Customer Relations Startup Front Hits Unicorn Status With $65M Raise

San Francisco-based Front is the newest minted unicorn after closing a $65 million Series D led by Salesforce Ventures 1and Battery Ventures.

The new funding gives the customer relationship software developer a $1.7 billion valuation—more than double its value when it raised a $59 million Series C in January 2020.

The company was able to reach unicorn status despite raising money “amid the most challenging tech fundraising environment in over a decade,” it noted in its release.

Front was co-founded in 2013 by Mathilde Collin, who is still the CEO. Its email and customer support software is used by nearly 8,000 customers in more than 100 countries. The software adds collaboration capabilities and customer data to try to enhance customer relationships with faster and deeply personalized messaging.

The company has grown net new annual recurring revenue by 120% year to year while gaining significant traction in the mid-market and enterprise sectors, according to  the release.

Funding to customer service startups

So far this year, startups like Front in the customer service sector have seen serious interest from investors.

While VC-backed startups in the space raised nearly $3.4 billion in funding last year—according to Crunchbase data—this year already has seen almost $2.4 billion come to such startups just in the first six months.

While funding has slowed this year for much of the startup ecosystem, clearly software that helps companies stay engaged and involved with their customers in a worsening economy is something investors think has significant potential.

The new round brings the company total financing to more than $200 million to date, according to the company. Other investors in the round included PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Threshold Ventures and Uncork Capital.

Illustration: Dom Guzman