Zendesk

Zendesk was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007 by three friends: Morten Primdahl, Alexander Aghassipour, and Mikkel Svane.[4][5] The founders started developing the Zendesk software in Svane's loft.[6] Initially, Zendesk was funded by the cofounders themselves, each doing consulting jobs to support their families.[6][7] Within a few months of the Zendesk software-as-a-service product being released in the fall of 2007, it had about 1,000 trial customers.[6] Initially, interest in the software spread slowly through word-of-mouth[6] predominantly among other startups.[8] Adoption accelerated in 2008, due to an increased interest in responding to customer complaints on social media and after Twitter started using Zendesk.[6]

Venture capital investors were willing to invest in Zendesk only if the company moved to the United States,[4] where most of their customers were.[6] In 2009 Zendesk moved to Boston, Massachusetts. About six months later, they made a second move, this time to San Francisco, California.[4][9] The company raised $500,000 in seed funding, which was followed by a series A funding round for an undisclosed amount[10] and a series B round for $6 million.[6] Zendesk raised $19 million in a series C funding round in December 2010,[4] followed by $60 million in a series D funding round in 2012.[11] This brought total venture capital funding to about $86 million.[4]

In 2010, many customers threatened to leave Zendesk in response to a substantial price increase after new features were introduced.[12] Zendesk apologized, abandoned the pricing, and promised never to change pricing on pre-existing customers for features they already have.[9] That same year, Zendesk created its first sales team.[6] Zendesk moved to larger offices in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco in 2011.[7] The city and county of San Francisco provided Zendesk with a six-year payroll tax incentive to move to the area in exchange for doing community service.[4][7]

Zendesk grew internationally, and offices were established in Ireland, Denmark, and Australia.[4][13] In 2017, Zendesk opened an office in Singapore.[14] As of  2011 half of Zendesk's customers were outside the United States.[4] Although the company was not yet profitable, Zendesk's revenues grew five-fold from 2010 to 2012.[4] Revenues grew from $38 million in 2012 to $72 million in 2013.[5] Zendesk introduced its first app marketplace for third-party Zendesk software in 2012.[6] By 2013, the company had 450 employees.[6]

In 2014, Zendesk filed an initial public offering[15] and was valued at $1.7 billion.[5] The IPO raised $100 million.[16] That same year, Zendesk announced its first acquisition.[17] It bought a live-chat company called Zopim for $29.8 million.[17] It acquired a French analytics company called BIME for $45 million.[18] It also acquired Outbound.io, which developed software to manage direct communications with customers on social media sites.[19] Additionally, Zendesk acquired Base, who developed sales automation software that competed with Salesforce.com, for $50 million.[20]

In 2015, Zendesk filed oppositions at the United States Patent and Trademark Office to 49 trademarks including the word "zen". The Electronic Frontier Foundation characterized their approach of filing multiple trademark infringement lawsuits covering a wide range of businesses as trademark trolling, and EFF condemned the practice.[21][22][23]

Initially, Zendesk's software was focused on assisting small businesses, but it transitioned to aid larger companies over time.[24][25] Zendesk also transitioned from a focus on inbound customer inquiries into communicating with customers proactively based on comments they made online.[19] In 2016, Zendesk changed its logo and rebranded to emphasize contacting customers proactively.[26] It added features that turn online reviews and comments into a customer help ticket in September 2016 and acquired Outbound.io, which helps businesses respond to online complaints in 2017.[19][27] Zendesk introduced new analytics and automation products in 2012[28] and 2016.[26] In 2016, it added features that tell customer service agents which portions of the website a customer visited before contacting customer support.[29] That same year, Zendesk added features that attempt to predict which customers are most likely to cancel their subscription service.[30]