By Alex Konrad Photograph by Eric MilletteCONTRARIAN TECHNOLOGY
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INNOVATIONFORBES.COMLong Live Email
The inbox had been left for dead. Now it’s being resurrected by the two founders of Front,
a startup with big-name backers and a mission to make old-fashioned email cutting-edge again.
MARCH 20 20ing to a stream of price quotes for cargo ships’
availability around the world.
To her surprise, it was the broker, Simpson
Spence Young, that promptly began pitching her.
The company had surveyed its employees and
discovered their communications tools, more
suited to the telegraphs of an earlier century,
needed an overhaul. They wanted Front’s help.
Turns out a lot of older businesses that rely
heavily on email are eager for Front’s help. “Hav-
ing a new tool would change their life,” says Col-
lin, 30. Better to fix what you have. Younger tech
firms like Shopify and private payments lead-
er Stripe have also signed on, paying between
$9 and $79 per user each month (more money
gets you more shared inboxes and features). Al-Mathilde Collin fidgeted
with her backpack as she walked into a build-
ing overlooking the Tower of London, worried
that she’d seem “too San Francisco” to the ex-
ecutives running a shipping broker that had re-
cently celebrated its 134th birthday. Collin, the
CEO of startup Front, was there to pitch software
that turned a standard email inbox into a shared
workspace—perfect for a logistics team respond-M
Survivors
Cofounders Mathilde
Collin (left) and Laurent
Perrin faced personal
hardships even as
they reinvented
corporate inboxes. He
received, and beat, a
cancer diagnosis; she
suffered a breakdown
caused in part by the
ensuing stress.