Mikkel Svane | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1971 [1] |
| 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.
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
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, using an old door as a desk to work upon, which later hung in the Zendesk headquarters as the original 'Zen desk'. [6] [7] Svane later said that he became CEO in 2007 because the other two co-founders were busy writing code. [1]
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] [8] 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] [8] 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. [9] On November 28, 2022, Svane stepped down as CEO of Zendesk. [10]