Eric Yuan, CEO, Zoom

Among other topics, Eric discusses the following issues with Metis Strategy: • Evolution of collaboration through different eras • Differentiation in the web conferencing space • Rationale behind deliberately controlling growth of Zoom in early days • Importance of having a company philosophy to deliver happiness to customers • Possibilities of Augmented Reality in the business world • Impact of Silicon Valley on new and upcoming companies • The need to create a culture of self-motivation for employees • Trade-offs required to build a sustainable company • Hybrid approach to selling to Small Businesses and Large Enterprises • Focus on existing customers rather than only pursuing new customers • Sequoia Capital’s impact on Zoom’s growth Eric Yuan Biography: Eric is the Founder and CEO of Zoom, a people-centric, cloud service solution, currently valued at $1 billion, that offers video, audio, and screen-sharing experience across multiple platforms. As CEO, Eric influences and guides his team to be single-mindedly focused on excellent call quality and prioritizes delivering happiness to customers. Prior to founding Zoom in 2011, Eric was Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco's collaboration software development. As one of the founding engineers and Vice President of Engineering at WebEx, Eric grew the WebEx team from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. Eric is a named inventor with 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real time collaboration. Eric received an Executive MBA from Stanford University. I recently caught up with Eric in his office in San Jose, California and our conversation covered World Class IT Principle One, People, as we discussed the importance of developing a company culture where employees are focused on end customer happiness; Principle Two, IT Infrastructure, as we discussed the importance of technology reliability to keep customers satisfied; Principle Four, IT and Business Partnerships, as we discussed the importance of innovation that stems from the partnership between the Business and IT around customer needs, Principle Five, External Partnerships, as we discussed the impact of Sequoia Capital’s funding of Zoom, along with a variety of other topics.