Dug out of the rubbles of a fallen startup story...
In 2014 the founder and CEO of Zendesk published Startupland. A love letter to the opportunity and energy of building from nothing. In this 2026 follow-up Startupland Redux you get the ransom note revealing the price.
Ten years after taking Zendesk public, Mikkel Svane had created $10 billion in wealth. In this brutally honest and oddly funny sequel, Svane reveals the hidden cost of building at scale. A dark reckoning for anyone who's chased success and discovered it wasn't built to last.
Prologue
“People like you don’t like working for people like us.”
Those were the ten words that ended my Zendesk career and my almost fifteen-year journey in Startupland. I was talking to two of the private equity partners who’d led the Zendesk acquisition. The transaction had just closed and we were having a beer (which was so unusual, but we tried to make it super caj and not awkward at all). It was sobering hearing the words out loud. Had I even given it any real thought until now? Probably. Did it matter? Probably not. And it was true. People like me didn’t like working for people like them. They knew it. And before I got back into my car, I knew it too. We said goodbye, and as I pulled out, I came to peace knowing this was the end.
Soon after, we told the team. Made it official. And that day I completely logged out. Deleted all my social profiles. Got off all our systems. Stopped taking calls. Ignored my emails. And within a few days it was as if Startupland had never happened. That long and all-encompassing journey that I had been on since founding Zendesk with Morten and Alex, taking it public and building an organization with more than $1 billion in revenues and thousands of employees, was over. What had been the entirety of my life for so many years.
My days easily filled up. Three dogs. Five kids. Laura, my partner and soon-to-be wife. Bicoastal households. A small foundation. A family office. My health and sanity. Art. Cocktails. A big world to explore outside of conference rooms. Plenty of areas to invest my time and money. I wore a lot of denim and started playing tennis like an old fart.
Before times
STARTUPLAND is the story of risking it all to find unconventional startup success. Mikkel chronicles three thirty-somethings starting Zendesk from a Copenhagen loft, moving it to San Francisco, and ultimately taking it public on the New York Stock Exchange.
Aftermath
STARTUPLAND REDUX is the story of losing what you started in a public-company dismantling. Mikkel reveals what led to Zendesk becoming a target and the hard truths of being at the top: the addiction to power, the loneliness, and the forces—ego, activist investors, and private equity—that unravel it.
Mikkel is the founder and former CEO of Zendesk, a pioneering customer service software company. He lives in San Francisco—or is it New York—with his wife and children. You may find Mikkel on BlueSky or Substack, because he kinda had it with Twitter/X.
For more information on Mikkel’s new venture, please visit sunnny.com.
Carlye is a former journalist and four-time New York Times bestselling co-author. Her books have been translated into a dozen languages. Unfortunately, she lives in Connecticut.
For more information visit carlyeadler.com.
Up next
STARTUPLAND REDUX is totally and unforgivingly a hook for Mikkel Svane's new venture SUNNNY. A grand release is planned later this year, but check out a teaser to get a little taste.
