Having once spent every waking (and nonwaking) moment together, Alex, Morten, and I don't see each other that often anymore. While Alex and Morten still have critical roles at the company and are running their own teams, doing people management or all the other management stuff has never really been their thing. So much of the early work rested on their shoulders, building a beautiful new-generation customer service product, and my biggest contribution back then was primarily having opinions about everything. I'm grateful they believed in me enough to allow me to grow into a role where I could truly make a difference.
Alex, who now has a beautiful (Danish) wife with exquisite taste (of course) and two kids, can no longer work a hundred hours a week. He works about half as much now. With big teams, things take longer, and he says he's a very impatient person who sometimes misses the old days with three guys in a room just doing it. Retrieving and retaining that sense of just doing it and getting shit done, killing your darlings and making beautiful brutal decisions, will be key to keeping Zendesk a company that keeps pushing the boundaries and disrupting the status quo.
Morten, too, sometimes says he misses the old days, but that it's more the romantic version of how it was—rather than how it actually was—that he misses. The truth is, we can do much more impressive things much faster today because of the team and structure we've built. And yes, it's not always cozy and quaint, but it's more impressive and rewarding. Morten probably lives the rock star life that any aspiring entrepreneur seeks. He's young, handsome, and successful, and, despite a series of fantastic girlfriends, still unmarried in California. I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't want to live Morten's current life.
Thomas Pedersen left to start his own company, OneLogin. We tried, but we couldn't keep him from pursuing his own dream. Today, he says, those years working for Zendesk at home were the happiest time in his life: “It was worry-free, there was no pressure. It was a very creative phase: No investors, no upset customers, no VC pressure.”
Michael Hansen is still one of my best friends. He very much personifies the original soul of Zendesk and is still with us, now based in Australia, or is it Hong Kong? Michael is still a gypsy. Over three years he traveled the APAC region and kick-started our operations from Melbourne to Manila to Tokyo. He's not the biggest fan of bureaucracy, processes, and all the other big company stuff, and he struggles with some of the elements of growth. But things change all the time in a company that is growing quickly, and that is not always easy. For anyone. Michael still represents what it means to build a customer-focused culture and get shit done. And he spends an increasing amount of time pounding that message into the rest of the team around the world.
It took us a few years to persuade Matthew to move from Boston to San Francisco, but we finally succeeded, and Matthew truly found his calling with Zendesk. Today he leads our creative video team—and even stars in a few of the videos. I involved him deeply in writing our S-1, as I wanted to make sure we were true to our tone. I am so proud of Matthew and his journey and happy we have created a company where something like this can happen.
Rick is still one of my most trusted employees—and friends. Despite everything. He still lives in Boston, but we get him out to San Francisco at least once a month. It's such a fantastic advantage to have Rick on the team, as he remembers exactly how things went from three-guys-who-didn't-know-anything to public company reporting requirements. That kind of perspective on your business is priceless.
Amanda has been loyal to us all these years and has become one of the most trusted people in the organization. She's one of the only people in the organization who has absolutely no problem telling me why I'm wrong about something. It was such a scoop for us hiring Amanda, as she's not only a hard and smart worker but sets such a high standard for everybody else in the company.
Mick is still happily in love with California, living in Palo Alto and enjoying the extra 20 degrees and the warm evenings. We're still amazed at how quickly he sold his house, uprooted his family, and settled with us here.
Devdutt is still on our board. He taught me to drink martinis. Dirty and up. I don't think any other VC could have held Morten, Alex, and me together in those early days. A few days after the IPO, he came by the office to invite the three of us and our families out for a grand dinner with him and his wife. As we started to synchronize our calendars, we couldn't find an available date for all of us until almost five months out. I think at that point Devdutt truly realized just how far away we were from the early days.
Matt Cohler was a board observer all the way to the IPO. He never missed a meeting and is still one of the smartest and coolest people I know, and I think Mie is a little bit in love with him, although his Facebook feed is packed with models. At the last board meeting prior to the IPO, we gave him a T-shirt that said “I f***ing discovered Zendesk and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.”
I still appreciate getting gently mind fucked by Peter Fenton over Burgundy wines on RN74 from time to time. I always end up smarter and more open-minded—and incapable of driving. At one point it became a thing with my oldest daughter, Ella, that if the car was not in the garage in the morning she would ask me if I had been “out with Peter Penton.” (Mistake intentional; that's how she says it.) In the short time I've known Peter he has become the father of three kids, sold and IPO'ed more companies than I can count, built a house in the hills of Big Sur, and trashed his knee heli-skiing (almost handicapping himself for life), only to run a hill marathon in 3:01 six months later. And oh yeah, he has become a certified helicopter pilot too. I don't even…
Mie, the kids, and I live in Bernal Heights in San Francisco and have completely fallen in love with the neighborhood. We go back to Denmark and the chicken farm every summer, and sometimes we miss Denmark. The company is now truly global, and I travel way too much, which is hard on the family. A combination of more-expensive tickets, Bloody Marys, and my own little rituals has made flying something I can almost enjoy. In November 2012 we had another beautiful baby girl, named Eva—the first real American in the family.
Thank you for taking the time to read my book. Feel free to reach out and follow me on Twitter: @mikkelsvane.