Perks for Pirates--Zendesk partners with Startup Pirates

We've written about the Startup Pirates movement that began in Europe and is spreading worldwide. Basically (and this is a big over-simplification) it's a series of week-long intensive programs for prospective entrepreneurs that are being held in cities all over the world. It's a movement because the events are largely locally organized and sponsored following the basic formula developed by Startup Pirates and conforming to what they call 'the pirate's code". Think of it as something like locally organized TedX or Ignite events, but focussed on entrepreneurship and lasting a whole week. This week the Startup Pirates announced a pretty big perk for companies that take part in the program... free use of the popular Zendesk Plus+ customer support software for a full year.

Zendesk has some very large customers including Box, Groupon, AirBnB and Pintrest. Their website says they have over 20,000 customers. Their Zendesk Plus+ package costs $60/month per support agent. They're offering this package free for one year for 5 users for any qualifying startup -- a very useful $3600 freebie. The rules are essentially this:

• must be a Startup Pirates sponsored technology or internet startup
• not already a Zendesk customer
• business must be under 18 months old, have under 10 employees and have under $1m financing

That casts a pretty wide net... pretty much every early stage startup so long as they're a Startup Pirate.

Hats off to Zendesk. It's a very useful tool (and therefore valuable) for many types of startups. It's also good business for Zendesk because their product gets used by a whole range of potential new customers for them. Hats off to Startup Pirates for setting up this offer with Zendesk. Win-win in the best sense of the term.

The details of the Zendesk offer can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/zeff09pohg6embv/Startup%20Pirates%20-%20Startu...