Zoom's CEO talks about the company's chaotic growth during COVID lockdowns in early 2020. Schools, neighbors, and his own kids suddenly needed Zoom for classes and happy hours. He credits the team's culture and sleepless nights for handling the surge while managing new privacy concerns.
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In March and in April, when COVID was becoming— it was clear that this was going to become the new normal and this pandemic was spreading. Can you tell us what it was like inside of Zoom at that time or what it was like to be the CEO?
As I mentioned, right, I had more sleepless nights, right? It's not that easy. On the one hand, you know, every employee at Zoom, we were very excited. It feels like many years of hard work finally is well paid off. Even my kids at school, they can use Zoom for online classes. Your neighbor can talk about they use Zoom for like happy hour or for online yoga class. So you're very excited from that perspective. Also, at the same time, guess what? You have to work harder, right? Because the users came from all over the world. You have to add capacity. You've got to embrace a lot of new use cases. Privacy challenges for consumers, they are very different user base. User base, and plus, you know, and you need to make sure your internal process not broken, right? And you know, this is not that easy behind the scenes, but the good news, our investment on the company culture and value, you know, in this critical time, looking back, I think this is something I think I feel very proud. No employee that assume any complaint, they all worked very hard. They all wanted to leverage this opportunity. To help Zoom to become a better company and to help people stay connected.
