Zoom, the video conferencing company, had an IPO on Thursday April 18 2019. Shares jumped 72% on its opening day, putting the company's valuation at nearly $16 billion. Eric Yuan, Zoom's founder and CEO, owns 20.5% of his company's stock. At the price Zoom closed at Thursday, Yuan is now worth more than $3 billion.
Unlike most Silicon Valley tech unicorns, Zoom is profitable AND it has been growing like crazy. The company saw $7.5 million in profits in 2018. The company brought in $330.5 million in revenue in fiscal 2018, up 118% from $151 million in fiscal 2017.
- He moved to the United States in 1997 after his visa application was rejected 8 times.
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He spoke very little English when he moved to the U.S. Instead of taking English lessons or
going to an US graduate school, he chose to learn English from his colleagues.
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He founded Zoom in 2011 when he was 41 years old.
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He started a company in a super crowded market against incumbents such as Cisco/WebEx, Google Hangout, Microsoft Skype, and GoToMeeting, but he still succeeded.
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He was a key engineer and later VP of Engineer at Cisco/WebEx. According to a Forbe
Article: “ Yuan was not happy with the way Cisco was managing WebEx when he left in
2011. As he said, ‘I was paid very well as a VP at Cisco. But WebEx was my baby. In 2010
and 2011, I did not see happy customers. I was very embarrassed that I spent so much time
on the technology. Why are the customers not happy?’”
- He has 99% approval rate by his employees on Glassdoor, and won Glassdoor’s topCEO award.
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