I’m Girish, CEO and founder of Freshdesk. Ask me anything!

Hi TiA community,

I’m Girish Mathrubootham, the CEO and founder of Freshdesk.

Freshdesk is a SaaS-based customer support software company headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in Chennai, London and Sydney. We help companies of all sizes talk to their customers wherever they are and however they want to interact.

We founded Freshdesk in 2010 because of a nightmarish customer experience that revolved around shipping a TV from the USA. We’ve acquired over 50,000 customers and scaled to a global team of 500 people in less than 5 years. Before founding Freshdesk, I was VP of Product Management at Zoho. I have over 15 years of experience in managing cross-functional teams who have gone on to build world-class products. When I’m not conjuring up interesting product ideas, talking to investors, or beating kids at Foosball, I love walking around the floor and being the guy with the Answers.

Fun stuff about Freshdesk and myself:

• We started out as just 2 people in a 200 sq.ft office. We’ve expanded our office eight times since then
• I love Chelsea, food, tennis, Game of Thrones and movies. Not necessarily in that order
• Our first 6 customers were each from a different continent
• “Naan solrathaiyum seiven, sollathathiyum seiven”. Google it 😉
• Freshdesk isn’t the first company I founded

I’m willing to talk about anything under the sun. This list might give a head start though:

• Building a global product from outside the Valley
• Keeping your company culture intact as it grows
• The art of dealing with investors and fundraises
• Keeping customers happy
• Product management (best practices) and anything entrepreneurship in general
• Supporting the startup community in India
• #CEOOnSupport

Ask away!

Note from Daniel, TIA’s community manager:
The host may choose at his/her preference to not answer particular questions. The AMA is moderated by the community managers, so let’s keep the questions friendly. 🙂

Read more Freshdesk related articles here, here and here!