Zendesk CFO Alan Black Plans to Depart Company in 2016

December 10, 2015

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – December 10, 2015 – Zendesk, Inc. (NYSE:ZEN) announced today that SVP and Chief Financial Officer Alan Black has informed the company and board of directors of his plans to depart the company during 2016. Black, who joined Zendesk in 2011, will continue in his role as Chief Financial Officer until a replacement is identified and plans to be active in the search and transition. The company intends to immediately initiate a search to identify and recruit a new Chief Financial Officer.

“Alan played a critical role in Zendesk’s transition from a startup to a fast-growing public company and built a world-class finance team to take us into the future,” said Mikkel Svane, Zendesk CEO, chairman and founder. “We’re grateful to him for his years of dedication and leadership and thankful that he will remain on board through this transition.”

Below is the announcement, in its entirety, that Black sent to company employees today about his plans:

“I wanted to let you all know that I’ve informed Mikkel, the rest of the executive staff and our Board of Directors of my decision to step down from the position of Chief Financial Officer in the coming months.

This is a bittersweet decision for me. I love Zendesk, the successful business we have built and the great team we have assembled. It has been a privilege to work with so many awesome and talented people. I was given the opportunity to join Zendesk over four years ago with the goal of helping the organization grow to a point where it could become and succeed as a global public company. I am extremely proud of all we have accomplished in pursuit of this mission and confident that we today have a world-class finance organization ready to help scale this business to a billion in revenue and beyond.

Having accomplished these goals, I am ready to explore and take on new challenges. What those end up being will be sorted out in the months to come. I am in no rush. I’ve told Mikkel and the Board of Directors that I’m here for as long as it takes to identify, onboard and transition to a new Chief Financial Officer that will live and breathe Zendesk like I have. While we undertake that process, I’ll continue to lead the team on a day-to-day basis. After that, I’ll make myself available to continue to help Zendesk in any way I can as a proud shareholder.

Thanks so much to all of you for working so hard with me over the years to help build Zendesk. I cherish the transparency under which we operate, so it was important to me that this decision be shared with the whole team as soon as I made my decision. I look forward to catching up with you individually over the weeks and months to come as we move forward. Meanwhile, some habits die hard… we have a quarter to close so let’s all get back to work.”

More biographical details about Black and his headshot are available at https://www.zendesk.com/company/management-team/

About Zendesk

Zendesk provides a customer service platform designed to bring organizations and their customers closer together. With more than 64,000 paid customer accounts, Zendesk’s products are used by organizations in 150 countries and territories to provide support in more than 40 languages. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, Zendesk has operations in the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. Learn more at www.zendesk.com