Danish Firm Finds Success in the USA – Meet Zendesk CEO & Founder Mikkel Svane

By Carol L. Schroeder, co-author of Eat Smart in Denmark, for The Danish Pioneer Newspaper –

Desperate cravings for flæskesteg are a small price to pay for relocating your company from Copenhagen to San Francisco – and growing it to the point that it goes public on the New York Stock Exchange. Mikkel Svane is one of the founders of Zendesk, a cloud-based enterprise software company assisting over 52,000 customers in 150 countries around the world with their customer relations. He and his partners Morten Primdahl and Alexander Aghassipour started the company in Denmark in 2007. But they found that when they were ready to aggressively grow Zendesk, Denmark didn’t have enough investment companies, and U.S. venture capital firms weren’t investing in small Danish startups. They were desperate for cash, Svane explains, and had an offer for funding from a VC (venture capital) firm in the US. “Accepting the round of funding meant we would move to US, and in the end we knew taking Zendesk to the United States was the right move.”

Taking that step may have been easier for Mikkel Svane than for his partners, because his father lived in Bronxville, NY as a child. His grandfather was stationed there to represent the interests of Greenland while it was under US protection during WWII. And as Svane mentions, “I had fallen in love with the US and San Francisco during several visits there. Being in Copenhagen I felt like the odd man out building my own startup, but in San Francisco I found so many like-minded entrepreneurs that were in the same boat as me. In Silicon Valley, the tech scene was alive and thriving in a way I had never experienced before and that’s when I started thinking about San Francisco as the place where we needed to grow our business – it really felt like I was finally home.”

“I would not be surprised if other Danish companies follow suit,” Svane commented, “since majority of investment funds and VCs are out here. However, as the Danish tech scene is growing, there are many more opportunities there now than there were back in 2007. With the country’s bustling tech scene, I think we’ll see more successful companies grow but decide to keep Denmark as their home base.”

Zendesk began in Copenhagen, and according to Svane, “our “headquarters” was initially my apartment, but that was being taken over by my kids and family life so we soon switched everything over to partner Alex’s loft. It was an old loft that had been remodeled just a few years earlier, but it was also very much a bachelor pad. It had a semi-functional kitchen with more drinks and condiments than actual food, and we all worked on different schedules. This made for a slow way to launch a company. We worked on building the product for eighteen months.”

“In the earliest months—those days in my apartment and Alex’s loft—it was all about innovation and inspiration. Everything was a blank slate. Anything was possible. But a lot comes with the reality of building a business and in the early days we spent a lot of time together, got on each other’s nerves, disagreed, and faced overwhelming challenges. We ran into issues raising funds, didn’t have salaries and struggled to make ends meet. But our early years in Denmark had a huge positive influence on the company and without those experiences Zendesk wouldn’t be what it is today.”

Time has shown that although Zendesk left Denmark, it is still Danish in many ways. “The Danish influence is evident in every aspect of Zendesk, from our office design aesthetic to our company culture. Our offices are clean and simple, with airy feel that touches on design elements unique to Denmark. Danish influence is also reflected in our easy and sleek product design. Community service is ingrained in our culture, since Danes take care of one another and the neighborhood they live in. Our Danish roots touch every part of Zendesk and I love to see that culture reflected in Silicon Valley.”

Another uniquely Danish trait at Zendesk is the “lakrids” test. Mikkel Svane reports that he looks for authenticity in everyone he hires, and that for a time he would offer candidates a piece of salty Danish licorice. Since this is an acquired taste for most non-Danes, he considered an honest response to its strong flavor a positive sign.

In addition to running the wildly successful Zendesk, Mikkel Svane has written Startup Land: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business (Jossey-Bass, 2014). The book talks about the company’s growth its humble beginnings in a Copenhagen loft to its debut on Wall Street with a $100 million initial public offering. But despite the busy, happy life in San Francisco he describes in the book, Svane says “Sometimes we miss Denmark — and I periodically get desperate cravings for flæskesteg.”

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