Zendesk shows off more growth, adds 3 women to board

Cloud customer-service software player Zendesk just keeps growing up.

Today the company announced new growth figures — more than 40,000 customers in 140 countries. That market expansion follows the sort of user growth that has other companies comparing themselves with Zendesk.

“While it took almost four years to reach our first 10,000 customers, we added our most recent 10,000 customers in only nine months,” Zendesk founder and chief executive Mikkel Svane said in a press release.

In late 2012 Zendesk signed up its 25,000th customer. And the company has previously boasted a 300 percent annual revenue growth.

Along with the latest growth stats, the company announced the appointment of three women to its board of directors: Caryn Marooney, vice president of technology communications at Facebook; Elizabeth “Betsey” Nelson, former chief financial officer at Macromedia; and Michelle Wilson, a former general counsel at Amazon.com.

The expanding customer base comes as the company is reportedly hurtling toward a public offering.

And the new diversity on the board — which also includes Benchmark Capital general partner Peter Fenton and Matrix Partners general partner Dana Stalder — follows a move from fellow cloud software company New Relic to add Salesforce.com executive Sarah Friar to the board.

While the customer-service software market is busy, Zendesk sits in a prominent position, having taken on big customers like Box, Disney, and Groupon. And with a public offering in sight, the company stands to gain a much bigger name and push way past the growth it’s reporting today.