will just import the whole file... "the file is too big please delete some columns or rows".

We aren't talking gigabytes of data. I can't wait for these shitty cloud services to be replaced with something a bit more capable than pre 1988, whatever form that takes.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#47

Post by mathouc »

x0x0 wrote: post #38
kylecordes wrote: post #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 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.

We won't I promise.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#48

Post by Cenk »

vm wrote: post #36
Cenk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Both is possible. You set up separate mailboxes (either team-wide or private) for specific email addresses, and by default you reply from the address they wrote to.

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#49

Post by mathouc »

vm wrote: post #36
Cenk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

you can decide. both work

Re: Front (YC S14) Raises $66M

#50

Post by Cenk »

rubidium wrote: post #30
Cenk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So you cut your staff by 90%? Or did you devote their time to other activities?

Neither – we grew our customers by 10x and didn’t hire any more support people.
Post reply on HN