I think it sheds light on a product to learn a little about the people behind the product. Zoom is the brainchild of the CEO Eric Yuan. He grew up and was educated in China. After graduation he wanted to move to the US so he could work in the Internet field. It took 2 years and 8 tries to get a visa, but he finally accomplished it in 1997. He went to work for WebEx which was bought by Cisco, and he became Cisco’s Corporate VP of engineering, in charge
of collaboration software. He knew a thing or two about developing online meeting software when he left Cisco to start Zoom.
He left WebEx to start Zoom in 2011
Many of his fellow engineers left with him in 2011 and they launched the Zoom Video platform in 2012. The company was successful and they went public in 2019. If you want to buy stock in Zoom, please be sure to choose the right one. Stock symbol ZOOM skyrocketed in price after Zoom Video went public in March of 2019. The problem? That's the wrong Zoom. Zoom Video is stock symbol ZM.
He's a good Dad
Yuan has an impressive personal story as well. I've read that he never misses one of his kid's basketball games and often helps out at practices. At the office Yuan has a 99% approval rating from employees based on workplace review site Glassdoor who named Yuan its
Big Company CEO of the Year in 2018.
He's addressing the problems
Then came the Corona Virus pandemic and
everyone needed online meetings. Zoom went from 10 million daily users in December to over 200 million daily users today. That kind of stress is bound to show some cracks in the system. There have been
many articles about privacy and security problems experienced by Zoom, but instead of denying it or stonewalling, Zoom is closing down loopholes, adding security features, and holding webinars to address everyone's questions.
We watched the webinar "
Ask Eric Anything" where he addressed the security concerns. They've removed the problematic Facebook SDK software, they've added a security button in the online controls for meeting hosts, and they've put all feature updates on hold for the next 3 months to focus on privacy and
security.
That's enough for me. I think we are very lucky, in our time of need, to have an online meeting system that works so well and is so affordable. Thank you Eric Yuan.
