Zoom founder was inspired to start his Internet business after attending a Bill Gates...

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: Some of the world’s best ideas originate from a desire to meet a need or solve a problem. The story of Eric Yuan’s journey to billionaire status is a perfect example of how determination – and a bit of inspiration – can lead to great things.

In 1987, Yuan was a college freshman living in China. His girlfriend lived in a different city, a 10-hour train ride away. During the long treks, Yuan would daydream of ways that he could see his girlfriend from afar.

Years later in 1994, Yuan attended a speech in Japan by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates on the future of the Internet which was barely a blip on the radar at the time. Inspired by Gates and not yet having scratched the itch that was the topic of those daydreams, Yuan decided to move to Silicon Valley and pursue a job in tech.

Except, it wasn’t that easy. Yuan’s visa application was denied eight times before he finally got approved on the ninth try.

Yuan eventually made it to the US in 1997 and landed an engineering job with a videoconferencing software company. WebEx was sold to Cisco a decade later and Yuan stuck it out, eventually moving up the corporate ladder before leaving in 2011 to start Zoom.

The outfit now employs more than 1,300 people around the globe. On Thursday, his video conferencing company went public and with a 22 percent ownership stake, his shares are now worth around $3.5 billion. Had Yuan not attended the Gates speech in 1994, he may never have been inspired to come to the US and chase his dream.

Lead image courtesy Ivakoleva via Shutterstock. Second photo courtesy Victor J. Blue via Getty Images.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/79733-zoom-founder-inspired-start-internet-business-after-attending.html

 

[amstech]

It's a copy and paste company but a good one.
It's nice to have more options with video-conferencing, we use Cisco based equipment here for NY state but dabble with options like this once in awhile for everyday users.

 

[mctommy]

We use them and they are night and day better than clunky Skype or webex.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Not copy and paste at all. We evaluated a number of videoconference options before deciding on Zoom and it was one of the easiest decisions we've made in a long time. Zoom works much better than the competition.

 

[ShagnWagn]

Never even heard of this company, and I've been in IT for 25+ years. I've worked with dozens of companies and none of them use it or talk about it. Everyone uses webex, and to a significantly lesser extent, skype. My first time ever using skype was a couple months ago for a remote interview.

 

[mctommy]

Never even heard of this company, and I've been in IT for 25+ years. I've worked with dozens of companies and none of them use it or talk about it. Everyone uses webex, and to a significantly lesser extent, skype. My first time ever using skype was a couple months ago for a remote interview.

Time to broaden your horizon! You are doing yourself a disfavor for not looking into them.

Zoom also landed on #2 best places to work according to Glassdoor.

We've seen more and more companies use it. Their zoom rooms make transitioning very seamless... Solid solid product.

 

[Burty117]

I have to say, we recently transitioned to Zoom and it really is a great product. Makes video conferences across our offices extremely easy. This dude knows how it should work, went out and made it happen, gotta applaud the guy!

 

[Slappy McPhee]

I had a couple customers that use Zoom and being an integrator I can tell you that it was a serious PITA. Various windows not allowing for keyboard input, lag issues, buggy requiring to have the host reboot their machine. Two different organizations and the same issues. I am not a fan of how the UI for WebEx has recently changed and that is attributed I think to the Paint by Numbers requirements of Apple users, but it still works better for interaction beyond the thing being a "TV" into someone's environment. I find it funny all of the comments about how well it works and how easy it is...perhaps for Neanderthals that only need to be spoon fed content.

 

[mctommy]

I find it funny all of the comments about how well it works and how easy it is...perhaps for Neanderthals that only need to be spoon fed content.

That's your own experience... why belittle others (and their opinions) when we are sharing our own experience using the product?

Zoom and zoom rooms have worked fine in our environment. We don't have issues with double booking conference rooms either as each room has a monitor up front showing up who booked what time slots.

My last company, we used a combination of skype and webex - skype was supposed to be the go-to app but they never got rid of legacy webex. Never felt confident about skype for large meetings and would typically default to webex for large meetings.

 

[djaffica]

My question is - what happened with the girl?

 

[Slappy McPhee]

That's your own experience... why belittle others (and their opinions) when we are sharing our own experience using the product?

Zoom and zoom rooms have worked fine in our environment. We don't have issues with double booking conference rooms either as each room has a monitor up front showing up who booked what time slots.

My last company, we used a combination of skype and webex - skype was supposed to be the go-to app but they never got rid of legacy webex. Never felt confident about skype for large meetings and would typically default to webex for large meetings.

Enterprises should be using Enterprise solutions. Period. Perhaps one day Zoom will get there, but the problem is organizations that are too cheap to use proper products and then in the long run they just look like fools to their partners and potential clients. It is one thing to want to have a simple and quick interface to expedite processes, but an entirely different situation when it is because users are either too lazy to or "too busy" to learn at least something about the tools they are using. That is one of the biggest issues in especially the last decade with society as a whole. It just wants to do what it wants to do without any knowledge of what the hell it is even doing. Truly sad. The human race isn't advancing with these concepts being employed; it is stagnating and losing intelligent evolution as a whole.