Mikkel Svane

Mikkel Svane
Born	1971[1] Copenhagen, Denmark
Education	Bachelor's in Economics
Occupation(s)	Entrepreneur and author
Employer	Zendesk
Notable work	Startupland
Title	Founder

Mikkel Svane is the co-founder and former CEO of the software company Zendesk. He has written Startupland,[2] documenting his experiences of starting his company.

Early life and education

Svane was born in Copenhagen, Denmark[3] in 1971.[1] He became interested in computer programming when he was 11 years-old.[3] As a child, he created basic computer games.[2]: 29  He served in the Danish military[4] and earned a degree in economics in the early 1990s.[3][2]: 8 

Career

After college, Svane started a business creating stereograms.[2]: 8  He authored a book and created software to help others make stereograms themselves.[2]: 8–9  Svane also created a website for free news and event listings called Forum.dk.[2]: 11  Forum.dk was purchased by a newspaper, but Svane retained ownership of the software that ran it.[2]: 12–13 

The Forum.dk software became the basis of Caput A/S, a startup Svane created in 1996 that sold software to run the websites of media companies.[2]: 12–13 [4] Caput went out of business as a result of the crash following the dot-com bubble.[2]: 15  In 2002, Svane got his first traditional job when he was recruited as General Manager at a German business consulting firm called Materna.[2]: 17 [4] He left that position in the Summer of 2005 and started doing his own freelance consulting work.[2]: 20 

Svane was in his mid-30s when he founded Zendesk with two of his friends, Alexander Aghassipour and Morten Primdahl.[3][5] Initially, the founders funded the company themselves, while working consulting gigs on the side.[3][5] They developed the software in Svane's apartment in Copenhagen, Denmark.[6]

Svane moved the company to California in 2009.[4] Svane led the company's ongoing expansion[3] and its initial public offering in 2014.[4][7] In 2014, Svane published a book about his life and starting Zendesk called "Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business."[4][7] The book details Svane's early work creating the company and raising venture capital.[2] In June 2022, Zendesk was acquired by a group of investment firms including Hellman & Friedman and Permira, in a deal that valued Zendesk at $10.2 billion.[8] On November 28, 2022, Svane stepped down as CEO of Zendesk.[9]

Further reading

• Q&A Interview in Fortune
• Video interview in AllThingsD
• Svane's Comments in Investor's Business Daily
• Q&A interview in the San Francisco Chronicle

References

1. Clancy, Heather (June 29, 2016). "Why Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane Obsesses Over Customer Service". Fortune. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
2. Svane, Mikkel; Adler, Carlye (2014). Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 9781118980866.
3. Locke, Laura (July 30, 2014). "The tech firm helping a tough area". BBC News. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
4. Parker, Garrett (January 17, 2018). "10 Things You Didn't Know about Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane". Money Inc. Retrieved September 1, 2020.
5. Rao, Leena (November 16, 2013). "From its Beginnings in a Denmark Loft, Zendesk's Steady Rise to the Top of the Helpdesk Heap". TechCrunch. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
6. Kim, Eugene (December 16, 2014). "How This CEO Was Able To Take His Company Public When Everybody Else Was Panicking". Business Insider. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
7. Brown, Kristen V. (December 25, 2014). "Zendesk CEO Mikkel Svane on being an outsider in 'Startupland'". SFGate. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
8. Deveau, Scott; Davis, Michelle F (June 23, 2022). "Software Maker Zendesk to Be Bought by Investor Group in $9.5 Billion Cash Deal". Bloomberg.
9. https://www.zendesk.com/blog/our-north-star/