Eric Yuan: The Man Behind Zoom
View From The Top — Stanford Graduate School of Business
Eric Yuan, CEO and founder of Zoom, recently spoke about his journey building one of the most successful video conferencing platforms in the world at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. In this blog post, we summarize the conversation and extract the key stories, ideas, and insights that Eric shared with the audience.
The Early Days
Eric Yuan, born and raised in China, was fascinated by technology from a young age. He studied applied mathematics and computer science in college in China and then came to the United States in the late 1990s to pursue his American dream. He joined WebEx as one of the first founding engineers and worked hard to improve the product. However, he felt there was still room for improvement. He wanted to build a video conferencing platform that was easy to use, had a better mobile experience, and was more secure.
After a year of trying to convince others at WebEx to pursue his vision, Eric left the company to start his own solution. This was the beginning of Zoom. Eric believed that video conferencing had the power to change the world, and he was determined to make it happen. He wanted to build a platform that would not only connect people but would also bring them joy and laughter.
