Day 46:) Who is Eric Yuan?

Have you ever come across the name? The chances are higher that you haven’t heard about him at least before the pandemic.

Eric is a Chinese guy based out of America. During his freshmen days in China, he used to travel for 10 hours via train just to meet his girlfriend (now wife). He used to brainstorm if he can develop something and don’t have to travel, which will eventually help him save lots of time. He became fascinated about internet after listening to Bill gates and planned to move to America. He applied for Visas not once but nine times in a span of 2 years. As the saying goes, “Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8.” He got his Visa in the final attempt. How many times do we try in today’s world? May be one or just two times and give up easily. It was his sheer determination combined with patience and hard work. He didn’t know to speak English flawlessly. He just knew to code properly and that landed up him a job at WebEx, which was later acquired by Cisco in 2007. He became Cisco’s Corporate VP of engineering, in charge of collaboration software. In 2011, he resigned from the company and started his own venture along with other 40 employees and named it Zoom. Probably now you can relate who is Mr. Yuan. He is the founder and CEO of Zoom.

Zoom needs no introduction, it’s widely used video conferencing platform and its usage has surges as the impact of COVID-19 increased. Its stock price was trading at $60 at the beginning of the year and has soared to $150 in March. It’s rare to see a stock climbing height when there is a blood bath on the streets.

How did I come to know to about Eric?

I generally use skype for calls. One of my friends suggested me to use zoom since it is smooth and screen sharing is easier. There are more additional features like 500 users can join a conference call and lite mode. Thereafter, I was thinking which tech giant own it. But I was amazed to know that it isn’t acquired by any of leading companies. Zoom had tough competition from the giants but it survived and grew. I came across this interview, where he had shared his story.

"Don't be afraid to admit you made a mistake and start fresh. My only regret is that I didn't found my company earlier, so I could start getting better sleep sooner!" – Eric Yuan.

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