Who is Eric Yuan – The Man Behind The Popular Zoom Video App?

Eric Yuan is the founder of Zoom which has now become the leading video calling app in various countries.

Eric Yuan, founder, Zoom Video Communications

(Photo: The Quint)

Zoom Video Communications: That's a company you probably haven't heard of before, but are now familiar with thanks to video calling zooming ever since half the world is working from home in the past few weeks.

As the fight against the coronavirus outbreak intensifies, there are millions of people working from home. That's not the only use-case for video calling. There are people using it for virtual playdates for their kids or choosing to hold virtual drinking sessions with buddies, as there is a ban on meeting in public places. Social distancing is the norm.

This pandemic has had one company shine through. And that's Zoom, a company founded by a former CISCO employee Eric Yuan. Zoom was founded in 2011 along with 40 other Cisco engineers that Zoom CEO Yuan took with him.

This video conferencing solution was a concept he had dreamed up in China when he was a student in the 1990s. It was born out a need to avoid the 10-hour train trips to see his then-girlfriend who he later married.

In just 11 months after it was listed on the stock market, Zoom is booming. The Zoom stock has soared 46 percent in the past couple of months as investors think video conferencing will become a part of everyday life after this coronavirus pandemic blows over. In contrast, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index has fallen by 25 percent in the same time. 

Yuan, 50, recently spoke to The Associated Press during an interview conducted on, well, Zoom.

He spoke about how companies will learn from the current scenario and think about remote working. He says companies may refine their policies to allow work from home at least once a week or have certain functions that can be done remotely. Earlier companies were not open to the idea of working from home.

Yuan also talked about how Zoom is being used for more than just businesses. He said that while it wasn’t what the company had envisioned in the first place, having Zoom used by schools for virtual learning is motivating for his team.

“I am just telling my team and reminding myself this is a very critical time because we are in a crisis. So we are focusing on two things: To serve our existing customers and make sure our service is always great quality and is always up. The second thing is how can we help the local community, like the K-12 schools, handle this crisis.”

Eric Yuan, Zoom Founder to AP

When quizzed about Zoom’s stock price soaring these days, Yuan played it down. “I don’t focus on the stock price,” he said. “So the stock is up, it’s good for our investors. If it’s down, we keep working hard,” he said in the interview to AP.

He further talked about how during these trying times of social distancing, physical interaction is an important element of society. He mentioned that in the future, we may have features like a virtual hug which can actually be felt or the possibility of digitising the smell of tea or coffee.

He said that while such features will be available with AR (augmented reality) technology, it was still early days. Personal interactions are still inevitable.

(With inputs from Associated Press)