Zendesk

Mikkel Svane, Alexander Aghassipour, and Morten Primdahl founded software provider Zendesk to help customer service keep up with the cloud. Zendesk's software assists companies in managing customer-service requests that come in from a variety of channels, including email, the Web, social media, and the old-fashioned telephone. The company also has a variety of apps that companies can embed in their websites. However, the customer-service software industry has relatively low barriers to entry, so Zendesk has many competitors, including Atlassian, which raised nearly $500 million in preparation for its IPO at the end of 2015. But Zendesk believes that its competitive advantage is software that makes intercompany communication easier. Note: employee count as of Dec. 31, 2015