We’ve been hearing for the last six months of the evaporation of venture capital and the dearth of funding options for start-ups. It’s always nice to be able to break news of a company bucking this trend. Zendesk (CloudAve coverage here), is was a Danish based start-up that created a popular help desk tool (so popular that it’s used by such varied and high profile companies as Twitter, MSNBC.com and Rackspace.
Zendesk have announced this morning a funding round that I was first told of (and sworn to secrecy about) over a month ago. Charles River Ventures the well known Boston VC firm has secured the series A funding round for the growing company (Zendesk now boasts 1000 customers worldwide). Details of the investment size (both dollars and percentage) are confidential although I believe the stake is a minority one.
Along with the funding round Zendesk have relocated from the Danish base to Boston and this proximity to US companies should see them scale their company in the months ahead, they’ve already got some pretty excited evangelists including Twitter’s head of support Crystal Taylor who says that “Zendesk’s intuitive, elegant design makes issue tracking and resolution a pleasure”.
Zendesk has a pretty “off the wall” kind of a corporate persona. Over dinner with the VP of evangelism for Zendesk, Michael Folmer Hansen last month I quizzed him how this newly grown-up company could reconcile it’s casual and creative approach with the demands that a venture capital partner will undoubtedly bring. He was pretty confident that there was a path that would keep all stakeholders happy – founders, investors and customer. I sure hope so – I’ve enjoyed Zendesk’s unusual approach and would hate to see it stunted…
Attn. InkHouse PR: Barney does not blog here.
(they will know what this is all about)
also of note: Gist (gluecon sponsor) closed a 6.75mm Series A yesterday.
Congratulations to ZenDesk! It’s great to see “off the wall” companies managing to gain traction in the “corporate” market as well.
There’s far too many overcomplicated tools out there that have 1001 features, but where people only really “need” a small few. At the end of the day IT should enable as opposed to hinder.
We’ve tried to adopt the same philosophy with Beetil (http://www.beetil.com) and hopefully we can get to the same levels of success as the ZenDesk dudes!
Well done.