Management
Mikkel Svane
Chief Executive Officer, Founder
After an inspirational trip to San Francisco in 1995 Mikkel launched what was one of Denmark’s first horizontal community portals. Less than a year later the portal was acquired by a Danish newspaper and Mikkel founded Caput, a software company specializing in standard software components for community building and social networks. Serving as its CEO until 2002 he became General Manager for the German service management consulting group Materna. His tenure there reunited him with former friends and colleagues Morten and Alex with whom he founded Zendesk and launched it in October 2007. Mikkel holds a BSc(Econ) in Market Economics from Denmark, is a frequent Twitter user and loves spending time with his wife and kids when not working with his awesome team and Zendesk customers.
Zack Urlocker
Chief Operating Officer
Zack heads up all customer-facing areas of Zendesk including Sales, Marketing, Business Development and Support. Zack comes to Zendesk from MySQL, where he was Executive VP of Products. Besides building the business model for MySQL, he helped grow revenues to more than $100 million annually. He has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry and has held executive management positions at Active Software, webMethods and Borland. Zack received his MBA from Northwestern University and earned a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Concordia University. He is a frequent speaker and writer about disruptive technologies and business models.
Rick Rigoli
Chief Financial Officer
Rick leads finance and administration, human resources, and legal efforts at Zendesk. Yes, he’s kind of a big deal around here. Rick has more than 20 years of high-tech financial experience, with both public and venture-backed companies. Prior to joining Zendesk, he was CFO at Brix Networks, sold to EXFO Electro-Optical Engineering in 2008 and VP of Finance and Administration of Yantra Corporation, sold to Sterling Commerce in 2005. Rick earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and accounting from the College of the Holy Cross. He is a member of both the American Institute and Massachusetts Society of CPAs.
Morten Primdahl
Chief Technology Officer, Founder
Morten brings to Zendesk a refined focus on the technical details. He’s involved on all technical levels – from the application to the infrastructure components and databases. Prior to co-founding Zendesk, Morten consulted on a number of technology projects, ranging from helping startups establish a technical platform, to doing heavy duty consulting for online banking systems. Morten earned a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Copenhagen.
Alexander Aghassipour
Chief Product Officer, Founder
Alexander leads our efforts to keep clean and elegant design a top priority for product strategy at Zendesk. Prior to founding Zendesk, he consulted with global corporations about design, global strategy, and recruiting. Alex also co-founded Araneum A/S, the largest Danish-owned digital media agency, acting as CEO and CTO for four years. Alex earned a master’s degree in information technology from the Technical University of Denmark.
Adrian McDermott
Vice President of Engineering
Adrian leads and manages Zendesk’s Engineering and Operations teams. Prior to Zendesk, he was CTO at Attributor where he applied “lean startup” techniques to build multiple product lines, and as general manager, ran video compliance business from first customer sales until business acquisition. And here’s an interesting factoid: Adrian was the very first engineer hired by Plumtree way back in 1997, rising to VP of Engineering for Plumtree/BEA AquaLogic User Interaction Servers, a role he filled through their IPO and post-acquisition by BEA. Adrian has worked as an itinerant software consultant in London, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Guam. He has a 1st Class Honours degree in computer science from De Montfort University.
Jeff Wiss
Vice President, Demand Generation
Jeff leads demand generation and public relations for Zendesk. Previously, he served as Vice President of Demand Generation at MySQL which was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 for $1 billion and then by Oracle in 2010. At both Sun and Oracle, Jeff headed up the marketing function for MySQL. Prior to that, Jeff was a marketing consultant for 16 years focused on market development, company and product positioning, messaging, and lead generation. Jeff has more than 25 years experience in marketing, launching a variety of products for such companies as WashingtonPost.com, Newsweek InterActive, Rand McNally New Media, Oblix, Borland, Netscape, webMethods, and Dr Solomon’s Software.
Michael Hansen
Vice President and General Manager, APAC
Michael’s responsible for business development and strategic growth, and oversees all major accounts, partners and channels at Zendesk. An IT sales veteran, Michael has more than 20 years experience in a variety of sales and marketing roles spanning the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. Prior to becoming Zendesk’s first employee, Michael was selling help desk projects in Australia. Michael is an army officer who has studied at the Danish Technical University. He tends to be a fan favorite at Zendesk meetups, enjoys scuba diving all over the world, and despite being more than 6′ tall, owns and regularly drives a SmartCar.
Matt Price
Vice President and General Manager, EMEA
Matt is responsible for growing and supporting the Zendesk customer community in Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Since starting his career on the Borland tools helpdesk, Matt has held executive positions in sales, marketing and product in the US and Europe at high-growth software companies such as ATG, Wily Technology and Troux Technologies. He holds a BSc (Hons) in Computer Science from the University of Reading.
Matt is successfully using Zendesk to support his two teenage children: managing tickets for IT support, transport, funding and handling complaints on his dress sense.
Board and Advisors
Devdutt Yellurkar
Charles River Ventures, Board Member
As a partner at Charles River Ventures since 2008, Devdutt Yellurkar’s investment interests include Cloud applications and infrastructure. Previously he was Venture Partner at Rho Ventures and CEO and Co-Founder at Yantra Corporation, which was acquired by Sterling Commerce, a division of AT&T, in 2005.
Peter Fenton
Benchmark Capital, Board Member
Peter Fenton joined Benchmark Capital in 2006 after spending seven years as a partner with Accel Partners, where his investment interests included software, digital media, and technology enabled services. Prior to joining the venture capital community, he spent several years working with Silicon Valley software and high-technology companies as an entrepreneur and strategy consultant.
Dana Stalder
Matrix Partners, Board Member
Dana Stalder is a Silicon Valley based general partner at Matrix Partners, where he invests in early stage software and internet companies. Dana joined Matrix in 2008 from PayPal, where he was a senior vice president and managed all business operations, including product, sales, marketing and technology.
Matt Cohler
Benchmark Capital, Board Observer
Matt Cohler has extensive experience working with great entrepreneurs to build lasting consumer Internet companies, having served in senior management roles at Facebook and LinkedIn. Before LinkedIn, he was a consultant in McKinsey & Company’s Silicon Valley office and worked in Beijing for AsiaInfo, the telecom solutions provider that built China’s Internet infrastructure, prior to the company’s initial public offering.
Christoph Janz
Point Nine Capital, Advisor
Christoph Janz, who recently joined early-stage venture capital firm Point Nine Capital as a partner, was Zendesk’s first outside investor. Besides Zendesk, Christoph has invested in a number of other successful SaaS companies such as FreeAgent Central, Clio and Propertybase. Christoph previously co-founded several software and Internet startups, including comparison shopping engine DealPilot and personalized startpage Pageflakes.
