If, like me, you work in the tech industry, you might be struggling to reconcile two facts. On the one hand, 2020 was a pretty awful year: we had a pandemic with lockdowns everywhere, intense wildfires and storms exacerbated by climate change, rightful uproars asking for racial equality in the US, just to name a few. On the other hand, through all that turmoil, tech stocks have grown more than 40%! Somehow, our industry is generating more wealth than ever, at a time when many are in dire need of help. Fortunately, this bizarre situation is compelling many into action…
The year 2020 is challenging our beliefs on what work means in so many ways.
Essential workers are putting their health — and lives — at risk to keep the world going. Meanwhile, it’s hard for non-essential workers to feel their work matters and believe that their work is still important amongst everything that’s happening around them.
For years, people have been chasing productivity at work. Getting more done. Checking things off their to-do lists. But that’s changing. I think that the future of work is much more about the impact that each of us will have on our customers…
Like many companies across the world, we’ve had to transition Front to fully remote work in just a few days. If you’ve read anything from me before, you know I care a lot about people being happy at work, and now more than ever, I’m making it a priority. The least a company can do in these times of high uncertainty is to find ways to cheer up employees, help them weather this storm, and make sure they know they’re valued.
Our HR team has risen up to the challenge, and done a wonderful job translating our in-office culture into…
Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times is a trend… I’m once again making public the deck I used to raise our latest round of funding!
Based on the feedback I’m getting from readers, this is easily one of the highest-leverage activities for me: it takes about an hour to put together, and then hundreds of thousands of people can see it and use it in their own entrepreneurial journey. The internet is truly a beautiful thing!
The process
Why did we raise money now? The framework I used for our Series A was just as helpful today as…
It’s official: we’ve raised $59 million in our Series C funding round!
I want to take a moment to thank our customers for their partnership and feedback, our team for their tireless dedication to building Front, and our investors for their support — I know we wouldn’t be here without you all. We’ll use this new money to continue building the best product, improve its distribution, and hire more people to join us on our journey. (We’ve just opened an office in Phoenix and we’re hiring!)
The most interesting part about this funding is that it is led by a group of individual investors, as opposed to a traditional venture fund, which…
I launched Front because I wanted more people to be happier at work. I obsess over it at Front and have shared some thoughts on how to achieve this. However, there’s just so much I know! It’s my first company after all 😊 So a few months ago I decided to interview people who also obsess over it.
Today, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of a series of interviews. The first one is with Alexis Ohanian, and here is what I learned from the conversation.
Don’t wait until something terrible happens to prioritize mental health.
Both Alexis and I had earth-shattering moments while leading our companies when we realized…
Every quarter, I build a presentation about our business, not for investors or customers, but for my employees. It’s a ton of work. In sharing this practice with others, I’ve found it’s rather unique. I strongly believe this is some of my most well-spent time so I’m sharing how and why I do it.
The presentation is called Last Quarter at Front (LQAF). I’ve been holding it for 2 years — and for 2 years before that, I actually held it monthly, called Last Month at Front. Here are the slides from LQAF in Q1 and Q2.
Last year, I challenged myself and those around me to completely disable notifications on our mobile devices. It was an effort to become more present and focused, and it was successful: what began as a source of anxiety and constant distraction became an opportunity for productivity. I suddenly found myself able to get so much more done, in less time.
And removing notifications was just the first step in my quest to be more present. I’ve since found that limiting my overall mobile usage has led to some seriously positive results. Inspired by my friend Justin Kan, I switched my…
I am a huge fan of Kim Scott and believe that her radical candor philosophy is the most powerful tool to 1. create a great place to work, 2. prevent negativity, 3. prevent politics. This positivity leads to higher employee engagement.
In case you’re not familiar, radical candor is a framework for giving and receiving feedback that is rooted in caring personally about your colleagues while challenging them directly. If you are being radically candid, you won’t gossip behind people’s backs, you won’t brush issues off, and you won’t come off as a jerk. You will have those difficult conversations…
During my gap year, I took an internship in corporate finance at one of the biggest French companies. I didn’t care much about the work we were doing there, but I was content to work with great people, I had a decent paycheck, and plenty of time to enjoy Paris with my friends after work. I was happy, but I had no drive to do my best work, let alone stay with the company for the long haul.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, in early 2017, my co-founder was diagnosed with cancer. Where we previously shared the responsibility…
