134 From Kitchen Table Startup to Silicon Valley Mega-Success with Mikkel Svane

"It's all the little things that matter tremendously." - Mikkel Svane If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at lewishowes.com/podcast/mikkel-svane/ Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 134 with Mikel Svaney.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Thank you guys so much for joining me today. Very excited about today's guest. His name is Mikel and he is from Denmark. And this is about starting up a business and the real story of what it takes to risk it all and go for broke. Now conventional wisdom says most startups need to be in Silicon Valley, started by young engineers around a sexy new hot idea, and backed by VC funding. But as Mikel Svaney reveals in Startup Land, his new book, the story of founding Zendesk was anything but conventional. And Mikel is the founder of Zendesk, which really transformed the customer support industry and business.

• 1:14Lewis Howes?

  And so many people use this software online to manage their customer support. So you're going to learn a lot about customer support in this, also the journey of starting up a business, a journey from moving from Denmark over to the US and the transition of that. The differences between the European mentality versus the US mentality, and the positives and negatives of each, how to manage having multiple business partners in a business and a startup, and much, much more. Very excited to bring him on. He is an interesting, fun guy, lots of wisdom, and I know you're going to dig this one. So let's dive into number 134 with Mikel Svaney.

• 2:01Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Excited to connect you with today's guest. His name is Mikhail Svana. I believe I'm saying it correct. How you doing, Mikhail?

• 2:13Speaker 01

  You butchered it. No, I'm doing, I'm doing fine. Thank you, Louis.

• 2:17Lewis Howes?

  I'm very excited. We were just chatting about handball because you're from the home country where handball was invented. And we just had a conversation that no one in the United States knows about handball. They all think it's a different type of sport where you hit a ball against a wall.

• 2:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33Lewis Howes?

  But in fact, it's an extremely exciting sport. And you said you used to play growing up, so I'm glad we got to connect there.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:39Lewis Howes?

  And you are known for a very powerful piece of software called Zendesk that you created with a couple of buddies back in the day. And it's taken over the world. You know, 150, you have customers in over 150 countries and it's just, it's grown like crazy. I don't know anyone who doesn't know about Zendesk, who's working in the online field or online business or anything like that. So congratulations on the success, first off.

• 3:05Speaker 01

  No, thank you so much. Thank you, Louis.

• 3:07Lewis Howes?

  And your book is called Startup Land. How three guys risked everything to turn an idea into a global business. And you've created a global business. But I'd like to figure out first, how did Zendesk first come about? And what was, who came up with the idea? And how did you get it started?

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I think in many ways, it's a very traditional tech startup story. We are three founders and two of us spent a few years in the customer service software industry and were underwhelmed by the quality of the software in that industry. And, and like the whole lack of, of customer centricity in the industry. Like, nobody really cared about customer service. It was very much a cost center. And not something that people saw as an opportunity to better engage and relate with their customers. So, so we set out just to build a more beautiful, simple, straightforward piece of software and, and use like, brought it up to date, made it modern, like it's so it's cloud-based, it's straightforward,

• 4:09Speaker 01

  they have a beautiful interface and very consumerish in kind of its approach. And, and you know, we didn't have a big business plan or everything. We just, we put it out there and, and, and we got a lot of early, uh, great feedback on it.

• 4:23Lewis Howes?

  Now, you're in Copenhagen when this happened or somewhere in Denmark, right?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  Correct, we were in Copenhagen. We were working out of my co-founder's, uh, small kitchen.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  And we did that for almost two years, bootstrapped it for almost two years.

• 4:38Lewis Howes?

  Okay, so you bootstrapped. Did you take on any investment at all?

• 4:41Speaker 01

  We did a little, uh, we did a little family and friends. Uh, we did that in the early days, uh, because we couldn't raise money in Europe. Uh, so we did a little family and friends and there was an angel, a German angel investor who, who, uh, who, uh, who, um, took on to that, uh, round, but it was a relatively small round, but it, it got us through the first couple of years.

• 5:04Lewis Howes?

  And when did you realize that it started to take off? When did it start to really like say, whoa, okay, some big names are using this and it's starting to make a lot of money?

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I think there's been many small milestones along the way. It's, it's never like, it's never like you have one big eureka moment, you know? But like we, we, we, even in the early days, we saw good signals of progress. Suddenly like, um, I remember when MSNBC contacted us out of the blue and wanted to use Sendus for their internal customer service. And that was like, that was a big thing for us. Um, and, uh, and, uh, I remember later when some of the startups, you know, C and C, they converted, started using Sendus too. I was also like, okay, now like, there's suddenly all these cool companies that we heard on, and TechCrunch and so on, started using Sendus. And these two companies like, you know, Script and Twitter and Yam,

• 5:58Speaker 01

  so on, like this really cool that they suddenly started using Sendus.

• 6:01Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. Okay, cool. So some, was that within the first couple of years? Some of these cool, cool companies started using it and bigger names started using it? And when, when did it start to turn profitable for you guys? When were you like not, you know, on your kitchen table anymore? And you had like an office with some real income coming in?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  So like we didn't like this. This was very much a bootstrap startup with no offices and so on for the first couple of years. And it wasn't until we started raising money in the US and moved the company here to San Francisco in the summer of two thousand and nine. That it really became like a real company and where we started to hire an organization and and and and building a real team around it and so on.

• 6:45Lewis Howes?

  And when did you launch the company then? It start if you came to the US in two thousand nine?

• 6:49Speaker 01

  So we launched in two thousand seven. So a little of a close to two years after we launched, we moved the operations to the US.

• 6:56Lewis Howes?

  And when did it go public?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  We went public in last year in two thousand fourteen, May of two thousand fourteen. So, you know, six something, six and a half years after we we we launched. And, you know, close to five years after we moved to the US.

• 7:18Lewis Howes?

  So it sounds like to me that you created like an American dream story, but you didn't start in America.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  No, but I think we we we I think I think the American dreams, the American dream concept means means something to us like this that. Because especially in the world of tech startups, you know, there's a there's a big mental difference between San Francisco, Silicon Valley and the mentality in Europe. And you have an opportunity to dream big and do bigger and and and think bigger here and and go all the way and and and truly disrupt an industry or and and and you don't have the mentality in Denmark or in Denmark or in for that matter in a lot of Europe. So.

• 8:01Lewis Howes?

  What is what is the mentality in Denmark or in Europe? What what is it? And how is it different than the American spirit?

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Well, I think that that it's, you know, we have a lot of, we have a lot of, I think we just we think smaller. You know, it's it's not like you see three guys with a computer and you say, okay, these guys can disrupt an industry, you know, it's that's not how it is like and and you have. In the US, everything can be done. You know, everything is possible here. And in Europe, it's much more a world that is dominated by our legacy and by how we used to do things and, you know, how things have always been. And that's just, it's just a very different mentality. You have more like old boys networks. You have these clubs and secret handshakes and all these different things in Europe

• 8:51Speaker 01

  that just characterizes a region with a much longer history and with much more legacy and a lot more luggage, if you will. Whereas there is, especially in California, there's a clean shake slate. There's like a, there's a willingness to start all over and kill your darlings and all these different things. And I think for a tech startup, that is incredibly inspiring.

• 9:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's almost like if you live in America, anything is possible. There's that mentality, at least maybe in Silicon Valley and some of the bigger cities, that anything is possible. Now, I'm curious, did you have a secret handshake?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  That's a lot. I think in regions like, you know, in Europe and Denmark, many other countries, there are a lot of secret handshakes.

• 9:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, did you have one, though?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 9:43Lewis Howes?

  Now, now, why did you and your two friends have something different inside of you? Have a different spirit inside of you than the general spirit in Europe and in Denmark? Why was your guys' energy different?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Well, I think, I don't know. I think we had this longing, like we wanted to do something. And it was a number of very tough decisions to take it all the way. Like it is something like taking, you know, ripping your family and yourself up with their roots and moving them across the world. It's just a big task, you know? And it's, it's like, you have to be in a very healthy position in many ways to be able to do that. Because it is, it is just, it's a big change. And we've been so fortunate to be in a position to be able to do that. Been very lucky with the business and the people we have surrounded ourselves with,

• 10:44Speaker 01

  the investors in the company, the board that we put together and a lot of the early employees and the staff that we put together, the team we put together. They've always wanted us to do better and be better and always helped us think bigger and more creatively about the opportunity ahead of us and the business we could build. So, you know, I think it's all the little things that matters tremendously. But taking that first step and saying, okay, let's give it a shot at building the business here in San Francisco rather than doing it out there. Was the platform for everything else that succeeded for us.

• 11:20Lewis Howes?

  So would you say when you decided to move and the process of being in Silicon Valley and in America in general, that everything shifted and you wouldn't be as big today or successful without that move?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:33Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. You talk about in your book about the mindset in Silicon Valley, about how everyone talks about failing fast. And you say that you're never okay with that. Can you talk about why you're not okay with that mindset?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Well, I think that there's some sense in kind of the fail fast, iterate quickly mentality of-

• 11:58Lewis Howes?

  Being startup.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's definitely some sense to it. But I think that everybody, but you have to have, you have to have a safety net. You have to have, you know, you have to have a big cushion to be able to think positively about failure. For most small businesses, for most startups, you know, where you don't have the cushion, where you don't have anything to fall back on and so on, like failing is typically a thing with big consequences, you know? It has consequences for you, for your personal finances, for your employees that suddenly is without a job and for your families and for all these customers that believed in you and believed in your product and gave you their money and all the partners you

• 12:41Speaker 01

  have and so on, like that, you, that whole disappointing all these people and disappointing yourself and your family and so on, that, that kind of failure is just really, really tough.

• 12:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, because you're always letting someone down, right?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 12:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, that's challenging. So it's more, what I'm hearing from you was it's more like a dance. It's more like, yes, you want to iterate and come out with something fast. But also you want to have a consistent plan. Like if something doesn't go right, you don't want to just give it up right away, right?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  No, I think that, and you know, that is the dilemma of every tech startup entrepreneur, that on one part of you, you have to be fully blindly motivated and dedicated to what you're doing and not believing in anything else. But there's another part of you that has to be realistic about where you are and the consequences of what you do. And then that is the everyday dilemma of a tech startup founder or an entrepreneur. And that's not easy. There's no formula for that. And nobody can help you kind of really navigate through that process.

• 13:47Lewis Howes?

  Gotcha. A lot of people talk about creating something remarkable. You know, the best marketing plan is to have something remarkable, be a purple cow, you know, stand out, and that will help you sell and create awareness for your business, your company, your product, whatever it may be, your software even. But in with Zen Test, you talk about it being not sexy or not really a purple cow, let's say. It's, and you talk about it's beautiful being boring. Now, why is it, why is boring beautiful?

• 14:23Speaker 01

  I think that, I think that, I think it's, it's, it's, and I'm talking to somebody, something that probably happens in most, you know, with, with the most of the technology industry, that you take something that is typically boring and then you make it, you know, a boring process, like, you know, a business process, or some, something that none, nobody really enjoys doing. And then you figure out a way of just making that simple and easy and straightforward and, and kind of responsive and sexy and, and just like interesting. And then suddenly you can completely redefine what that means for people and it can change

• 15:05Speaker 01

  an industry. I think a little bit like, think about like when you used to receive a check and you had to go down to the bank to put it into your account. Nowadays, you can just, you know, scan it with your smartphone and, and you know, it's on your account right away. That kind of, that kind of taking a process that is incredibly boring and, and then suddenly making it super easy and sexy. It just, it transforms the whole like notion of giving checks because suddenly it's so easy. And like, we did that on a little bit bigger scale with, with customer service. Like customer service was, nobody, like, nobody wants to contact customer service. If you contact customer service, it's because you're already like, you know, you're already, like, you're already angry or mad. Disappointed or something like, you know?

• 15:49Speaker 01

  So, so like changing that notion, so it's actually, you know, you, you can use customer service as something much more proactive to, to have a better experience and actually to learn something and, and, and be positively surprised. It's like, suddenly we just make it fluent and, and transparent and easy and you don't hang in a phone tree and you, and, and people get back to you really quickly and it's transparent, transparent what's going on and you know who you're talking to and so on. That can just change the whole industry and to some extent, that is what we, we, we try to do and to some extent, we, what we did for the customer service software industry.

• 16:26Lewis Howes?

  I like it. So tell me about how the idea originally came about. Like you just said, when someone contacts customer support, they're already not happy or they can't find something or something's not working. So they need to contact to figure out how to make something work. How did you guys, you and your two friends, come up with this idea in the first place? How did it come about?

• 16:46Speaker 01

  So two of us spent a few years in the customer service software industry and, and, and, and that's where we learned a lot about how complicated we made these systems and how nobody was empowered, how there was very little transparency and how complicated it was to make work with like the channels that we enjoy using today. You know, like that, the, just the fact that you can email somebody and get a response, like it's, it's, that's very empowering for, for consumers. And, and like, so we just updated all these modern channels and provided like there's a self-service interface. So you can always see kind of what is the status of my request and so on. A lot of these basic things that just provides transparency and that empowers everybody involved.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  And, and building on, on, you know, building it out on those values so that it's not only for the end customers, but also the people actually providing the customer service experience. So they, so they have a great experience too. So they feel empowered to, to make decisions and help the customers in the best, best way. I think these are some of the basic values that we defined the sender's gone.

• 17:53Lewis Howes?

  I like that. And something I want to point out is I had a business partner in a another business of mine that I'd sold and things went really well for the first couple of years, but then we just had different views and different visions and ended up, you know, splitting apart and selling the company to him because we, our views went different ways. Now you had, there's three of you that started this and I'm curious to know, did you all share the same viewpoint in the early stages and how did you guys pull it off and work together to have one vision with three different people?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's, that's of course impossible, you know. And also because like the, the vision is something that shapes up, that, that takes shape after, you know, after some time, you know, it, it, it evolves and, and, and of course you're not always aligned and, and you're thinking different, in different ways and so on. So especially in the early days when you have to keep people together and, and, and all kind of subscribe to doing the same thing, it's incredibly complicated. And, and I think in many ways, that's where, you know, that's where most startups, they fail, you know, getting, you know, keeping the founders together and keeping them committed to a joint vision is incredibly complicated. It's not, see, and it's

• 19:14Speaker 01

  a little bit like a relationship, you know, it's like you start somewhere and then you evolve and, and, and some people just grow apart and that's incredibly complicated.

• 19:24Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like it's different in business relationships, like things are more cordial in Denmark or European culture over maybe the American culture where it's more ego or solo focused type mentality? What do you think?

• 19:43Speaker 01

  We have egos too, you know, we had big, we, each of us had egos and it was, it was hard to keep us aligned, you know, and it was hard for us to, to all, you know, doing this at this, in the same page and, and, and also because in a startup, like it's, it, it's a different phases in your company's life where you can really make a difference. And, and, and like, you know, when somebody works really hard and there's two other co-founders not working so hard and, but then you have another period where it's one of the other founders that works really hard and, and, and that's, that, that whole dynamic is just really complicated. Um, but I think that we were in a fortunate position that each of us like,

• 20:24Speaker 01

  we were not in our twenties, we were in our thirties, we were, you know, in many ways old and like, we saw this as our, Zendesk was our baby in many ways and we all wanted the best for the baby. So you live through these things, you live through the differences, you live through the facts that you're not always aligned and you're not always super happy in the relationship. But, you know, the, you all double down on making sure that you're doing what's best for the baby.

• 20:51Lewis Howes?

  And, and Alex and Morton are the, are the two founders, correct?

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:55Lewis Howes?

  And you guys, are you still close with them?

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We see each other, uh, a daily basis. We still, all of us works in the San Francisco office and, and our families get together and so on.

• 21:05Lewis Howes?

  Nice. Okay, cool. So it's worked out so far. That's good. So tell me some, you know, you've been in the customer support industry for a long time now and you've had lots of experience with Zendesk, with all the different companies you've worked with and you've probably seen some horrible uses of customer support and some incredible uses of customer, uh, customer support. Can you share some of the best things you've learned along the way on how to keep customers happy?

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Well, I think that, I think it comes from the inside, you know, I think that it is, it's in the, it's, it has to do with the mentality of the company. The company has to embrace the fact that customer service is a really, really hard discipline, you know? Nobody really enjoys it. You don't enjoy it from the, no, but it's not like you don't have, you, it's not like you sit down and say, oh my God, I'm gonna call customer service, it's gonna be awesome. You know, and the people working in customer service often, you know, when they take a call, they know that people are upset or angry or have questions or frustrated or doesn't understand what's going on and so, and that's just like, it's, it's really hard. But it it it's a little bit like exercising, you know, getting up every morning at six a m.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  And running in the rain or in the snow or lifting weights or whatever you do. Nobody really enjoys that until you get to a point where you kind of realize how good it is for you and how much you learn from it and how you sleep better and eat better and get better sex and all these different things. That's a little bit same with customer service. Like you, once you get into starting embracing it, you understand how much you learn about your customers and your product and ultimately yourself. And and and, you know, I think if you if you approach it that way and say like, this is a, this is a complicated sport. This is hard work and like, but you have to go out there and in many ways, just do it.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Uh, uh, a little bit like, you know, you, the Nike commercial and getting up on the, on the highway running. And and, you know, once you get to that, I think you you have a real opportunity to see customer service as something that can give you like a real relationship with your customers and can take your company to new levels. It's really, really easy to provide bad customer service. I'm not, you know, I did a lot of.

• 23:23Lewis Howes?

  Do nothing, do nothing and you do a bad job.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Well, I did a lot of our customer service in the early days and it's, it's, it was really easy to fuck it up. It's really to disappoint your customers and not understanding them correctly and and not showing empathy and and all these different things. It's, it's really, really easy not to do it in a good way. It's, it's, it's hard.

• 23:45Lewis Howes?

  And the, the American mentality would be that people from uh, Europe maybe don't have uh, empathy for people. Because the, the thing is, you know, when you go over to Europe, they actually, you know, the, at least in restaurants, it's like, there's no service. You know, and uh, and then no one's around and no one shows up and you can't get water filled, you can't get your food. You basically have to go grab it yourself, whereas Americans are used to that mentality of how can I help you? And what do you need? And so that's interesting.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Well, but I think, you know, I think most Americans also have plenty of examples of

• 24:25Lewis Howes?

  Of course, of course, yes, I'm just generalizing it.

• 24:28Speaker 01

  It's one of these things that is really hard to scale especially and and and and you know, I think that building on some good values around transparency, empowerment, trusting people and and always taking the high road and always, you know, never start with distrusting people and and so on. Building on some of these values, I think, is incredibly helpful for for for great customer service.

• 24:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, there's a lot of entrepreneurs that are listening here that feel overwhelmed. They feel like they take on the entire their entire business by themselves, like they have to do everything themselves. There's just too many tasks for them to do and it's hard, it can be a challenge for some of them to let go of their responsibility and to bring on the right team. Now, can you talk about how you find the right the right people with the value, the same values that you share to build a successful business? Because I know it's all about having the right team of the people that have the right values. But how do you find those people that you can trust, that you can rely on, that live

• 25:35Lewis Howes?

  the same type of values that you have with your company?

• 25:38Speaker 01

  But but that is, you know, that is really complicated, you know, and and and in many ways, it's a little bit of hit or miss, you know. You you you you end up hiring people that turns out not to be the right people for you and for the team or for the dynamic of the team. And and when you when that happens, you just have to figure out a way of of of moving forward and and correcting along the way. So like, but I think you you realize these things once you really try it, you know, once you go into it and say, okay, like, let's try to hire somebody that, you know, will take over this responsibility and and find the right person and trust them with that responsibility. And I think, especially in our early days, like, one of the one of the first things we did, or not one of the

• 26:22Speaker 01

  first things, but one of the early things we did was to hire like a like a VP of of product engineering and somebody who's tried to scale an engineering organization before, somebody who had a network and all these different things. And in many ways, it was a little sensitive for us because like with the team structure and so on, like, Morgan and Alex had to work very closely with that guy and and to some extent, like, report into him, like, they had, he had to be able to You know, manage that relationship. So it was incredibly sensitive for us. And, and, and, and, you know, it was a very tough position to fill. We were then lucky to find that, that person and who was the exact right person,

• 27:03Speaker 01

  not only for coming in with that experience and with the network and, and with the team, but also somebody who could navigate that tension of, of founders and egos and all these different things. And, and so like it, it, it comes so much down to the initial team and the people you, you, you initially hire to your team. Like your success depends so much on them because they are, you know, they, they help you with that scaling that is, you know, so critical.

• 27:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure. What is the ideal personality type of someone to hire to manage customer support for your company?

• 27:44Speaker 01

  For customer service? Well, I think I would always go, you know, like attitude over skills. Like somebody who loves talking to people, somebody who is like, who has that ability to show energy, who doesn't like, doesn't take things personal, who loves being extrovert and like all these different things. And I think our, our initial customer service staff was a lot of like, was a lot of, it was a, it's a random bunch in many ways, but you know, they came in with a, with a great attitude and, and, and have, you know, really a lot of these guys have, have built a whole career and send us going out doing incredibly interesting things.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  But come in with that attitude and, and can show skills where they, they know what it is in a small organization. They like, they don't get upset if somebody swears or a little out of order. And, and, you know, are, are curious about cultures and are curious about different people and so on. And, and that kind of openness and diversity in your organization, just like super important when you build the initial team.

• 28:55Lewis Howes?

  Talk to me about investing. How many you raised a little bit early on with family and friends, you said?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:01Lewis Howes?

  And then how much more did you raise since then? Or how many rounds?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we did four rounds after coming to San Francisco. So we did an A, B, C, and a D. And in total, it was, you know, I think eighty, ninety, ninety million dollars, something like that. Yeah.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  And I think same thing applies for, for finding investors, you know? It has to be people that can, you know, help you grow both as a team, as a CEO, as a board, and takes you kind of to the next level. And we've been very fortunate with the investors that we found to this company, and they all helped us grow the company. It's not only, it's not about the money. It's of course also about the money, but it's, it's more about the people.

• 29:46Lewis Howes?

  Relationships, the strategy, right?

• 29:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And their ability to help you take it further.

• 29:51Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like your investments were necessary to get to this level? Or do you feel like you could have done it through other channels or continuing to bootstrap? Or do you feel like it's wise to take investments if you're a growing company, growing startup?

• 30:07Speaker 01

  No, I couldn't, you know, we, we went public five years after we moved to the US, a little under five years after we moved to the US. And then we, you know, at that point, we had, what did we have, six, seven hundred employees? We had a run rate of close to a hundred million dollars. We had customers, almost, we had forty, forty-five thousand customers in a hundred and forty, fifty countries. And like you can't build that kind of scale in such a short time without some funding, especially when you are like a subscription service, like software services. Like it's, it's like, it's very hard to finance that initial growth through your own means.

• 30:47Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  But we have built a very efficient business, and we're not very capital. We are very capital efficient and not burning a lot, but, but still like it, it gives us, it's given us the freedom to grow really quickly.

• 30:59Lewis Howes?

  I like that. What's next for you and Zendesk?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Well, like, in many ways, going public has just been the first step in a new journey for for Centeskin. Like, we're really excited about the opportunity we have ahead of us. Like, we've been doing so many different things. We're growing a lot of market, and suddenly engaging with all these large enterprises about their customer service strategy and their whole CRM and customer engagement strategies. And they're incredibly exciting for us. We also built out a whole new set, a generation of, a whole new set of tools for engaging with your customers. So that customer service becomes more like an embedded experience rather than a destination you have to go to. And that really takes customer service to the next level, where it's,

• 31:46Speaker 01

  where customer service suddenly available for you when and where you have the issue, rather than has to be somewhere you have to go after having an issue. And so it's just, it's just a huge opportunity. There's so much we can do here. There's so many things, so many new things that this market shows for us. And like, we have a team that is incredibly excited and hardworking and global. And it just makes, it's just incredibly fun and we're really enjoying it.

• 32:16Lewis Howes?

  I like that. I like the direction. What are you most grateful for in your life right now?

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Oh, what am I grateful for? I think like, you know, we've come nowhere without this fantastic team that we built here in San Francisco. Like, and like, just coming to a city where you feel like home and where everybody has welcomed you and made you successful is an incredible experience. And that like, that we are so privileged to have built this startup and taking it so far. It's a very unique experience. And we are just incredibly grateful for having had that opportunity.

• 32:52Lewis Howes?

  I like it. Well, well, Mikel, I want to acknowledge you. I have one more question for you, but I want to acknowledge you first for creating, for having a vision to create something that so many people find helpful in their business. You know, something that is such a challenge for people, you've created. A system that allows people to have ease and be at least a little bit more relaxed with their customer support. So I acknowledge you for the drive that it took to do everything with two other partners. Come to America and make this happen. So thank you for all that you've done. And then before I ask you the final question, I want to make sure everyone goes and checks out the book. I'll let you know the link of where to get this in the show notes after this last question.

• 33:36Lewis Howes?

  But the book is called Start Up Land. How three guys risked everything to turn an idea into a global business. And it's a funny story of what it takes to risk it all and go for broke. So I'll have a link up for that on the show notes. But the final question, Mikkel, is what is your definition of greatness?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Oh, I think, I think greatness, what is my definition? I think that your ability to be able to be open, be, now I'm looking, now I'm searching for proper words in English. So like embrace people for what they are, embrace the world for what it is. That things, you know, things are good, things are bad, things are complicated, some things are easy. People are not, it's not always easy with people. People have their own set of issues, people have problems. And, and it's like, you know, being able to embrace that it's a complicated world out there.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  I think, I think it characterizes people that have the opportunities, that have the capacity to, to maybe do great things. Is that they can embrace all the, all the, all the different colors and all the different angles and all the different complexities there are to the world today.

• 34:58Lewis Howes?

  Great answer. Thank you so much, Mikal, for, for sharing and for finding the words in English. I appreciate you coming on and thanks so much for all you do.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  No, thank you so much.

• 35:13Lewis Howes?

  And there you have it guys. Hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, do me a big favor and head back to LewisHowes.com/134. That's right, LewisHowes.com/134. We've got links where you can go find Startup Land, the book, and get that information, more information about Zendesk and what Mikel is up to. You can check out all the show notes over there of what we covered. And if you enjoyed this, go ahead back over there and share this with your friends over on Facebook or Twitter. Again, the episode is LewisHowes.com/134. So if you've got someone who's an entrepreneur, or someone who wants to start a startup, definitely email them this episode and share it with them because I think they'll get a lot out of this. Thank you guys so much for coming on. We've got some big episodes coming up. So

• 35:58Lewis Howes?

  excited to bring them to you soon. And for those that have been asking for more female guests on The School of Greatness, we've got some epic females coming on here shortly. So stay tuned for that. Thank you guys again for coming on. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Something great.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  ...