Mikkel Svane

Mikkel Svane is the co-founder and former CEO of the software company Zendesk. He has written Startupland, documenting his experiences of starting his company.

Early life and education Svane was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1971. and earned a degree in economics in the early 1990s. Initially, the founders funded the company themselves, while working consulting gigs on the side. Svane later said that he became CEO in 2007 because the other two co-founders were busy writing code. In 2014, Svane published a book about his life and starting Zendesk called "Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business." On November 28, 2022, Svane stepped down as CEO of Zendesk.