“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify!”
– Henry David Thoreau

Zendesk is a leading provider of web-based customer support software that is reinventing how companies service and engage with their customers. Built upon the idea that help desk software doesn’t have to be costly and complicated and should be focused on the customer experience, Zendesk lets companies offer high-quality support for both internal and external customers at minimal expense.

Zendesk was founded in Copenhagen, Denmark, in late 2007, by Mikkel Svane, Alexander Aghassipour and Morten Primdahl. The founders have extensive experience consulting with companies to implement large-scale help desk and customer support solutions. Their experience led them to conclude that there must be a better way than the complex, expensive solutions offered by the current crop of enterprise software vendors. Adhering to a “less is more” design philosophy, they set about to create a web-based solution that is easily affordable, simple to use and geared to the way people communicate and interact in today’s connected world.

The Zendesk product proved instantly popular. Early customers included MSNBC.com and Twitter. In March 2009, Zendesk raised initial funding from Charles River Ventures. This was followed a few months later by a $6 million investment led by Benchmark Capital, and the company relocated to San Francisco.

Zendesk acquired its thousandth customer in May 2009, and expanded its customer base to 5,000 by May 2010. Today, Zendesk customers span the globe with 35 percent located outside the United States, including John Lewis (UK), Lonely Planet (Australia), NZPOST (New Zealand), and Boxee (Israel).

Zendesk is easy to customize, integrate, and use so companies can quickly start offering better customer service. For more on Zendesk, take the Tour.