Mikkel Svane

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• How much time should one spend with customers? Is the voice of the customer important in your process or is innovation something that doesn't really involve customers in the beginning?

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    We invest a lot in having regular meetups around the world to meet with us face-to-face, but we also leverage as much social technology to stay connected and stay connected to our customers .

    We are always listening.

• How should one build a great team? What qualities and personalities are you looking for?

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    Personalities first!

    Qualities (skills) second!

    As I’ve said before, your cofounders and team that you’re going to be spending a lot of time with. Great people play well together, and a foundation of shared humor and respect goes a long way.

• We saw your announcement today with LogMeIn and everyone is trying to achieve the clarity of the message that you now have with media. How do you do this? Who does briefings in your organizations and how do you get media excited about the news?

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    Invest time, build a great team.

    We have a clear messaging strategy, which is built into our product and roadmap.

    Your product is just as much the message as it is the technology.

• How do you know when to keep going on a startup idea and when to call it quits? I heard stories of businesses about to close when the next day sales customers started calling...

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    This is a hard thing to define.

    Successful businesses have stamina and perseverance. It’s a hard decision to draw in the sand.

    Founders must persevere, but that said — don’t stay in a bad place.

• What is the newest emerging channel to engage with your customers?

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    No one is coming close to the engagement opportunities that Twitter is offering right now.

• What kind of places / events / forums (etc) are fruitful places for a founding team to "find each other" ... how did Alex, Morten & yourself come together? Cofounders who are smart, supportive & aligned largely determines whether a startup makes it through the first year. afterwards, the market decides.

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    For me it was leveraging my personal network, and the best advice I could give is that you need to know people outside of a business context, because you’re basically going to be living together.

    Find people you want to drink beer with, you have to love them.

• I have a web company that currently does x -- our clients have offered us insight into bettering x, but have also asked that we do y & z -- wondering how we should evaluate all the requests coming in.

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    Sometimes you have to make the decision to say “no” to more, and that includes even more money.

• How have things changed at Zendesk since you grew from 3 to 50 employees?

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    We’ve grown to having 2 refrigerators in our kitchen, one entirely for soft drinks and beer.

    On a more serious note, this kind of growth means that we’ve grown processes and structures. It also means investing time on building a company culture that includes things like our summer soccer picnic (our CTO broke his leg).

    That’s culture!

• Customer support is something that is easy to believe in. Have you found that because your business is based on simple idea, it was easier to sell and position?

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    The whole challenge in building a company and product is finding something easy to believe in.

    Customer support has been an overly neglected area. We’re in the business of helping businesses engage with their customers.

• What kind of CEO are you? Are you more of a business leader...? a product manager? an engineer?

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    I’m kind of a crossover, originally very product-focused, I’m working on becoming a people-powered kind of ceo.