How Zoom Was Inspired by a Love Story | Ep. 14 | The Inflection Point

As a college student in China three decades ago, Eric Zhuan spent hours traveling to visit his long distance girlfriend. It was the only way to see her.

If I have a device, I can, one click, can see her, can talk with her. Wow, that'd be awesome.

Fast forward to today and Eric's solution. Zoom has dramatically changed both our personal and professional lives.

For me, you know, I want to eat, sleep. Zoom.

Welcome to the Inflection Point. I'm Monica Langley. Eric, it's so fun to be at Zoom headquarters. You know, this show is called the Inflection Point. So my first question has to be, when was that moment in your life when everything changed? And you can say that's when my life changed.

Course, my life completely changed when I started Zoom back in 2011.

Well, it changed all of our lives.

Actually, I call Silicon Valley Startup Valley. I always wanted to start a business. Finally, that moment came when I started Zoom.

What did that mean to you when you started it? I mean, you wanted to be an entrepreneur for a really long time. What did that feel like to you?

So it means a lot to me because I was so inspired by Silicon Valley spirit, by entrepreneurial spirit. So many great entrepreneurs. I feel like finally I can start achieving something. Especially I had a dream before to start a business. It's part of my American dream. Right. And you come here with nothing and you keep working hard and you can start something.

Well, now, you wanted to be an entrepreneur since you were a little boy. Actually, I've read somewhere that when you were in fourth grade, you had this idea to, like, make money off copper.

Yes.

And you did something a little crazy. What happened that you burned down your neighbor's cottage?

First of all, my neighbor, they were so upset and they told my parents. My father also was a little bit outside. I never realized, you know, cause the, you know, the fire so well.

How did you start a fire at your neighbor's cottage? What the heck did you do?

Because I tried to burn the plastic, the stuff. Right. Otherwise you cannot sell that. Right. So I had to burn that.

And that was. You were trying to make money and be an entrepreneur in fourth grade?

Yes, exactly.

All right, so then you're growing up, and at some point you were getting your degrees in China and what made you decide you wanted a visa to come to America?

So when I was young kid, I was so, you know, fascinated by all those great stories that happened in Slink Valley, like HP Story and Apple and all those great entrepreneurs. And also I was traveling in Japan in 1995, and I was so inspired by the Bill Gates speech, his talk of Internet, he was there to give a keynote speech. At that time, realized, wow, Internet is the future. It might change everything. I should come here, take a look. To embrace the first wave of Internet revolution. That's why I decided to come here.

But you had to apply for a visa eight times. Eight times. Eric, why did you keep that? Why did you keep trying?

So at that time, I can tell you, I was so sad the first time I got a decline. Good news. I did not give up. Looking back, I feel like, you know, it's more like practice of my perseverance.

Well, it's a good thing that you persevere and you're here. But at some point, a lot of people say, fourth, fifth time. Well, it's not meant to be.

I told myself, unless you told me that I can never come here. I will always try. Maybe 20 times, I'm okay.

Once you finally, finally got your visa, what was it like to leave your home country, take us back to that time for you and your family? Was it a sad or joyous moment?

So, first of all, I was so excited because, you know, Sailing Valley is a worldwide innovation center. On the other hand, I was also, you know, so sad because I cannot see my parents anymore. They were also so sad. My mom cried. I also cried. My father, he told me that, hey, you are going to go to Silanga Valley and make sure you keep working hard, stay humble. You are going to have a lot of new friends. So, yeah, it's on the one hand, very excited, but overall, I think it's very emotional.

But now, when you finally got here, what year was that?

That's 1997.

Okay, so 1997, you came, you had degrees from China universities in applied mathematics and engineering, right?

Yep.

So. But you didn't speak English, so your language was code. How did the ability to code help you get a job here even though you could not speak English?

Yeah, I was sort of the first, you know, one of the first 10, you know, engineers when I joined WebEx. Because I understand the code, I know how to write a code. That's why I can survive.

But you couldn't speak English. So did you just learn it on the job?

Just to talk with my colleagues, you know, sometimes talk with our neighbors and, yeah, that's pretty much so.

When you arrived here, you were clearly a software whiz, but you also had a vision. You had a dream. What was that vision that you had? Your big idea that originated in China. It kind of began With a love story.

Yeah. So when I was a freshman in college, my girlfriend, she's one year older than me, she's at a different college. And to see her is really hard. And probably I only can see her twice a year. Every time I took a train. There's no direct train, you know, probably 10 hours. And one day, I remember there's more like a daydream. I thought about, my God, it's so hard to see her. Maybe in the future, if I have a device, I can one click, I can see her, can talk with her. Wow, that'd be awesome. It's more like a daydream. I never thought about that. You know, later on when. The first time, when we had the prototype of Zoom, at that time, I can connect the dots.

Did you finally, when you got Zoom up and running Zoom with your wife and say, it's here.

I hope I did that on the day when our product was ready, but I did not do that. Only until a later date.

Oh, you didn't do it right away and say, it's here. It's all because of you, my true love.

I was too busy at that time. Always think about how to make the product better.

Is she like, you spend way too much time on Zoom.

She wants me, you know, to keep improving our service.

She does?

Yes, she does.

Wow. Do your kids now tell you at dinner time, dad, there's this thing about Zoom that you really should do.

My daughter, sometimes she does give me feedback like that.

And do you listen or have you ever executed any suggestions from your wife or your kids?

Absolutely. Because the first day my daughter's school, when they went online to use Zoom for online classes, she asked the question, how to raise my hand.

Ah, so you did that.

Now, we are still in the process to keep improving.

Well, now, when you came here, you started at WebEx, so did that give you some way to pursue your vision?

No, I joined WebEx, and at that time, there's no video, and it's more like a web conferencing. Nobody thought about video because there's no video camera. Not like today.

Okay, gotcha. So you're there. You are making good money. You're like the lead engineer or something. And you're there for like, 10 years, right?

That's right.

And then they're acquired by Cisco, and you still have your dream of wanting to do the video conferencing or seeing people by video. So what did you do?

So the year before I left, you know, every day I tried to talk with our customer. I mean WebEx customer. Because I feel like WebEx sort of my baby. And however, I can tell you, back then, every day I was not happy because I did not see a single happy customer. So every morning when I woke up, not like today, I even do not want to work. So I struggled for a year. Finally I decided to leave and to build a new solution to bring happiness back to WebEx customer.

At this point, you had a wife, you had three children. What made you, what is in you that made you willing to walk away from that and take this bigger risk to start completely over?

You are so right. That's a very tough decision. Even my wife, a lot of friends told me that, hey, you already had a very good successful career, right? Why you want to start over? However, you know, I live in Slink and Valley, right? I really wanted to start something, right? Because I already planted a seed when I was a young kid. And also, if I do not try, I feel like I was already 41 years old, right? Probably if I do not try, I never try that. The most important thing is I always wanted to fast forward. Let's say fast forward to 30 years. Look back, will I regret or not? I feel like if I do not start something back, then I'm going to regret. So that's the reason why I think I do all I can. No matter what kind of a cost, I still need to move forward to start a company.

You left Cisco at 41 years old to start Zoom, is that right?

That's right. It's very young.

That's not the youngest of ages for a lot of these startup guys. But you had this vision. Did you find people were like, what a great idea. Did they love your idea?

I hope that was the case. Actually, interesting enough, I shared the idea. I want to build a new solution. Almost every friends, every friend of mine, especially for those VC friends, they all told me that that's crazy, you better give up. The world does not need to have a new solution like that.

They did. And just like the guy who tried eight times to get his visa, you just decided, I'm going to persevere.

So first of all, I was a little bit disappointed because I thought, they are all my friends, they are going to invest me. The good news, some other friends and personal friends, they all supported me. I cannot raise any funding from all the VCs.

Ten years later, you were a success. Zoom is a success. You proved you could do it. And then you did an IPO and it was a huge hit. Your ipo. Tell us about that moment, I think.

You know, since I lived here in 1997, I always dreamed about, hey, someday if I can start a company, the company can become NASDAQ company. That's a big dream. I think the day when we went public, the dream came true. Also, we all went to New York to ring the bell. I feel like, wow, that's so. I was so excited.

Well, the stock market actually validated your vision. I mean, I think your stock doubled that day, didn't it? I mean, it was like a major hit on the market. Nasdaq. You became a billionaire that day. I mean, it was a dream come true.

I think, given my age, I feel like the, you know, money or power, those kind of things were not bringing me any happiness. You know, how to build the best product to really help the world and to help people stay connected. That will make me happy.

So you felt you had connected the world. You were getting a lot of success with Zoom. But then the pandemic happened. Let's talk about 2020. What were you thinking in early 2020?

Wow. As good news, it's over. I really do not want to go back a year. 2020, that was so challenging. So one hand, we were so excited. Finally, we realized, wow, we can really help the world. Right? Because of the tools, Zoom, we can help people stay connected when they work remotely or work from home. On the other hand, I can tell you we were not ready. You know, the meeting participants, 30 times more traffic. How to support those users is a big challenge.

Exactly. And once the pandemic took hold, everything was halted. Business, travel halted, schools closed down, families couldn't gather. And so they all turned to Zoom, which is what you had to build up to, as you say, for 30 times. And did you realize that Zoom was becoming like a phenom? I mean, you basically came part of the culture of Zeitgeist, right? I mean, I remember watching Saturday Night Live on Zoom. You know, NBA teams were practicing over Zoom. People were getting married over Zoom. Were you gratified and proud? How did you feel when Zoom became part of the whole experience? Pandemic was horrible, but Zoom was one bright spot.

Yeah. First of all, we all felt very proud. This is great privilege to serve for so many users. You mentioned Saturday night. That's one of my favorite shows. Tom Hanks, he was there.

I know. Wasn't that funny?

And also, the Zoom marriage was legal in New York. We feel like, wow, we can really, really help the people stay connected.

As you mentioned, though, there were growing pains at Zoom, at your company and that must have been hard to suddenly have the Zoom bombing become an issue. How did you react to that, Eric? Because this is your baby, this is your brainchild.

You know, first of all, you know, if I can take a step back to share with you how we started. Zoom was built, you know, to serve for enterprise customers. And from a privacy security perspective, we do have so many features. But the way it works is normally we work together with the enterprise IT team. They will decide what kind of features they enable or disable. However, last year there's so many first time consumers, including K12 schools. I think sometimes they are so excited to share the gallery view with the meeting id, no password, they shared it to the social media, I think.

So that became a big problem for sure.

This is also our problem. I think we should take a step back to really look at a consumer use case. We should enable those security features by default with the meeting password, with the waiting room, we learn a big lesson not only from enterprise perspective, but also end user perspective.

You have taken serious steps to resolve this now, right? I mean, you came out and you had ask Eric anything.

And first of all, we got to, you know, tell the audience, tell our customers, you know, sorry, you know, like for me as a CEO, I know actually that is a big problem. And also we wanted to keep everything open and transparent, tell our users what kinds of actions we are going to take to completely address this problem. We hired so many security background engineers, we have a security council and also hired so many the professionals from a security background. And we triple down on that and essentially want to make sure the privacy security is a part of our company.

DNA people though, continue to stay on Zoom, like practically around the clock. I mean, I live on Zoom. I felt like I've lived on Zoom, I continue to live on Zoom. But a lot of people then started to talk about Zoom fatigue. And you know, Zoom is a verb. We all like, let's get on Zoom. We wanna do Zoom. It's a verb. That's great. But then when they start making Zoom fatigue a noun because everybody's like, oh, I'm exhausted. Even you came out and said you were getting tired of Zoom a little bit yourself.

When we were all stuck at home, you know, for me, you know, I wouldn't eat, sleep and Zoom.

Exactly.

Nowhere to go.

Yeah.

Also on a peak day, I had a total of 19 Zoom meetings. You know, for sure, I also have a little bit of fatigue, but we all understand why that is.

So do you feel even as the founder of Zoom, that Being on Zoom all the time is not a healthy way to live and work.

The problem is, you know, you have too many back to back meetings. You never take a break. And then the mental health anxiety, depression could cause a problem.

And for you, that day, you had 19 Zoom meetings in a single day. Did you find? I'm like, about to lose my mind.

At that time, I can tell you. And I was so tired. And I just realized, Ma, that the meeting fatigue is something real. You have to be proactive to take a break.

What do you do when you're proactive and take a break?

Oh, I just walk around in my backyard with my kids, with my mom, or maybe read a book. Given that the future is about a hybrid, I think that problem will be gone.

Really? Because now we're vaccinated. And the future of work, you think is going to be a hybrid workspace. And the future of Zoom will still a part of hybrid. Hybrid by definition means we're going to be out some, but we're also going to be at home some. So people will still be Zooming, just not all the damn time. Right?

Very true.

Okay, so we're sitting here in Zoom. We have the delivering happiness. There's little happiness sayings all over the office around here. You talked about starting Zoom because you weren't happy and your customers weren't happy. What does happiness mean to you, Eric?

So, you know, back to the time when I was a kid, I do not understand the purpose of life. I try to get an answer to that, and only later on I realized the purpose of life is to pursue happiness. And sustainable happiness comes from making others happy. Deliver happiness is our company culture. Meaning for me, as a CEO of the company, my number one priority is to make sure our employee happy. If our employee happy, I would be happy. And also together, if we can make our customer happy, also we are happy. And also that happiness is very sustainable.

You were named the 2020 Business Person of the Year by Time magazine. You have gotten a lot of great accolades and cool things that people would say. You have arrived, Eric. You should be super happy.

All those happiness are short term and not sustainable. Only the sustainable happiness is making others happy. Those happiness are very sustainable.

So do you feel happier?

I do.

Because.

Because I make our users happy. I make our employees happy. I make my family happy.

Well, you made me happy by letting me come interview you. So thank you so much for letting me join you today.

My pleasure. Thank you so much.