Announcing Series A, New Boston HQ and 1,000 Customers (PR)

Big day today for the Zendesk team. We're announcing our Series A investment by Charles River Ventures, opening of our new Boston headquarters and that Zendesk now has 1,000 customers sharing the good help desk karma, here amongst Twitter, MSNBC, Condé Nast Publications, Scribd, Rackspace Cloud and John Lewis Plc.

On the last day of October last year, a taxi pulled up in front of Zendesk's offices in downtown Copenhagen and out jumped Devdutt Yellurkar from Charles River Ventures (CRV). He had stumbled upon us on the web, and had flown in to have a chat about a future together. The rest is, as you say, history, and today we're happy to announce that we have raised our Series A from CRV and that Devdutt has joined our board.

We're experiencing tremendous growth at Zendesk, and we have a lot of plans for our product. If we want to keep up with the customer demand and fulfill our own product ambitions, we need to make an evolutional leap. And to do that we need good counseling, a kick-ass network, über talented people, energy boosters, lebensraum and money in the bank. And with CRV we get all of that.

Zendesk's new corporate headquarters is situated in downtown Boston, on South Street in Boston's old Leather district. We have approx. 70% of our business in the US, and it makes sense to get closer to the action. We will remain a global operation and retain our operations in both Europe and APAC.

Last month we passed 1,000 customers. Meaning that one thousand active paying organizations all over the world are using Zendesk for supporting customers or employees right now. It doesn't seem to end and we want to reach out to some of the original first-movers and Zendesk customers such as MAXroam Cubic Telecom, WebExpenses, Laughing Squid, TETCO and Inquisite Inc. Thank you for being such excellent and loyal customers. We owe it all to you.

Full press release below the fold.

Contact:

Beth Monaghan

InkHouse (for Zendesk)

781-916-9090 x801

zendeskpr@inkhousepr.com

Zendesk secures series A funding from CRV and opens U.S. headquarters

in mission to spread good karma to help desks everywhere

Zendesk’s help desk in the cloud brings tender loving customer care to 1,000 organizations

Boston, Mass. (May 6, 2009) – Inspiring the help desk 2.0 movement through a focus on enlightened customer support, Zendesk has secured series A venture capital financing from Charles River Ventures. Zendesk’s SaaS (software as a service) help desk system has been providing tender loving customer care to companies including Twitter, MSNBC.com and Rackspace Cloud since 2007 and has now passed the 1,000 customer mark. The financing will be used to expand operations and painless customer support to organizations worldwide, starting with a new U.S. headquarters in Boston.

“Beautifully simple. That is all you need to know about Zendesk. What’s important is a focus on the customer as an individual,” said Mikkel Asger Svane, CEO of Zendesk. “Zendesk has grown by selling to individual people, not companies, who are embracing a more agile approach to customer service. This financing will help us build on our success and bring good help desk karma to any organization seeking enlightenment.”

“I was sold when I set up a help desk on my own in two minutes,” said Devdutt Yellurkar, partner at Charles River Ventures. 

Zendesk enables any company – from Fortune 500 conglomerates to Web 2.0 startups and PTAs – to offer professional-grade support service with very little effort, so they can capitalize on valuable user feedback. Svane added, “Zendesk gives companies a unique differentiator in this commoditized world of easy and inexpensive ‘me-too’ products. We give them a way to create meaningful relationships with customers through online support that leverages new communications tools like chat, Twitter, Facebook and email.”

 “Zendesk has it all: beauty, brains and a wonderfully responsive team behind it, too!,” said Crystal Taylor, head of support for Twitter. “Zendesk's intuitive, elegant design makes issue tracking and resolution a pleasure. Ticket information is fully integrated with Twitter's system for accurate user history and reporting, and users have a working archive of all of their requests.”

Zendesk is on a mission to bring good help desk karma to organizations large and small. Zendesk’s approach ranges from the modern help desk to the Buddha Machine Wall where ambient patterns from Chinese musicians FM3 soothe away the edge of the office. Follow @zendesk on Twitter to see what will come next this June. 

About Zendesk

Zendesk is inspiring the help desk 2.0 movement through a focus on enlightened customer support. By leveraging the benefits of Web-based communications and social media, Zendesk extends good help desk karma to any company looking to offer professional-grade support service with very little effort. Backed by Charles River Ventures, Zendesk was founded in 2007 and has more than 1,000 customers including John Lewis, MSNBC and Twitter.  To learn more, go to www.zendesk.com or follow @zendesk on Twitter.