[HN Gopher] A comment in Hacker News led Girish Mathrubootham to...
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       A comment in Hacker News led Girish Mathrubootham to create
       Freshworks (2019)
        
       Author : sarathyweb
       Score  : 57 points
       Date   : 2021-08-28 09:39 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (yourstory.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (yourstory.com)
        
       | woleium wrote:
       | We tried fresh desk, but left disappointed. We now use Zammad,
       | written in ruby by one of the lead devs of otrs, which used to be
       | awesome before it went closed source (ish).
       | 
       | unlimited users and agents for the cost of a $5 a month VPS
        
       | lifeisstillgood wrote:
       | I seem to be getting better at Indian-English-patois
       | 
       | >>> and has more than 2,000 employees and 1.5 lakh clients.
       | 
       | lakh = 100K
       | 
       | So please work out the total customers yourself. Revert back to
       | me when you have the needful done.
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Recent and related:
       | 
       |  _Freshworks (previously Freshdesk) files for IPO_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28335299 - Aug 2021 (1
       | comment)
       | 
       | Past related:
       | 
       |  _How Hacker News motivated me to resign my job and launch my own
       | startup (2011)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4427728 -
       | Aug 2012 (24 comments)
       | 
       |  _How a simple comment on Hacker News made me quit my job and
       | launch a startup_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2340732
       | - March 2011 (92 comments)
        
         | ignoramous wrote:
         | I believe, this is _that_ comment:
         | 
         | " _Whenever I read something like this I can 't help but think
         | "Here's a potential customer to whomever can get this right and
         | at the right price". It seems like there's still a huge opening
         | in this market for someone to come in and take all of ZenDesk
         | and eSupport's customers._" --megamark16
         | 
         | Zendesk raises their prices 60%-300%, users predictably revolt
         | (2010), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358398
         | 
         | Congratulations on a _reverse-BrandonM_ , Mark.
        
           | dang wrote:
           | This is offtopic but I think people need to realize that
           | Brandon's comment has been unfairly characterized.
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28293146
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27068148
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23229275
        
             | sillysaurusx wrote:
             | While we're offtopic, I noticed that if you visit the
             | original comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224
             | both BrandonM and dhouston show up as green. I just wanted
             | to say, it's really cool you keep adding little details
             | like that to HN over the years.
             | 
             | (Maybe it's not new, but I hadn't noticed it before. It was
             | a neat moment of "Wait... that's a feature, not a bug"
             | followed by 2007 nostalgia.)
             | 
             | Thank you.
        
       | ineedasername wrote:
       | What happened to ZenDesk? (And I mean that literally, not a
       | rhetorical question)
       | 
       | I remember when they were the breath of fresh air in terms of
       | online support, the disruptor.
       | 
       | Did they get worse? (Apart from prices increase) or did the
       | expected standards increase and pass them by?
        
         | blakesterz wrote:
         | I work on ZenDesk all day every day, and it's the ONLY thing
         | that I've fought to keep. As far as I'm concerned, it's
         | awesome, and I think I'd only say that about maybe one other
         | thing, GitHub. Of course, I don't pay for it, but it does what
         | I want it to do, it functions perfect for what I need, and I
         | can't say that about many other things. I don't think anything
         | has happened to it, been a happy user for 7 years now.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | edoceo wrote:
         | Classic cycle. Enter market, disrupt, get fat and lazy, raise
         | prices, drop quality, create space for next organism.
         | 
         | Circle of life.
        
           | unclebucknasty wrote:
           | > _Enter market, disrupt, get fat and lazy, raise prices,
           | drop quality_
           | 
           | Exactly this. But, it's funny how a brand's image sticks. I
           | selected Zendesk for a business I ran years ago. And it was
           | the slow-boiling frog experience, where it takes time to
           | ultimately realize the rift between where you started and
           | where you are. But we hobbled along due mainly to switching
           | friction.
           | 
           | Still, I instinctively reached for them when evaluating
           | support solutions recently, based on name and familiarity
           | alone. But, with fresh eyes, it was immediately obvious that
           | they were a complete nonstarter.
           | 
           | MailChimp's the same. They may not have ever been the lowest-
           | priced solution, but time was they made it easy to get
           | started and the value was there for a startup/small-biz. Now,
           | they're trying to be quasi-enterprise with an over-priced
           | bloated feature set.
           | 
           | These guys start disrupting by aiming for simplicity in a
           | value-priced, pro-small customer offering. Then, in the
           | pursuit of endless growth, they raise prices and become
           | staunchly anti-customer in favor of their own economic
           | objectives.
           | 
           | Would be nice to see companies continue to maintain their
           | disposition to original customers and ethos, but pursue
           | growth through new options that are truly optional and not
           | subsidized by the entire user base. That, and adding new,
           | complementary product lines that still retain that original
           | ethos.
        
           | PragmaticPulp wrote:
           | Can you cite specific problems with ZenDesk? Or name
           | competitors that do things better?
           | 
           | Or are you making a general comment on software, not
           | specifically ZenDesk?
        
       | underscore_ku wrote:
       | we did it!
        
         | Bilal_io wrote:
         | I found the Redditor
        
       | mrlonglong wrote:
       | We just started using freshdesk to field support calls a few
       | weeks ago and I love it. The ability to update tickets with notes
       | or direct communication with the user who logged the ticket is
       | just nothing short of a miracle. Fantastic product.
       | 
       | (Edited typo)
        
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