How Zoom's Eric Yuan is Reinventing Video Conference

As meetings have moved online due to the pandemic, chances are, you've probably used Zoom at least once for your web conferences. My first encounter with Zoom was when my high school friend requested that I use the software for a video conference call. 

As with all users, I was initially reluctant, hoping to stick to platforms which were familiar, such as Skype or Google Hangout. However, the video call experience with Zoom was seamless, and exceeded my expectations. It occurred to me that I was a laggard in adopting Zoom in Silicon Valley - all my friends were already using it. 

Today, Zoom is valued at over a billion dollars, having recently received venture capital funding of $100 million led by Sequoia Capital (a total funding of $145 million). Eric Yuan is co-founder and CEO of Zoom, and we had the opportunity to meet him for an interview, where he shared more about his experiences. 

In 1997, Yuan immigrated from China to the United States, specifically Silicon Valley to pursue his dream of starting a successful technology business. "I read in the news about technology leaders like Jerry Yang from Yahoo and Jeff Bezos from Amazon." Yuan felt that if they could do it, so could he. 

He started out as one of the founding engineers for WebEx, the video conferencing tool for enterprises which was acquired by Cisco for $3.2 billion in 2007. When he first arrived in the United States, he was unfamiliar with the English language. However, through sheer grit and determination, he powered through and became one of the top engineers at WebEx. Yuan was then promoted to the Vice President of Engineering. However, when WebEx was acquired by Cisco, he was frustrated by the change in direction of the company from its original mission - to create the perfect video conferencing tool.

This led Yuan to leave WebEx and start his own company, Zoom. When he first came out to work on Zoom, many people discouraged him from doing so, stating the reason that the market was saturated. 

However, Yuan had spent a lot of time talking to customers, and confirmed that they were not happy with existing video conferencing solutions. Customers had complained about the video conferencing experience repeatedly but no company was satisfying that need. After raising a seed round of funding from angel investors, friends and WebEx senior executives, Yuan started Zoom. His mission for Zoom, which still remains true to today, is "Delivering Happiness" to users, employees and stakeholders. Yuan believes in leading by example and often points to Andy Grove's statement "Only the paranoid can survive" as his motto in business. 

In the first two years of Zoom, Yuan focused exclusively on hiring engineers and getting the product right. He personally led product development and worked closely with his team to talk to customers and design the product. 

Zoom was finally launched in 2013. It was quickly adopted by tech companies in Silicon Valley and beyond, who were eager for a better video conferencing tool. Today, the San Jose-based company (just down the street from Cisco) has over 500 employees, and over 200% Y-O-Y revenue growth in 2016, servicing over 18 billion annual minutes, with 50% of the Fortune 500 and 90% of the top 200 Universities as customers. 

Through sheer determination and drive, Yuan has achieved his dreams of building a phenomenal technology company, and reinvented video conferencing.

Author's note: This is a series of articles featuring 1st generation and 2nd generation entrepreneurs in America to showcase their immigrant story and how they worked hard to start their businesses. The author himself is an immigrant entrepreneur who moved to the United States from Singapore.