Mikkel Svane, Founder and CEO, Zendesk: 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.