Cloud helpdesk service provider Zendesk today debuted on the New York Stock Exchange with the stocks seeing a 49% surge on their IPO price, taking its value to just under a billion dollars.
Last year Decoding the New Economy had the opportunity to talk to Mikkel Svane, the founder of Zendesk about his company.
Svane is an enthusiastic, open guy and clearly passionate about customer service – a field that’s the ugly stepsister of modern business. As Svane himself says, “no-one ever gets the girls by working on the helpdesk.”
‘Beautiful and elegant’ is a phrase Svane uses to describe his software and it’s notable how many other founders of cloud services use those words about their products – Xero’s Rod Drury even uses it as the company’s slogan.
Like many cloud services, both Xero and Zendesk are still not making a profit and a big fat stage for a stockmarket listing is always a worrying sign that an IPO might have been undervalued.
At the moment though, the initial stockmarket success of Zendesk is a win for some nice guys.
Interestingly, in the time it’s taken for Zendesk to progress from startup to listed company, their technology and ‘help desk’ paradigm has been leapfrogged by ‘invisible help desk’ providers like Help Scout and Groove. Will be interesting to see if these providers experience a similar trajectory.