Mikkel Svane, CEO of Zendesk, reflects on market segmentation and pricing strategy with CRV general partner Devdutt Yellurkar.
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,…”
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.”
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 …”
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”
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.”
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”