Zoom-Boom

We are all familiar with the Zoom app, as the ideal video conferencing platform (VCP). Its overnight success is what is making its competitors bite their nails. The debateable question is, how Eric Yuan, the CEO of Zoom, managed to use the pandemic as a stepping stone to success? Let us try to address this question and understand the secret behind it, learning about him and the company from their history to the future.

Eric Yuan believed that it’s not how big the user community is, but how the company cares for its existing consumers that matters. It took 9 years for the Chinese emigrant to become a tech billionaire from a struggling entrepreneur. Unhappy with the consumer services, he left Webex in 2011 after working for about 14 years in the company, to make his own VCP - Zoom. Same year in April, Yuan invited angel investor Dan Scheinman, who also left Cisco around that time, for a demo of his idea. And Scheinman ended up giving Yuan a $250,000 investment check — which is now worth more than $175 million. From the very beginning, focus on customers has always been his first priority. Talking about Eric, Quinn Li, senior vice president of Qualcomm Ventures, an early Zoom investor, said in an interview – "Very early on, we spoke about customer experience and culture; two things he really cared about". "He would write back to any customer that would write to him, which is very rare for a company CEO to do", he added. Yuan has been an epitome of simplicity and innovation. The Emergence partner Santi Subotovsky told Forbes that the venture firm’s partners were amazed when Yuan showed up for the pitch meeting and urged them to install the Zoom app and set up a live video conference of the presentation. Ever since the investors have been confident about the company’s growth as the valuation is nearly 50 times its sales.  

Zoom has been a go-to service for not only virtual meetings and classroom lessons, but also for happy hours, costume parties, church services, brunches, book clubs and even romantic dates. Then what makes zoom any different from the other VCPs? Well, the word we’re looking for is ‘Dexterity’. The company ensured to provide the features that no single provided altogether.

Let us look at some of the key features provided by Zoom:

• The last thing people (especially in business) want to hear is that their trade secrets are being exploited. Zoom is a cloud-based peer to peer software platform, which is very secure.

• The VCP boast the ease with which one can navigate the app and it is no lie. 

• Whether it’s your phone or PC, Zoom provides maximum video quality as well as minimum break in transmission.

• Zoom has a higher participant capacity as compared to other competitors like google duo, skype, webex etc.

• Users don’t feel embarrassed anymore as the application allows for a virtual background.

• Zoom gave its users free 40-minute meetings for up to 100 people.
  

Zoom was quick enough to implement important changes foreseeing the need of the hour. The company removed the 40-minute time limit and is offering its services to K-12 schools, free of charge in various countries. It also waived its monthly charge to all its users in China. Zoom has captured disproportionately more market share than many of its competitors with more resources, such as Skype, Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, and Cisco Webex. It has been able to achieve this success by focusing on building a product which considers its user’s needs first, establishing strong network effects, and leveraging network bridging. The company did not limit its platform to just a community of users, unlike Apple’s FaceTime, which can only be used on iOS, Zoom can be used on all operating systems – PC, Linux, iOS, and Android. It also created an app marketplace for integrations with other platforms like Slack and PayPal in order to extend the reach and convenience of Zoom.

It’s easy to see why these features and strategies helped zoom to set itself apart from the competition. Though it is yet to be seen how ZOOM will manage to hold its position with the arising competitors like Jio-meet and google-meet and what the company has more to offer with the increasing VCP demand during this never-ending lockdown period. With this, more questions emerge, Is the company ready to face the world after the pandemic ends? And how? Does Eric Yuan have some strategies hidden up his sleeve which are yet to be unfolded? Well only one or none knows the answer.

Altogether it is evident that it’s not just an overnight success. It’s the ambition and belief which paved his way, followed by continuous hard work and dedication that paid off at the right time.

- Mudit