Zendesk acquires FutureSimple

Zendesk has acquired FutureSimple, the company behind Base. Base is known for building modern, easy-to-use sales force automation software designed to help salespeople do their jobs more effectively. Zendesk will invest in Base’s ongoing market growth and product development, focusing on existing customers and delivering products for smaller, fast-growing sales teams, expanding to larger organizations over time.

Mikkel Svane, Founder & CEO, Zendesk, says, “Base is a natural fit with Zendesk because we both share a passion for designing beautiful products built for the people who actually use them. We want to do for sales what Zendesk has already done for customer service: give salespeople tools built around them and the customers they serve.”

Base and Zendesk last year launched an integration between their products, bringing together support and sales information about customers. Among the companies using it is home loan education platform Mortgage Coach. Its director of IT and QA support services called the integration seamless and said it ultimately saved the team countless hours of data duplication.

While legacy sales force automation tools are designed around rigid management processes that discourage salespeople from using them, Base gives sales teams the information and context they need to be effective and successful with prospects and customers. The result is a tool that helps salespeople work and sell more easily.

Uzi Shmilovici, Founder & CEO, Base, says, “Legacy sales tools were never built for the people actually using them. Our core philosophy in building Base was to create a world-class experience for sales professionals to help them close more deals. Just like Zendesk set out to improve the customer experience, we set out to dramatically improve the sales experience for 30 million sales professionals worldwide. We are thrilled to be joining Zendesk in building the future of customer experience software.”

Currently serving over 5,000 customers globally across industries, Base has offices in San Francisco and Krakow, Poland. All of Base’s customers will continue to receive support and services, and the Base team will all be offered roles at Zendesk. Matt Price, formerly Zendesk’s senior vice-president, product portfolio, will lead a team dedicated to growing Base across product and go-to-market.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. For the year ending December 31, 2018, the acquisition is not estimated to have a significant impact on Zendesk’s revenue and is expected to be dilutive to GAAP and Non-GAAP operating margin and earnings per share. These estimates reflect a reduction relating to fair value adjustments to acquired deferred revenue. Zendesk will provide further detail on the actual and expected impact of the acquisition on its results of operations for the year ending December 31, 2018 when it releases financial results for the quarter ending September 30, 2018.