The Zendesk ownership saga took several new turns this week, with an external investor, Jana Partners, agitating against the company, a review of its strategic options coming to a close, and the business software company deciding to stay independent.
Now worth less than $10 billion, Zendesk has made more noise in recent months than you would expect from a company of its size. But after announcing that it would buy Momentive (SurveyMonkey) for more than $4 billion last year, Zendesk has been in a bruising fight with external investors that has proven to be recurring headline fodder.
Even though Jana wasn’t terribly enamored with the SurveyMonkey deal (to put it mildly), Zendesk believed it was a way to drive revenue growth and push the company from purely help desk-related tasks – and, to a smaller degree, customer relationship management, or CRM – into the customer experience market. Zendesk suggested in an investor