Chapter 5The Game Is Not Over

Getting investors and getting along with your partners

In late 2008—late one evening, out of the blue—Devdutt Yellurkar, a partner at the venture capital firm Charles River Ventures (CRV), called me on my cell phone. My phone was listed on the Zendesk website, and I was accustomed to getting weird calls at odd hours, so it wasn't that unusual. People were usually offering to sell me something or pretending they were anything from customers to investors and everything in between. On one occasion I'd even had somebody pretending to be a reporter contacting me in the middle of the night with “unsettling news”; I finally realized he was trying to get a referral to one of our customers.

But this one was different. ...

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