From an Immigrant to a Billionaire, the story of Eric Yuan the founder of Zoom

Eric Yuan is the CEO and founder of Zoom, the most popular and widely used video conferencing website across the globe. The 50-year-old billionaire's net worth is estimated to be $13.6 billion. He also ranks on the Forbes List of 400 richest Americans.

Zoom’s booming success started when the world was introduced with corona virus and social distancing laws pushed schools, offices and businesses to remote working. Many people believe that Zoom’s success is much less to do with Yuan’s hard work but more with surging demand of video conferencing software due to covid19, they believe luck is one word definition for Yuan’s success story. But after going through Yuan’s life, I believe that luck is by far the most opposite word that expresses Yuan’s success.

Though corona virus played the main role in increasing demand for video conferencing sites, but Zoom wasn’t the only player in the game and unlike its competitors it wasn’t backed by big tech giants, like Apple’s FaceTime, Google’s Meet, Cisco and Skype. Yuan’s smart leadership skills and a better customer approach took Zoom ahead in the race. But Yuan has been fighting the odds from a long time now.

Yuan born in Tai'an, China. After graduation he worked in Japan for four years, but he was inspired by the internet boom in United States and wanted to move to California’s Silicon Valley to work for a tech startup, his interest in the dot-com bubble augmented after attending a conference by Bill Gates on the Internet and its role in the future. After that, Yuan applied for US visa and eight times he was declined, but finally on his ninth attempt he was accepted, but the process took further two years. Yuan is reported having said that for nine years his request for a visa permit was declined, but he did not give up, now when he looks back at those days it seems a practice of perseverance.

In the US he started as a programmer at WebEx and soon became the head programmer for its video-conferencing platform. After Cisco acquisition of WebEx in 2007, he became the vice president of the engineering department. He was famous for being a product man, sincere to customers.

Not only with the customers but he was also well known for a very respectful approach with his subordinates. His committed spark comes through bright and clear, even at Zoom, his words of explanation are linear and logical.

It was this steadfast behavior, that led a few dozen WebEx engineers to join Yuan in 2011, when he announced, he was going to start his own video conferencing platform built for both mobile phones plus desktop and with more user-friendly features. Initially he went to Cisco to fund his startup, but for Cisco the demand for a video conferencing platform was not cunning enough. According to Yuan, Cisco was more focused on platforms like Facebook, and that it took them three years to realize that he was right.

Yuan was unable to convince any other investors to fund his startup, so he lent money from his friends and family and launched Zoom in 2013. Even his wife was worried about Zoom’s future, if it fails all the money Yuan lent will become a huge problem but Yuan didn’t give up. During the early days of Zoom, Yuan was involved in every aspect of the business, even the customer service. In an interview he said that he personally emailed ever customer who rejected his services.

After six years of steady growth, the company went public in 2019. Unlike other tech IPOs accumulating huge losses like Uber, Lyft and Slack, Zoom was both debt-free and was making profit. Zoom was also ranked in one of the highest employee-rated companies to work for. Yuan moved a bit cautiously about rapid growth in the consumer market, with no big plans and exaggerated expectations, which often disappoint.

Zoom did incredibly well on the stocks, its share price accelerated 72% on the very first day. Yuan was a billionaire before the fall of 2019. Then In 2020 corona virus came, and Zoom emerged as the most common and easy to use Video conferencing app in market. The company is now worth more than 35 billion US dollars, and provide services to more than 30,000 companies such as Samsung, Walmart and Uber. But the work-from-home trend hasn’t all been very smooth surfing for Zoom.

Zoom’s greatest strength over its competitors was its accessibility, which also became one of its most vulnerable aspect. When Zoom became highly demanded app it instantly became the main target for hackers. It’s one of the Silicon Valley tricks to give super user-friendly features and security is left as an upcoming milestone. Yuan said in an interview that when his team developed the software, they didn’t have the slightest idea that in the near future the whole world will be using their platform. Soon a lot of Zoom meetings were hijacked by Zoom bombers. Zoom introduced a feature which allowed the host to screen every participant before letting him in. In a statement Zoom officials declared that their company was serious in protecting their user’s privacy.

Rumors also spread that Zoom have been leaking information of its user to strangers because it does not have end-to-end encryption policy, such claims were denied by the Zoom officials. Zoom did satisfy the security agencies who wanted to ensure that it didn’t breech its user’s privacy. Yuan’s connection to China were also questioned, Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, called Zoom a Chinese entity, after the platform shut down accounts that had hosted meetings to honor the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, under the pressure by the Chinese government. But Zoom said that their actions were not dictated by anyone.

Yuan apologized in a blog post about the hijacking and promised for more better services in the future, he also said in an interview that he is an American citizen and Zoom is an American company headquartered in California. Many other entrepreneurs who knew Yuan also came to his aid by denying any claims of his affiliation with the Chinese Government.

In this pandemic era Zoom has done well in uplifting itself from its competitors and is doing a fair job tackling all the claims against it. Yuan said in an interview that the over flowing money into Zoom’s vault does not make him that happy, that he has passed that age, but the thought that a lot of people are using his platform for video conferencing really motivates him, the world will get rid of corona virus in the near future but office work will never be the same again, remote working will play a large part in every business and he is happy, that in some way he had a part in convincing the world that entire businesses can be run virtually.

Takeaway

Yuan’s visa permit is reality for a lot of people but it also shows that never-giving-up pays of eventually. According to Yuan it took him more than nine years only to enter US, let alone starting his own tech startup. In 2013 when he did launch his platform success did not come over night, it took further six years for the company to solidify. A lot of people face this problem, they have a wonderful idea and they believe that as soon as they will over come the first milestone the rest will happen in a night. The reality however, does not go very smooth and these people leave in the midway never realizing that their idea really had the potential to lay the seeds for a multinational firm.

Yuan’s approach towards his customers and subordinates is also exemplary, to be successful you need a trustworthy team and loyal customers. Yuan was committed from the very first day, he is the kind of a guy who does not long for the money his product will generate rather how much accepted his product will be in the market, and such people don’t find way to attach strings to increase revenue instead, they go for perfection and in the end, it is their product which actually become a brand.