How Zoom CEO Eric Yuan Made Billions In COVID-19?

Eric Yuan and Zoom.

Eric Yuan is the Founder and CEO of Zoom Video Communications.

During the pandemic, Zoom’s shares grew more than double and his net worth is increased by 4 Billion.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, this Eric Yuan was net worth at $2.9 Billion and Now he is worth $7.57 Billion.

According to Blomberg’s list of the 500 richest people in the world, He is currently ranked №192.

Eric is one of the rare Chinese –American CEO who started his company in Silicon Valley and led it through IPO.

He is an American citizen.

In this article we gonna have a look through his early days, his journey, about Zoom and Eric’s personal life.

Early Life.

Eric Yuan was born in 1970 in the family of mining engineers at Tai’an Province China. He got the idea of Zoom when he uses to travel 10 hours on the train to meet his long-distance girlfriend in China.

After his college graduation for 4 years, Eric worked in Japan for some time.

Later Eric decided to move to Silicon Valley after he listened to Bill Gates’s speech about the dot-com bubble.

But the change was not so easy.

His visa for the USA got rejected 8 times. But on the 9th try, he got his visa permit.

Silicon Valley.

In the year 1997, he got a job at Webex, in Silicon Valley. The company grew very quickly, went public, and soon in 2007 was acquired by Cisco.

After Cisco’s acquisition, Yuan became the VP of Engineering at Cisco. During customer interaction, he found out that the customers were not satisfied and happy with their product. So did the market research and pitched a new software idea to the Cisco, which he used to think during his China days while going to meet his girlfriend.

But, Cisco denied that software’s idea. Hence, Yuan along with 40 of his fellow engineers of Cisco, left to start his new venture to build the product.

Founding Zoom.

After 2 years of research and hard work they made the product and decided to launch it in 2012.

Eric wasn’t able to convince the investors to back his new venture. Not even close friends and colleagues believed in his product. As all of them thought that the Video Conferencing market was saturated and there is no place for a new player. Hence, Investors turned down for the investment in his venture.

At last, Eric borrowed money from family and friends to start his venture.

What is Zoom?

Zoom is an enterprise-grade affordable all in one platform for video Conferencing, Audio Conferencing, and Web Conferencing. It is an American company.

It works on mobile and desktop devices.

Zoom reached $1 Billion in Valuation in 2017.

Eric Yuan ‘s Zoom first became profitable in 2019 and completed its IPO. It is listed on NASDAQ.

In its stock market debut, the company is valued at 15.9 Billion and Eric who owns 22% of the shares became worth $2.9 Billion.

Affect of COVID-19 Pandemic.

During the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic, social distancing requirements forced people to engage in telecommuting, distance education, and online social relations. Thousands of educational institutions switched to online classes using Zoom.

By February 2020, Zoom had gained 2.22 million users in 2020 more users than it amassed in the entirety of 2019.

On one day in March 2020, the Zoom app was downloaded 2.13 million times. Daily average users rose from about 10 million in December 2019 to about 200 million in March 2020, with 300 million daily meeting participants by the end of April 2020.

This led to a significant increase in the company’s stock price in early 2020, giving the company a market value of $42 Billion.

Eric Yuan’s net worth jumped off to 7.57 Billion in the past 2–3 months due to the quarantined measures adopted in COVID 19 pandemic.

Criticisms.

During the Pandemic, Zoom has been criticized for security lapses and poor design choices.

Many of the issues “surround deliberate features designed to reduce friction in meetings” which citizen lab found to “also by design, reduce the privacy of security”. As a result of which various big companies and major organizations stopped using Zoom.

In April 2020, CEO Eric Yuan publicly apologized for Zoom ‘s security issues and agreed to focus on data privacy and issue a transparency report.

Personal Life.

Eric Yuan was awarded as the top big company CEO honor by Glassdoor, which said that the executive holds a 99% approval rating among the employees.

Along with the other perks, the employees get reimbursed for any book they purchase for themselves or their family members.

Being a top CEO, he is also a family man. His then Girlfriend for whom he thought of Zoom’s creation became his wife and they have 3 children.

Comparing to other CEO’s he travels very less and prefers to hold meetings on Zoom.

Conclusion.

In this article, we have discussed Eric’s personal journey, his professional journey, the creation of Zoom, and taking it to the valuation of $42 Billion.

In my opinion, if the Zoom app fixes its issues i.e. it’s privacy policy and design. It will be of great use to the customers as during the lockdown we realized that our physical presence is not really important for the meeting and can easily happen through Zoom, Hence saving a lot of our time and money.

What are your thoughts on Zoom?

Feel free to share your thoughts/opinions in the comments section.

To read more of such awesome stories, You can also read my Blog- Sanket Mishra.