Skype launched nearly a decade before Zoom, so why does everyone use Zoom now instead? Before the pandemic shut down the world, Skype held the largest share of the video-calling market. So when businesses, friends, and families had no choice but to interact with each other through their screens, Skype was set to see the sort of growth other companies can only dream of. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Zoom seemed to pop up out of nowhere and take over the industry in what felt like the blink of an eye.
So, what exactly did happen? How did Zoom’s founder, who moved to the US unable to speak a word of English, beat Microsoft, and build the number one video calling platform in the world? And how did a young man’s desire to see his girlfriend turn into a company worth billions of dollars? This is the incredible love story that changed the world. This is the inspiring true story of Zoom.
Table of Contents
The Flames of Inspiration
Eric Yuan was born in China in 1970. Throughout his childhood, Eric always had entrepreneurial instincts, like coming up with a variety of schemes to help raise money for his family.
For example, in the fourth grade, Eric discovered that the local recycling facility would pay for scrap metal, so Eric began to collect scraps from construction sites so he could sell them. There was one problem though. The recycling facility only wanted metals like copper, and it was often really difficult to break the copper away from the wood and other materials he’d collected. So Eric came up with the idea of setting the scraps on fire, hoping to burn away everything but the metal that he needed. He knew he would get in trouble for lighting a fire though, so he took his bundle of scraps into his neighbour’s old chicken shed so his parents wouldn’t see him do it. However, as he lit the scraps on fire, the flames quickly spread to the wooden floor beneath him. Before Eric could do anything to stop it, the walls of the shed caught alight too. Even the ceiling was on fire! Eric’s heart was pounding as he scrambled to escape, watching as the fire consumed the entire shed. But the fire didn’t stop there. It continued to grow out of control, creating a blazing inferno that was on the verge of spreading to his neighbours’ houses. Thankfully, a team of firefighters arrived to put it out.
But Eric’s parents were furious. Having grown up in a tight-knit family, Eric was devastated to have disappointed them – especially as he’d been doing it to try and raise money to support his family. As he moved into his teens, Eric felt confused about what his purpose was. He looked to his father for advice, who told him to work hard, be humble, and the answers would come.
Then one night, Eric picked up a newspaper his father had left behind and began reading an article about a tech-start up in America. Eric was fascinated by it. For the first time, he’d found something that he was genuinely interested in. Eric began reading countless more stories in his father’s newspapers and local magazines about Silicon Valley, where companies like Microsoft and Apple were just starting to make a name for themselves with their innovative technology. Eric knew that something incredible was happening. Something he wanted to be a part of. In fact, Eric fantasied about one day starting his own technology company, just like the people he was reading about…
But that was halfway across the world. And locally, the tech revolution hadn’t found much traction in China yet. So when he finished school, Eric enrolled in the local Shandong University of Science and Technology to study applied mathematics and computer sciences. This allowed him to stay close to his family, and to finally start learning about the latest developments in technology first hand.
As a college freshman in 1987, Eric was dating a girl called Sherry. Even though they were young, Eric was madly in love with her. There was just one problem though. Sherry lived in another city – a 10 hour train journey away – and there were no direct trains to see her. So Eric had to change multiple times to reach her, and the trains were so overcrowded he often spent the entire journey standing shoulder-to-shoulder with other passengers. These long journeys were extremely uncomfortable, and he was surrounded by horrible smells, loud noises and irritating passengers. Unable to sleep on one of these busy trains, he spent the entire journey dreaming of one day being able to see Sherry more easily and frequently – as he was only able to see her a couple of times a year.
He wondered, what if he could have some sort of smart device where he could just click a few buttons and see her face and interact with her from wherever he was? Eric’s overactive mind thought about it every single day, but he didn’t yet know how to make it happen. Despite the distance between them though, Eric knew she was the one, and at the age of 22, they got married.
After graduating university, Eric then set up a small tech company in Beijing that focused on coding and developing software. It wasn’t quite the Silicon-Valley-style company he’d dreamed of running, but it was a start. But in 1994 everything changed. Eric went to a conference in Japan where Bill Gates was giving a speech. Microsoft hadn’t even released Internet Explorer yet, but Gates spent most of his speech talking about the future of the internet. He speculated how the internet would be used for revolutionary ideas such as social media and even video calling. Suddenly something inside Eric’s mind just clicked. This internet technology would clearly be the solution to Eric’s dream of pressing a button and immediately seeing his wife.
The problem was, not many people in China were even using the internet yet. But Eric knew if he could somehow make it to America, to the forefront of the tech-boom in Silicon Valley, perhaps there he could learn how to achieve his dream. If it hadn’t been for that speech from Bill Gates, it’s entirely possible Eric would have gone down a very different path. But inspired by the words of one of his childhood idols, and with a firmly set goal, Eric decided to head to America. And with the extensive qualifications and coding skills he now had, he thought it would be easy to get into the States. But Eric could not have been more wrong.
The American Dream Barely able to speak English
Eric applied for his first visa to work in the US. But when he was asked to produce an English language business card, he mistranslated his job and listed himself as a “consultant”. The immigration office determined that Eric was a part-time contractor and denied him entry into the country. Eric soon re-applied. But was rejected again. So, he applied again. And again. And again. But every time he got rejected. After 8 rejections, he knew he had to try something different. Luckily, he had a friend whose husband was a co-founder of a tiny tech start-up called WebEx – a company who specialized in Internet based phone calling for business conferences. With proof of his skills and dedication, WebEX took a chance on Eric and sponsored his ninth visa attempt. They didn’t care that he could barely speak a word of English yet, as long as he knew how to code. Finally, Eric’s visa application was successful. And in 1997, after nearly two years of trying, he was able to move to Silicon Valley to join WebEx as one of their first 10 engineers. Though leaving his family behind and giving up his small start-up business was a very tough decision for Eric, he knew he had to do it.
However, Eric soon discovered the transition wasn’t going to be quite as smooth or easy as he’d expected. He was going to have to quickly learn a new language and a new culture. Not to mention the challenges of making new friends when he could barely speak any English. And thus communication remained an ongoing issue for Eric. Though he learned the language as quickly as could, he still found himself unable to join in conversations with his colleagues, often feeling side-lined and overlooked as a result. So he chose to follow his father’s advice and focus on the one thing he knew he could do: work hard. And thus, Eric worked tirelessly, and was known for coding all through the night. And as Eric’s language skills grew, his merits quickly became apparent to his colleagues at WebEx. Eric wasn’t just hardworking; he was filled with an infectious optimism and a surprising honesty.
And as a result, it wasn’t long before he was promoted to head up the entire engineering team. After WebEx went public in 2000, Eric was thrilled at what he’d helped the company to achieve. But it was a bittersweet victory. He had set out to come to America to build his own company. That was always his dream. So although he was happy to see WebEx succeed, he vowed to himself that one day it would be his own company going public instead. But before Eric could even consider that, a tragedy unfolded that made his job more difficult than ever…
After 9/11, the world was gripped by fear and paranoia. Many companies didn’t want to fly employees across the world unless they absolutely had to. This meant demand for WebEx’s software dramatically increased, as it let businesses hold cheap virtual audio meetings. But Eric realized this was an opportunity to help push WebEx in the direction he’d always wanted: video calls.
And so in 2003, using code that Eric was pivotal in developing, WebEx launched its first video calling features. This made them one of the first video conferencing products on the market. Eric had finally made his idea from the train all those years ago, into a reality. Although, it wasn’t quite how he’d imagined it. Because the WebEx platform had been originally built for audio calls, the video product they’d added on wasn’t actually that good. Eric knew their video calls could be significantly improved if they started from scratch.
But before he could even discuss this with anyone, WebEx was sold to Cisco. And now that the company was owned by one of the biggest tech companies in the world, the culture of WebEx changed dramatically. Eric was pushed to his breaking point as he and the other original WebEx employees were dismissed and ignored. He grew extremely frustrated by their new owners’ lack of care for innovation, and especially their poor customer service. Eric frequently met with clients who always had huge issues and complaints about their services. Customers complained that the software was slow to start up. That the video would lag. And if they had too many people on a call the audio and video would fail completely. Plus they were crying out for new updates like the ability to screen share.
Unfortunately, Eric’s attempts to fix these issues were ignored by the new management. His new bosses just didn’t seem to care. They were much more concerned about the money side of the company than the customer side. And since there was no better solution on the market, WebEx was doing very well financially, so they saw no reason to change things. Now, Eric liked money too of course – and by this point had a six figure salary. But he couldn’t help but feel like everything he was doing was a betrayal of his morals and of his original dream.
For the next few years, Eric woke up every morning feeling miserable. He dreaded going into the office and taking meeting after meeting where his customers told him how bad their service was – especially as he wasn’t able to do anything about it, which made him feel ashamed and embarrassed. And then, when Eric was at his lowest, he received another devastating blow. In 2010, Eric’s father tragically passed away. Eric had kept a close relationship with his dad, constantly calling him for advice and input. And now he’d lost one of the most important people in his life. With everything that was going on, Eric was feeling more lost and depressed than ever. But that unhappiness led Eric to a revelation. The thing that actually gave him purpose, that made his life feel like it had meaning, was making other people happy. When he made his family, his wife, his customers happy, he felt happy. Eric said: “When I was young, I had no idea about the purpose of life. But I’ve realized the purpose of life is to pursue happiness. Sustainable happiness comes from making others happy.” But to achieve that, he needed something to change. Either he was going to make the company listen to him, or he was going to have to do something drastic.
So he went to his bosses and he pitched them an idea – an entirely new platform, built specifically for video calling. An alternative, smart-phone friendly concept that he was confident his unhappy customers would love. The focus would be entirely on usability and enhancing user-friendly features. It would be cloud-based and not require downloading or signing up. It would take a simple click to jump into a meeting. And because of its better foundations, it would provide a stable and reliable connection, regardless of internet quality. It was everything his clients had been begging him for. But the Cisco bosses didn’t feel the same way. They flat out rejected Eric’s pitch. To achieve what Eric was suggesting, they would have to build an entirely new platform, not just update their existing software. It just wasn’t going to be worth their time or money. Especially when they felt the marketplace was already over-crowded. They were already struggling to compete with companies like Skype for business clients, and newer products like FaceTime and Google Hangouts were already servicing the home user market. They felt there was no demand for Eric’s new “user-friendly” platform. But Eric knew they were wrong. If there was no demand for it, why were their clients asking for it every day? This left Eric with two choices. Either he continued to work at his safe, six-figure job, overseeing software he knew wasn’t good enough, or he risked everything to found his own rival company, with no backing or support, overseeing software he truly believed in. Eric no longer had his father to turn to for advice. And even his wife Sherry felt the only option was to continue in his current job. He couldn’t just throw everything away, right? So what did Eric do?
He took the risk. In 2011, he said goodbye to the company he’d worked at for 14 years, goodbye to his safe six figure pay-check, and quit his job. Eric was going to set up a direct competitor to the software he had helped create…
Zooming To Success
Eric was now out on his own, and knew that his new company was going to require a lot of money to get started. Luckily, he’d built up a huge list of connections through his years at WebEx, so he figured sourcing investment shouldn’t be too difficult. So Eric went to every venture capitalist he knew and pitched them his idea. And every single one of them came back with the exact same answer: NO. None of them were interested in investing in yet another video-calling platform. Just like his old bosses, they claimed the Microsoft backed Skype, Google Hangouts, FaceTime and Cisco themselves were already huge players in that arena. And they couldn’t really understand why Eric’s proposal was any different to the existing products out there.
They told him it just wasn’t a good idea. Driving back from his final meeting, Eric was left feeling depressed and scared. He’d given up everything for his dream, but maybe he’d made a terrible mistake? But something inside Eric told him that wasn’t the case. The venture capitalists were wrong about his idea. And he was going to prove it to them. When he got back to his computer, he changed his screensaver to the phrase “YOU ARE WRONG”. While the venture capitalists didn’t believe in Eric, the people who actually knew him did. So support came from the friends he’d made during his time in Silicon Valley.
The first person to invest in Eric’s new business was a former exec at Cisco. The two didn’t really know each other, but the investor had heard such positive things about Eric from his former colleagues, that he immediately felt Eric was someone worth betting on. With one investor on board, more money began to flow, and Eric’s friends also put in what they could to help out. With the help of his friends and investors, Eric was able to raise the initial money he needed to pay a team of engineers to develop the software for his new company, which he initially called SaaSbee. Eric wasn’t happy with the name choice, but he struggled to think of one he liked more. But that didn’t matter right now.
Eric had just founded an American company, as an American citizen, in Silicon Valley. The moment he’d fantasized about ever since he was teenager had finally arrived. And in his mind, his company’s mission was simple. Build a better product. He wanted to create something that was intuitive, that didn’t require downloading or creating an account to use. That would have nothing to install, nothing to sign up to. That could run on Macs, PCs, iPhones, Androids, anything! You could just send a link, click on it, and be instantly in the meeting. It was going to be simple. It was going to be stable regardless of your internet strength, and it was always going to focus on making its users happy.
Eric was confident that if they focused on their customers, even if it took an insanely long time, they would eventually come out on top. And not just his customers, Eric was determined that he wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of Cisco. He didn’t want to dread going into work. And he didn’t want his employees to feel that way either. Eric had realized in his four years under Cisco that if employees weren’t happy, the quality of their work dropped. So Eric decided that above everything else, this newfound purpose in life – happiness – was going to be the driving force behind his company. Making the customer happy, making his employees happy, and making himself happy. But just because Eric’s idea was simple, it doesn’t mean it was easy. And it was going to require a team of the best engineers.
The good news is that many of the talented engineers from his former company, WebEx, felt the same way as Eric. They believed in his vision, and many reached out and asked to be part of it.
The bad news was that hiring all these skilled engineers meant Eric had no money left to spend on other departments like sales and marketing. But for Eric, getting the software right was more important than anything else. He believed if the product was good enough, it would sell itself. However, in 2012, a few months before their video conferencing software was ready to launch, Eric still hated the name SaaSbee. He asked every employee to come up with names daily, but he couldn’t find one that worked. In a final attempt, he reached out to his first ever investor, and begged him to come up with a new name for him.
When Eric heard his reply, he knew it was exactly what he’d been looking for: Zoom. World of Warships FREE Gifts Now if there’s one thing that’s clear from these business videos, it’s that business is often like war with the way companies battle against each other and devise strategies to win
Breaking Into The Market With a name change to “Zoom”
Eric and his team launched their first beta. But they didn’t actually have a launch strategy. They were confident that their product was different enough to stand out, but they had no idea how to get people to actually find it. So, they managed to convince Walt Mossberg to meet with them. Walt was one of the biggest technology reviewers in the industry at the Wall Street Journal. If they could demonstrate Zoom to him and he liked it, a good review could help get their new software the publicity it needed. Of course, a bad review could kill their product before it had even really begun.
But when they arrived at the meeting with Walt, it turned out his office currently had no Wi-Fi to connect to. How were they supposed to show off their entirely cloud based product with no internet? Fortunately, Walt was able to hotspot them from his phone. And in a strange turn of events, being able to show him how smooth and stable their video conferencing was on a weaker phone connection benefited them. Walt then spent weeks testing the features of Zoom out and ended up writing a glowing review of the product. Walt’s words introduced Zoom to the world and resulted in 50,000 new users downloading the software the very day his review went live! But during all this time, Zoom still had no other branches in the company.
Eric and his team of engineers were left to close sales, conduct quality assurance, and carry out any marketing themselves. In fact, Eric personally emailed every customer who cancelled their subscription with Zoom, trying to find out what he could improve to make them stay. One customer even replied to Eric’s email accusing the company of lying for pretending the email was from the CEO. Except, it really was the CEO. When Eric tried to explain this to the customer, they still refused to believe it was actually him, so Eric offered to Zoom them to prove it. Whilst the CEO emailing every customer to get their feedback was unusual, Eric knew if he kept speaking with customers, he could understand exactly what they needed.
Targeting business clients, Eric hoped to steal the unhappy WebEx customer base he already knew existed. And he had the perfect idea for how to do it. Unlike his competitors in the business world, Eric offered a freemium version of Zoom. This allowed for calls of up to 40 minutes and 100 participants at no cost. He hoped this would cause companies to at least try Zoom as they had nothing to lose. And once they tried it, he was sure they would see how much better it was and sign up for paid membership – which was cheaper than what their competition offered too. To the industry’s surprise, Eric’s plan worked. Businesses might already be paying for Skype or WebEx, but now they could just send a Zoom link, with no account or download, and jump straight into a call with whoever they wanted. As employees’ at large companies began using Zoom, their bosses soon saw how much better it was than its competitors and switched over.
Eric’s gamble of focusing exclusively on customer friendly features had paid off hugely. Before long, most of Silicon Valley was using Zoom, and it became a sizable player in the business video conferencing market. Having launched its first alpha at the start of 2013, by May the company already had a million customers and a valuation of 25 million dollars. However, at this point, they were still a long way behind the industry leader Skype, which had been bought by Microsoft for 8.5 billion dollars. And thus Microsoft had been integrating Skype into all of their products, giving it a significant boost. Thus for the rest of the 2010s, Skype held the largest number of monthly users and the largest slice of the market share, closely rivalled by Google Hangouts and other services such as Cisco WebEx. But Eric knew if he kept listening directly to customer feedback, and remained lazer focused on improving the software, Zoom would continue to chip away at their market share. And sure enough as Zoom became bigger and bigger, Eric was able to raise larger investments so he could reinvest in more growth.
By 2019, Zoom had transitioned from a small start-up to an extremely profitable business with revenue of over 300 million dollars. Having moved from their tiny, dingy office space, Eric now had 1700 employees in various teams working at the company. He also finally had real marketing and sales departments! With the company so profitable, Eric finally had the chance to achieve the goal he’d vowed he would a decade before. He could take his company public. He could be the success story in a magazine that inspires the next generation of teenagers now. Zoom was listed on the NASDAQ, and when the stock market opened that morning, Eric had his wife and three children at his side as he rang the opening bell for the day of trading. By the end of their first day on the market, Zoom’s price had risen by 72% per share, meaning the company was valued at 15.9 billion dollars when the market closed. And within only a month’s time, Zoom held a market cap of 42 billion dollars.
This not only turned Eric into a multi-billionaire, but many of his 1700 employees became instant millionaires too. But it also meant something else for Eric. He could finally take down his screensaver stating “YOU ARE WRONG”. His dream had become a reality, and his company had taken a formidable slice of the business-user market share. By December 2019, the company boasted an incredible 10 million monthly users. But while this sounds impressive, to put it into context, Microsoft claims Skype to have had nearly 300 million monthly users itself at this time. So while Zoom was growing, it looked like it would be a very long time before they could rival their biggest competitors. Not just that, but the same year it had become worth billions, it was discovered that Zoom had been putting hidden servers on laptops and desktop computers. These servers were intended to make it quicker to use Zoom in your browser, but it turned out that they had a major security vulnerability. Using these servers, outside forces would be able to open up a zoom conference call automatically on someone else’s computer and turn their webcam on.
The issue was so serious that despite being patched, Apple updated their own software to completely remove Zoom servers from their products. Thankfully, Eric and his team were able to fix the issue quickly, but Eric was working harder and longer hours than ever, and he hated that it meant so much less time with his wife and kids. He tried to take as many of his meetings as possible via Zoom so he could be with them more, but the workload definitely began to take a toll on Eric. And then, only a couple of months after the incident, in early 2020 something even more unexpected happened, that would change the path of Zoom forever.
The World Shuts Down In early 2020
most of the world was sent into a global lockdown as the Covid 19 Pandemic took hold. Suddenly billions of people had no choice but to work from home – requiring video conferencing tools to do it. Not just that, but people were locked away from their loved ones, so video calls were now the only way they could see each other. But whilst Zoom had been gaining popularity in the business world, many casual home users had never even heard of Zoom. Skype had been the market leader up until the pandemic. So why did the general public make the switch to Zoom instead?
Well, having once been innovative, Skype had failed to upgrade or improve its services over the years. It had originally been designed for audio calls, and video tacked on later just like WebEx, so their software foundation hadn’t been built to reliably host video calls – resulting in constant connection and stability issues. Whereas Zoom was built for video from the ground up from day one. Plus after Microsoft bought Skype, they heavily prioritised their new “Teams” software for business clients instead, and thus Skype didn’t really get the developments it needed. Instead they added features and gimmicks that nobody really wanted. And this resulted in loads of updates being needed. Often right before you went to have a skype call, skype would just automatically start updating – which sometimes brought new bugs as well, as the software definitely had lots of glitches and problems.
Not to mention the poor design choices they made over and over again that left users feeling confused and unhappy. In short, it didn’t feel like Skype had listened to its customers as much, as the experience of using Skype just wasn’t as smooth or well designed. By comparison, Zoom had been quietly perfecting its platform. Unlike Microsoft, Google, Facebook or Apple, video conferencing was always Zoom’s main product and sole focus. It didn’t require different versions for different browsers or devices, and it needed very little data to function. This meant the underlying platform would allow for high quality video calls, even if someone’s connection was poor. Zoom could also be used without downloading or signing up to anything. You were even able to record meetings if you wanted to. And it allowed users to sign in with their Google or Facebook account, making signing up a much quicker process. So when the pandemic hit, and even those who weren’t particularly good with computers needed to use video calling software, Zoom became the obvious choice.
It was simple to use. You could send your grandmother a link she could just click on and join. And with Zoom, schools and hospitals and businesses could hold huge conference calls for free – something no other platform offered at the time. And thus when the time came for the entire world to choose a platform, it almost unanimously adopted the easier, more user friendly Zoom. Think about it – if you’re hosting a meeting, you’d want the option where people can just click a link and join easily without an account or any technical experience. And so that’s the beauty of Eric’s decision to just focus on making the best product possible and trying to solve customer problems – because if they prefer your solution, they’ll tell other people about it for free, so you get this compounding growth from word of mouth.
As a result of all this, Zoom grew at an insane rate through the pandemic. By March 2020 alone, Zoom had gone from being downloaded 56,000 times daily to over 2 million times a day, breaking download records day after day on the App Store. And by the end of the year, it had captured nearly 50% of the entire video-call market. However, this sudden shift hadn’t been planned or expected by Zoom. Eric had designed Zoom for business conferences, but suddenly it was being used for almost everything you can imagine. Movie nights, quizzes, doctor’s appointments, TV chat shows, therapy sessions, church gatherings, to make horror films, even some marriages were done over Zoom! Zoom wasn’t prepared for this widespread adoption of its software that was taking place.
And it soon led to some major problems that threatened to destroy everything Eric had built…
Problems
Zoom had suddenly become a central part of the pandemic experience for millions around the world. But this unexpected boom resulted in a number of outages, forcing Zoom to upgrade its facilities in real time to try and keep up with the unexpected demand. This was incredibly stressful for Eric – millions of new people were suddenly wanting to use his product, but they couldn’t because of the outages. And sadly for Eric, the issues for Zoom were only just beginning.
They soon ran into a problem with unexpected participants joining meetings and showing inappropriate images or making inappropriate comments. This became known as Zoombombing, and it was a particularly big problem given many schools were now using the software. There were cases of people hacking into meetings and shouting racial slurs, showing graphic material to school classes, and even disrupting AA meetings and trying to trigger and expose recovering addicts. Not just that, but once the software became widely used, Zoom was accused of having a number of major security issues – from claiming their app had end-to-end encryption when it didn’t, to issues in the app’s coding which left room for virus attacks and access to user locations.
As a result, the New York State Attorney General began an investigation into the company, which ultimately forced them to pay out 86 million dollars in a settlement. This was a massive blow to both Eric and Zoom’s reputation. It even led to some companies and institutions banning the use of Zoom entirely, including NASA, Google and even the Canadian government. During this time where major security problems were arising, the zoom team became overwhelmed. Eric constantly found himself apologizing to the public and swearing to do better. But the constant negative articles about his company hit him hard, especially as his main goal with Zoom had always been to make people happy. Although his family, including his mother and brother, were locked down in his house with him, he felt more distant from them than ever.
He frequently vanished into his office, working late into the night. But Eric didn’t have a choice. More users and more scrutiny meant more problems that needed to be fixed, or else everything he’d built could be destroyed. So he and his engineers focused on making Zoom functional for its new, mainstream audience. They forced passwords onto every Zoom meeting by default and rebuilt their entire security process, purchasing the company Keybase to take advantage of their existing encryption software. But just as one problem was solved, another would seem to appear. There was one serious case of censorship when one of Zoom’s executives in China worked with the Chinese government to ban, and even expose the identities, of participants in meetings who were commemorating the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
This led to the US Department of Justice charging the executive for a number of crimes, and Eric firing him as soon as he realized what he had done. But it didn’t matter that this employee was acting alone, or that Zoom really was an American company – the association between Zoom, Eric and the Chinese government had been made. This caused some people to think Zoom shared all of its user data with the Chinese government. So Eric himself made sure to address this and ensure strict geo-fencing procedures were in place so no data was routed through China. Despite the headlines about security, Zoom continued to grow at an insane rate through the pandemic. Their revenue increased from 330 million dollars in 2019, to over 4 billion dollars in 2022.
But as of right now, despite looking to earn more revenue than ever, Zoom is starting to see a decline in its users and customers. Part of this is likely down to Google Meet, which has recently skyrocketed to become Zoom’s number one competitor. Offering free calls for over 40 minutes, Google Meet has been slowly stealing away Zoom’s market share. Amazon is also pushing their own competitor called Chime, so Zoom’s place in the market is by no means secure. In fact, Zoom has had to lay-off a significant portion of its workforce, with Eric even cutting his own salary by 98%. To try and keep up company morale, Zoom has recently asked its employees to return to the office. Despite Zoom playing a significant role in the increase of remote working, Eric has come out to say that he thinks employees interacting in person is much better for their happiness.
Eric also still has a lot of aspirations of growth, intending to branch out into new areas and new tech – even recently acquiring an AI language-translation company. Eric wants a future where anyone on any device, anywhere in the world, and speaking any language, will be able to use Zoom to instantly talk and understand each other in any language. Although this did cause some initial controversy, as articles appeared saying that Zoom can use your private calls and messages to train its AI systems thanks to new terms and conditions. Zoom denied this and admitted the terms had been worded badly, but given the previous security and privacy concerns, it wasn’t a great look for the company. But whether Zoom ultimately maintains its position as market leader or not, if Eric continues to prioritise customer and employee happiness, he will be achieving exactly what he set out to do. Eric came up with the idea for Zoom as a teenager who was unable to see the love of his life.
By the time he had created Zoom, he no longer had this problem. But millions of others around the world did. And thanks to Eric, they actually were able to see each other. Eric’s goal was to create something that made people happy. And by providing a way for millions to interact with each other when the world felt particularly dark and uncertain, there’s no doubt that he achieved that.
