Mikkel Svane

Founder & CEO, Zendesk · 1 appearance on the record.

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Mikkel Svane is the Founder and CEO of Zendesk. He shares operational and strategic learnings from scaling the company across various stages.

8statements → 4claims → 3claims resolved → 100%fully supported → 4/5average certainty → 1.5/5average debate potential → 1said about them ↓

3 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 4 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 assertions · 4 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 4 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 1 names no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Mikkel argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Svane: Zendesk Scaled From $0 to $10M ARR in 36 Months

“Zero to one took us 18 months, and one to 10 took us another 18 months, so of course it was a very, very busy 18 months”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 15:43 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

What they said8 What others said1 Episodes1

Everything Mikkel Svane said on the Official SaaStr Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight

Svane: Bad angel investors ruin early startups with personal agendas

“I see so many examples with small startups, where, you know, they get ruined by early angel investors, who are, you know, spending all their time challenging the company, and like, have their own agendas, and like, don't focus on just making the founder great,…”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 9:15 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

Insight

Svane: Flexible pricing and packaging is competitively disruptive

“Being really flexible with your pricing and your packaging can be really, really competitively disruptive. That you can come with a price point, or you can come with a pricing model that works for your customer, that is almost, that feels designed for their ne…”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 23:14 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

Insight

Svane: Fundraising is about future positioning, not valuation

“What matters is that you grow up, you get out there, and I think for any kind of fundraising, it's ultimately not about the valuation. It's really about the team and the path you set yourself up for after that.”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 26:16 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

Insight

Svane: B2B startups can disrupt legacy vendors via consumer-oriented CIOs

“Everybody here who has a B to B startup, it's, there's a huge opportunity right now because a lot of the established vendors are lacking tremendously behind. You have a whole new generation of much more consumer-friendly, consumer-oriented CIOs and executives …”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 28:10 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

Assertion Supported

Svane: Zendesk Scaled From $0 to $10M ARR in 36 Months

“Zero to one took us 18 months, and one to 10 took us another 18 months, so of course it was a very, very busy 18 months”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 15:43 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

Assertion Supported

Svane: Zendesk operated with no sales team until $10M run rate

“Until, kind of, our first, you know, until, like, ten million dollars in, in run rate, we didn't have sales. It was all a self-service business.”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 20:18 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Svane: Zendesk expanded from small UK division to thousands of Adobe users

“Our first Adobe customer was a small division in the UK, and now we have, you know, thousands of people within Adobe using our software. Same with Disney and a lot of other organizations”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 24:00 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

Assertion Supported

Svane: Zendesk has close to 100,000 business customers globally

“Been on this journey for almost 10 years now and have close to a 100,000 businesses around the world using our software for providing great customer service, great customer engagement.”

Mikkel Svane Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 1:40 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

The other half of the tape: Mikkel Svane's own voice is left out of every number here. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →

Statements about Mikkel Svane, by other people (1)

Assertion Supported

Yellurkar: Zendesk generated $312M in revenue in 2016

“Three hundred and twelve million dollars in revenue in 2016, that's about three hundred and twelve million dollars more Than when Kristoff and I met you.”

Devdutt Yellurkar Aug 23, 2017 ▶ 2:36 Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Zendesk From Day 0 to Today: The Lessons Learned	Aug 23, 2017	20m

Mikkel Svane

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

Statements about Mikkel Svane, by other people (1)

Appearances (1)

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