The Entrepreneurial Story of Eric Yuan — Founder of Zoom
Issues have been solved, it is SAFE to use
Covid-19 continues to spread worldwide. With the latest news, the US hits 1,000,000 confirm cases of coronavirus case. Besides that, the World Health Organization (WHO) is very concerned about the outbreak in India which may cause chaos to the world. Due to the vast spreading of the virus, many countries have lockdown and instructed citizens to quarantine at home.
During this difficult time, Zoom outperformed other applications and rose from a total of 10 million users to 200 million users per day (according to an article in VentureBeat). The primary reason is that many companies hold meetings through Zoom which offers a more user-friendly interface than other applications such as Google Hangouts and etc.
On the other hand, the majority of us didn’t know the entrepreneurial story of the founder of Zoom — Eric Yuan. In fact, when Eric Yuan was 27, he ventured into the Internet world. He didn’t speak English well but he stepped out from comfort zone and began his entrepreneurship in the US. Additionally, his Visa application had been rejected by the US up to 8 times! Fortunately, he didn’t back out and due to his perseverance, he founded a Nasdaq-listed company — Zoom.
The founder and CEO of Zoom — Eric Yuan born in 1970, at Shandong, China. During the early ’90s, the Internet has just been brewing in the US but not in China. Eric coincidentally took part in Bill Gate’s seminar which enlightened him during his business trip to Japan. In that seminar, he discovered the future trend of the Internet so he has made a firm decision to delve into the Internet in the US.
While Eric was 27, he flew to the US. Unfortunately, the journey wasn’t smooth. He got rejected 8 times and succeded on the 9th try for Visa application. After he landed in the US, he had his 1st job in the WebEx. He realized that he couldn’t cope with the communication between his colleagues as he wasn’t fluent in English. However, this did not deter Eric from mastering English. In order to get himself adapted to the US culture and environment, he worked overtime on weekdays which spared out time to have a gathering with his colleagues on weekends. He took the opportunity to master English as well as expand his network in the US.
2 years ago, Eric was interviewed by one of the American largest recruitment platform — Glassdoor and he said:
Even if I was refused entry 20 to 30 times, I would be willing to continue to try. My English wasn’t good, only diligence is where I outperformed competitors. There are too many excellent people in the Silicon Valley, so when others work from 9 to 5, I will do it for 10 hours. If you didn’t sleep, I won’t sleep as well. Diligence is planted in my DNA.
In 2007, WebEx was acquired by the corporate giant — Cisco. The acquisition allowed Eric to gain promotion opportunities and considered a major reversal in his life. After being promoted, Eric often needs to use his company-own products to contact customers via videoconferencing. However, because of technical problems, customers often complain. This recalled Eric of the ideal “virtual video meeting” that was ideal for fast, convenient, and barrier-free when he was in a long-distance relationship with his girlfriend. Hence, he made the most challenging decision in his life, that is, to give up the head of department position. He delved himself into new challenges, so he founded Zoom.
There is a famous saying goes:
The underlying value of entrepreneurship is to solve various problems people are currently facing. Entrepreneurs who can solve problems through their own professions can succeed.
Eric first had the idea of Zoom when he was 18. His girlfriend enrolled in a different college which was hours of distance from Eric one’s. In other words, whenever they missed each other, one has to sacrifice 10 hours of travelling time. Due to the long travelling time, they will only meet each other twice a year. Let me pause here for a while by asking a question:
What do you think about a couple who only meet each other for 2 times a year?
My answer will be long-distance relationship does not last long and will break up anytime. But the relationship between Eric and his girlfriend finally came true, they got married! Hence, I could only say:
Distance does not matter, the only thing that matters is Love
Alright, let’s get back to the story. Eric has realized the distance problem for couples and he started to drill his brain. At last, he came out with the idea of setting up Zoom. An interesting fact is that he promised his wife to spend lesser time for company gatherings while use videoconferencing for most of the time so that he is able to spend more time with his wife and family.
The road to success for Eric is people-oriented. He will personally email all unsubscribers to seek for the reason. Once known, he’ll make further improvements to enhance user experience. The most common problems encountered by Zoom users are the delaying between sound and video. Therefore, Eric put his best effort into technical research to improve the fluency of videoconferencing.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19 globally, many companies have extensively utilized Zoom as a platform to hold sustainable meetings while being quarantined. Undoubtedly, Zoom has resolved the pain points of countless companies globally — Face-to-Face Communication.
According to Bernstein Research market analysis, Zoom ’s monthly active user growth rate has increased by 90%. Besides, Eric’s net worth has soared by $2 billion this year, ranking fourth in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index as well as 274th among the world’s Top 500 richest people.
Nevertheless, Eric seems to be “getting rich overnight”. In fact, his success is definitely not accidental, but inevitable. During the outbreak of COVID-19, he has assisted thousands to millions of companies by solving the major problem — Face-to-Face Communication.
However, recently Google, Nasa and several countries have banned the use of Zoom due to security and privacy concerns. However, I would like to stand on the same side with Zoom to clarify that Zoom has taken necessary precautions and resolved issues related to security and privacy. My statement is based on the message written and published by the CEO and founder of Zoom — Eric Yuan in Zoom Blog.
Besides resolving current issues, Eric also promised and stated clearly the precautions that will be carried out over the next 90 days.
Eric Yuan: “My first priority is to make employees happy”
In addition, Eric credited his company ’s achievements to the public and his team. His first priority is to make employees happy, and if they are happy, so do the customers. Cisco’s experience made him understand the importance of company culture. As a result, he and his team are crystal clear about the company culture and value from the first day of Zoom founded. He will also recruit employees who are in line with the company’s culture. He does not value experience and educational background when recruiting, but pays more attention to people who understand self-motivation and self-learning.
Eric believes that:
