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Zendesk history
Zendesk company history timeline
Zendesk launched as a lean startup on October 1, 2007, and had paying customers the following month.
Zendesk was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007 by three friends: Morten Primdahl, Alexander Aghassipour, and Mikkel Svane.
By August 2009 Zendesk raised its series B led by Benchmark Capital, and moved headquarters to its final home in San Francisco.
Primdahl, Svane, and Aghassipour (l-r) when they first moved to the United States in 2009.
Primdahl says that Zendesk didn’t start establishing an actual product team in 2010.
Primdahl says that the company didn’t add a sales team until 2010, and the first 10,000 customers came completely through word of mouth and light advertising via AdWords.
In 2010, many customers threatened to leave Zendesk in response to a substantial price increase after new features were introduced.
Salesforce did end up buying a customer-service SaaS — Assistly for $50 million in 2011 — and rebranded it Desk.com.
Zendesk moved to larger offices in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco in 2011.
Zendesk introduced its first app marketplace for third-party Zendesk software in 2012.
While Svane and the company declined to give a timeline, right now it looks like the company will file its paperwork around mid-year in 2014.
In 2014, Zendesk filed an initial public offering and was valued at $1.7 billion.
In 2016, Zendesk changed its logo and rebranded to emphasize contacting customers proactively.
In 2017, Zendesk opened an office in Singapore.
The company first moved into sales software with its September 2018 acquisition of competitor Base.
An enterprise version of the software-as-a-service product was released in 2018.
In 2018, the company introduced Zendesk Suite, which combines social media, live-chat, email, and other communications into a single ticket system.
By 2018, Zendesk had annual revenues of $500 million.
In May 2019, Zendesk acquired Montreal-based Smooch, for an undisclosed amount.
The bot initially had limited functionality, but was expanded in 2019.
In 2019, Zendesk first released its "Sunshine" tool, which is focused on direct-messaging customers on social media sites.
Zendesk's sales automation software was later revamped with Zendesk Sell in 2020, which improved integration with Zendesk's customer support software.
In 2020, Zendesk announced more tools for messaging customers on social media and enhancements to its customer relationship management features.
In October 2021, Zendesk announced that it was acquiring Momentive Global Inc., formerly SurveyMonkey, for $4.13 billion.
In 2021 for example, several companies joined Zendesk marketplace, such as Crowlingo for multilingual data collection, Verse for lead conversion and ViiBE for remote visual support.
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Zendesk competitors
| Company name | Founded date | Revenue | Employee size | Job openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1998 | $350.0B | 139,995 | 3,875 | |
| Intuit | 1983 | $16.3B | 10,600 | 1,054 |
| Juniper Networks | 1996 | $5.1B | 9,400 | - |
| Citrix | 1989 | $3.2B | 9,000 | 6 |
| SugarCRM | 2004 | $60.0M | 450 | 23 |
| Quest Software | 1987 | $857.4M | 3,850 | - |
| Yammer | 2008 | $50.0M | 85 | - |
| Twilio | 2008 | $4.5B | 6,000 | 23 |
| DocuSign | 2003 | $3.0B | 7,461 | 88 |
| Freshdesk | 2010 | $126.4M | 3,917 | 92 |
Zendesk history FAQs
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Zendesk may also be known as or be related to Zendesk, Zendesk Inc, Zendesk Inc. and Zendesk, Inc.