Company update: How Fronted is responding to Covid-19

When the three of us founded Fronted, Anthony, Simon and I agreed that we would build this company as transparently as possible. So we made important emails viewable by anyone in the company; the bank balance visible to any team member who asked; the inner workings of the team and product shared with our community - all because we want people to feel like they are connected to this thing we are building.

Transparency is powerful, and it’s especially important when you’re sharing news that isn’t positive. We want to update our friends, family, suppliers and supporters on where Fronted is, and how we’re reacting to the current crisis.

As of Wednesday 1st April 2020, Fronted is going into partial hibernation for a few months. The majority of our team has been furloughed, but a couple of people are continuing to work on areas where progress can still be made.

Our service exists to help the country move which is hard when, right now, everyone needs to stay safe and stay put. During this time, we will continue to support renters with educational and factual content and we will raise awareness of your rights while things are more confusing than usual.

This temporary lack of demand has impacted the likelihood that we’ll be able to get the early market feedback we need to make Fronted a success. This, in turn, has made it a bad time to raise debt to lend to renters and equity for Fronted.

Fronted has reached a point in our development where we have a working MVP, our full user journey from someone arriving on our website, to them getting a Fronted Deposit is built. We will work to upgrade our product, working with our partners to automate some of the manual processes, so that we are in a better position to launch later in the year.

When we reemerge from this crisis our world will be different. People will need a change after months of isolation and opportunities in cities for work and education will return. The world we will inherit is a world where Fronted still fits.  

We have focussed on assembling the right team, developing the right strategy and creating the most customer value for a market we are obsessed with. Hibernating the business will help us tunnel through the worst of this pandemic so that we can launch when the economy wakes up.

The business is waiting while Anthony, Simon and I are ready for when the tide turns.