This weeks big news it Zendesks IPO, which will be listed on the New York stock exchange. Also, Zendesk announced that it will acquire Zopim, a Singapore-based startup that has a popular live-chat product.

The IPO aims to raise $150 Millions, and the company will trade with the signature “ZEN”.

The story of Zendesk

Zendesks story is a startup story as any. Founded in 2007 in Copenhagen, the company now employs roughly 500 people, however mostly in San Fransisco. It’s product offers help desk ticketing, issue tracking, and customer service support – a SaaS B2B product, used by both big and small companies worldwide.

Zendesk was founded by Mikkel Svane, Alexander Aghassipour, and Morten Primdahl, all from Copenhagen. The journey has been rapid – the first seed funding of $500 000 in June 2008, followed by a series A investment in may 2009 by Charles River Ventures (no official numbers on the size of the series A). A little later a $6 million series B funding in 2009 also resulted in the company moving to San Francisco to establish their headquarters their. The funding where followed by a series C ($19 million) and the whooping $60 million series D. For more details, see Zendesks Crunchbase Profile.

The total investments in Zendesk are around $86 million.

Acquisition of Zopim

Zendesk didn’t disclose the financial details of the Zopim acquisition in its press release, but it does in its SEC filing. According to the S-1, the Zopim deal is worth up to $29.8 million. Prior to today, Zopim had raised less than $400 000 since being founded back in 2008.

“Real-time chat has become the foundation for how customers want to communicate online today. It is convenient for customers and makes companies more approachable to more people. Zopim has a proven track record of providing tools for proactive engagement. Most importantly, the Zopim team shares our belief in building products that are beautifully simple and easy for any company to use.” said Mikkel Svane.

Milestone for the startup eco-system

This is an important event, that will further boost the startup scene and confidence in the region. Both the fact that Mikkel and team have started the company and built it to a $ 150 million IPO size in less then 8 years will inspire others, as well as the connections and experience this brings to the scene in general.