Mikkel svane bio and family

Mikkel Asger Svane is one of the biggest names in San Francisco startup history.

Mikkel Svane, the cofounder of Zendesk, and most importantly (for this story anyway), an art lover, created the Svane Family Foundation in

He founded Zendesk — a cloud-based, helpdesk software solution that allows customer service agents to stay productive — in The millionaire software mogul clearly has an eye for opportunity. But he is so much more than an everyday entrepreneur. Not many successful startups, especially in the tech game, come out of Europe.

Zendesk is a major exception. The Crunchie Awards from TechCrunch are coveted by any businesses in the technology field. The Zendesk headquarters was, in fact, a former Buddhist meditation center. When he still lived in Denmark, Mikkel Svane served in the military for some time. He has let some of the training that he received affect his management style.

For example, when he is screening new recruits he will walk really fast to ensure that they can keep up. He believes that athleticism is an important trait for someone working in a startup.

Mikkel Svane​​ Originally from Copenhagen, Denmark, he is a published author of the book Startupland, a father of five, and a lover of handcrafted cocktails.

Besides walking really fast, Svane will also screen his employees in more subtle ways. For example, he will take them to a famous San Francisco hotspot like The Creamery and see if they let him order first and who offers to pay. Plus, he swears like a sailor the whole time to gauge the responses of his potential employees.