Chaotic Flow

Streamlined angles on turbulent technologies

I’ve recently started working with Zendesk, and I can’t say enough about this Web 2.0  SaaS helpdesk company.  In my last post, I made the point that most SaaS vendors just don’t get Web 2.0.  Zendesk is the exception that proves the rule and I think this company has an amazing future.

You might think that the last thing the world needs is another helpdesk product.  I personally can’t think of too many spaces that are more crowded with everything from cheap packaged software to large scale ERP-integrated SaaS offerings.  So, what makes Zendesk special?  They get what all the other B2B SaaS / Enterprise 2.0 companies are missing.  When I submit their offering to the Web 2.0-savvy IQ test, their marks are off the chart.

First and foremost, Zendesk is a native Web-centric application that completely integrates the backend helpdesk with a company’s online customer support presence.  When you turn on Zendesk, you not only turn on the traditional helpdesk ticket tracking, business rule automation and reporting, you turn on your customer support portal, online forums, mashup widgets, pervasive RSS and your support@yourcompany.com email–all these customer communication points are seamlessly integrated to your back end helpdesk.  When I speak of B2B2C being an emerging disruptive force in Enterprise 2.0 SaaS…this is exactly it.

Zendesk launched in November of 2007 and in a short half-year has  [an undisclosed but an amazing number of ] paying customers and an increasingly impressive list of brand names.  Why?  Because you can sign up and get going without any help at all.  The website content, trial sign-up and purchase are seamless and is 100% automated.  And, the minimalist design is so intuitive that no training is required.  Although I know these guys like to give each new account a little tender loving care, the truth is that getting going is as straightforward as any Web 2.0 consumer site.

If your run a Web-based business, or simply want to provide better support over the Web, and agile customer service is more important to you than heavy-iron process automation and compliance on the backend…my pick is Zendesk.

It’s been a while since I have written a blog entry, but I am happy to say that it is for a good reason. I recently joined Conduit, an exciting B2B2C Internet startup as VP Marketing. The company has some incredibly cool things going on grounded in cutting edge, on-demand website syndication technology, so I have no doubt my experiences here will provide great inspiration for future blogging. We just closed a round of financing with Benchmark Capital, led by Michael Eisenberg and we are ramping up for some serious growth, marquee customer deals, and new product introductions (read: I am hiring in marketing…resume’s welcome) Our website has just been updated with the next-level of evolution in the company’s positioning (not the least of why I have been on a blogging hiatus). Finally, I am personally enjoying working with a fantastic, talented team and working at Conduit’s dual-country headquarters in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv which keeps me commuting between two of the most beautiful cities in the world.

What’s not to like. Sababa!

I couldn’t let the much anticipated announcement last week of the final draft of the new Affero GPL go by without making at least a few comments. First of all, I love open source. But, I am unimpressed by the new GNU Afferro GPL for three simple reasons.
1) It is a weak effort
2) It is already obsolete
3) It is irrelevant
While there are 10 pages dealing with everything from patents to liability, largely legacy from the original GPL that was designed for installed, perpetual license software, there is fully ONE SENTENCE that attempts to deal with what is clearly the biggest disruption to the software industry since the personal computer.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must prominently offer all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge, through some standard or customary means of facilitating copying of software.”

This is a band-aid and indicates a lack of interest in exploring the issue. The elephant in the room is that real value is shifting from the software itself to the fully integrated service offering, and the two are intimately intertwined. The delivery, scalability, integration, configuration, usability and administration of the software have as much influence over the Web user experience as the source code itself. Put another way, whose interests are the FSF really representing, developers or consumers?

While I think it is a truly beautiful philosophy that software should be “free to run…to study…to improve…to redistribute,” it is in reality free because its fundamental economic value is dropping to zero! If you buy into the idea that software-as-a-service is built around the delivery of a commodity offering, then you understand that real economic value and competitive advantage lie outside the functional capabilities implied by the source code, i.e., proprietary assets or IP in service delivery, brand loyalty, or switching costs. Any competitor worth its salt can duplicate another’s functionality in a matter of months, with or without the source code, but can that competitor deliver it to the user.

Alternatively, Web-based SaaS applications bring capabilities to consumers and SMB’s that they would not be able to afford or are perhaps even impossible under an installed, license distribution model. Different proponents of open source (myself being one) each have their own philosophy and motivations, but one underlying theme is making good software available to everyone. While much of the controversy surrounding this new license has been about stopping evil Web companies from taking advantage of open source, I will submit that it just don’t matter. Free software continues to make strong inroads into the installed, enterprise software space (and I will arbitrarily include Web servers in this category), but it is in danger of losing its philosophical underpinnings on the increasingly syndicated, service-driven Web.