ZOOMING Right In!

An obvious perseverer, please allow us to introduce to you….. drum roll …… Mr. Eric Yuan.

Mr. Eric Yuan founded the platform ZOOM which enables us to video conference call with our business associates, family members and yes, that particular one we love. Well, if you had not heard of it before, certainly you all have now with all that we are going through with the self isolating, etc.

Eric Yuan was born in China and whilst a freshman at university he, in his own words, “regularly took a ten-hour train ride to visit my girlfriend (who is now my wife). I detested those rides and used to imagine other ways I could visit my girlfriend without traveling — those daydreams eventually became the basis for Zoom”.

Yitzi Weiner interviewed Mr. Yuan and shared some of his answers with us:

“I decided to come to the U.S. in the mid ’90’s because of the Internet, which I knew was the wave of the future. It was red hot here, but hadn’t yet taken off in China. The first time I applied for a U.S. visa, I was rejected. I continued to apply again and again over the course of two years and finally received my visa on the ninth try”.

Talk about the quality of perseverance! It was not until his NINTH try that he was granted a Visa to enter this country!

He continues:

“I arrived in Silicon Valley in 1997 and joined WebEx, which at the time was a real-time collaboration company with about a dozen employees. The company grew very quickly and went public within several years of my arrival.

In 2007 WebEx was acquired by Cisco and I became Cisco’s Corporate VP of engineering, in charge of collaboration software. I often met with customers, and in my conversations with them learned they weren’t happy with the current collaboration solutions, including WebEx. I firmly believed I could develop a platform that would make customers happy, so in June of 2011, I decided it was time to make the video communications solution I imagined during my college train trips a reality.

More than 40 fellow engineers followed me in my new venture. We launched the Zoom platform in 2012. Now, a little more than five years later, we’ve hosted over 20 billion annualized meeting minutes (up from 6.9B last year) and our customer base includes 1/3 of the Fortune 500 and 90 percent of the top 200 U.S. universities”.

Holy mackerel, we say! That is amazing. But there’s a lot more!

Mr. Yuan goes on to say, “Zoom has also brought goodness to the world as an organization — that’s because our culture centers on happiness and caring. In fact, one of Zoom’s core values is “Care.” We expect our employees to care about the community, the company, their teammates, customers, and themselves. We don’t want our Caring philosophy to be a one-off that is explained in employee training and then never discussed again, so it is posted on the wall of Zoom’s lobby in every location, it is a common refrain in our all-hands meetings, and it is the core of the work at Zoom.

We help ensure that Zoom is made up of caring people starting with the hiring process. At that point, we evaluate candidates on whether we believe they can embrace the value of Care and deliver happiness for others. If they embrace our core value of Care, and want to deliver happiness, then they will be self-motivated and will work harder for their teammates and their customer”.

When asked, “What are the five things you wish someone had told you before you launched your start-up and why,” his answers were simple:

1. Although the start-up journey is long and tough, it’s also fun and exciting. Don’t be afraid to start — just go for it!

2. You don’t need to hire the people who are the most qualified on paper; instead you should hire those with self-motivation and a self-learning mentality.

3. Your company’s culture is the #1 most important thing to get right. Everything else flows from there.

4. If your employees are not happy, nothing else at your company will go well.

5. Find the investors who want to invest in you, not only in your business.

Oh, boy, this gentleman really has a heart! When asked who he would like to have breakfast or lunch with and why, his answer came right back:

“My father. My beloved father passed away just two months after I told him I was going to start a company. Whenever I make progress in my career, I wish I could share the news with my father”.

We are so grateful that he shared this much with Mr. Weiner and now with all of us. Thank you, Mr. Yuan, for putting so very much of your good self into your business.