Zendesk

Up until October of 2021, this was a pretty good place to work. Good product, growing quickly, good WLB, remote friendly, and people were generally nice.

Everything started going downhill when the CEO wanted to buy his friend's SurveyMonkey business for over $4 billion towards the end of 2021. The market and shareholders hated it, and the deal failed by historic margins in a 90%+ vote against such a deal. The Board of Directors unanimously supported the CEO and provided zero oversight.

Following that embarrassing blunder, the CEO and Board were shopping around to sell Zendesk because shareholders lost complete confidence and required them to sell or get fired.

One side-note: before the final vote on the survey tool, the Board (which includes the CEO) rejected a $17 billion unsolicited deal because it would undervalue the company. The Board ended up failing to find a buyer during its search, given it was a bad time to sell since the market deteriorated, and told shareholders they unanimously decided to stay independent.

Less than two weeks later (no joke), the Board announced they signed an agreement with a Private Equity firm to sell the company for $10 billion, $7 billion less than the original offer they rejected because they said it was valued too low. Absolutely nobody can make sense of this, other than the CEO and Board trying to save their skin because they would get fired.

The vast majority of internal employees are against this deal because Zendesk is a good company led astray by a corrupt CEO that has long overstayed his welcome and a seemingly corrupt Board that unanimously does whatever the CEO tells them to instead of upholding their legal duties to act in the interest of shareholders.

Shareholders have to lock in huge losses given the Board panic sold on 4-year lows. Unless this deal gets shut down (which is possible given how bad it is), don't bother joining. Under PE, $5 billion of debt will be thrown on Zendesk's books with over $300 million in interest payments that will lead to steep cuts in benefits and company-wide layoffs.

Mikkel, you're doing a lot of harm to Zendesk, and it would be best to cancel this ridiculous deal and go away quietly instead of burning things down on your way out. Zendesk has a bright future as a public company with new leadership and a Board that would adhere to its legal duties. PE firms will destroy the essence of what made this company great. In your own words, you said you had a choice: sell or fire leadership and the board, and you chose the wrong one.