How to connect while apart Eric Yuan
so
we’re now months into this pandemic
what’s been the hardest part for you
of adapting to such an abrupt and rapid
global shift of video conferencing and
remote work
yeah well this happened so quickly
because you know the zoom was built to
serve a lot
enterprise and business customers
you know in terms of capacity
functionality
but over the night you know there are so
many
first-time users or consumers
to start using zoom platform you know
for all kinds of
different use cases so the hardest part
is how we can quickly
transform our business to embrace
first-time users to support all kinds of
new use cases in terms of service
availability
privacy security functionality i think
we’ve got
to quickly adapt to that so that’s the
hardest part
of the past month and presumably as we
were all
um sort of being thrown into work from
home
you guys were at pretty much exactly the
same time maybe a little bit earlier
so how did you and your team have to
change the way
you worked in order to do all the things
you were talking about just now
and still give us all the ability to
work from home as well
well when the pandemic crisis started
and here
the united states in early march you
know we quickly
made a decision to send all employees
back home because employee safety is
always
number one priority also because
we have almost one third of our
u.s based employees already working
remotely
prior to pandemic crisis i think we also
have a tool called
zoom and so i think by and large
we know how to work it together remotely
i think from productivity perspective
there’s no problem the problem is how we
can
and not only do we know we can support
the zoo employees
how we can work it together as a team
everyone working remotely
you know to keep the service up and to
serve for the world
right to make sure other businesses can
counter consume
still can be productive that’s a
challenge but
our team we are working so hard and
i think we adapted to this very very
quickly
do you think that um zoom could become
a company that lives and functions and
works entirely on zoom
i believe so but however also there’s a
challenge
right because if you all of us always
work from a home
for such a long time you might have a
different
problems like a mental health
anxiety depression i think is in the
future is more like a hybrid
for sure we can’t work from a home
without any productivity loss
but we still prefer right you know
sometimes you know maybe this week
next week we all go back to office right
with the traditional working experiences
it’s also very important
i think the future is about a hybrid
so how do you um
talk to me a little bit about sort of
what that hybrid experience then
looks like because as we sort of move
sort of the dial a little bit where sort
of video becomes
much more prominent in our day-to-day
lives what is the experience that we can
expect in the future i don’t think we or
you want zoom in 2030 to look exactly
like it looks now so
what are some of these things we can
expect
i think a hybrid first of all means you
know used to
be employer they are making a decision
right all the employees will go to the
office working together
physically in the office you know hybrid
means you know some delay
they might work from home some employees
they might work in the office
or maybe once a week maybe twice a week
everyone can go back to home to work
however
to support this kind of a hybrid working
environment
for sure you know your technology your
goal to improve
otherwise the tools like zoom i think
can help but that’s not about the
the future the future can let you feel
like
no matter where you are you still feel
like in the same office
an online conferencing experience
like a zoom can even deliver a much
better
experience than face-to-face meeting
than in the office meeting
like like a remote handshaking if i want
to shake hands with you
you’ll feel my intimacy right and also
real-time
language translation all those cool
features
will be added in the future
collaboration
to further support working anywhere with
any device
so so i can see how uh translation would
work but
how would a virtual handshake work
so you look at the ai technology or ar
technology so i wear uh just a normal
eyeglass something like that
and if i try to shake hand she kind of
is you
you will feel my handshaking and with
some special
devices and i think that will be doable
in the future i’m not saying today
but in 10 or 15 years those technologies
will be ready got it so
one of the things you were saying about
that has been hardest for you in terms
of adapting to
to this sort of very rapid change is
that
so many of your users now are sort of
beyond the original use cases
that you um anticipated
so when we were chatting last week you
were mentioning that
you are now zoom is now used by
thousands of educational
institutions around the world i i’m
we’ve heard a lot
over the decades really about how the
future of education
is going to be remote and online so what
are you seeing
in terms of the future of education that
we’re now in
i think online teaching online learning
are becoming mainstream and prior to
this pandemic crisis
a lot of universities are already
deploying zoom and for online teaching
online learning
during this pandemic crisis a lot of
k-12 schools
you know around the world like you know
we
we we offer the free service to more
than ten thousand
k-12 schools they also can leverage zoom
platform
for online teaching i truly believe in
the future
also this is more like a hybrid as well
you know students
they want to go to campus basically they
can
or if they want to stay at a home they
also can use the tools like a zoo
for online teaching for online learning
this is the future
i think in team of 20 years it’s very
likely
most of the learning are going to be
done
online so physically the campus probably
will be
small portion of the online learning
experience
instead um so one question for you now
and then we’ll go to community questions
but
silicon valley in the tech industry is
not really known for being
ahead of the curve when it comes to
ethical
considerations and thinking about the
ethical implications of their products
um what are the ethical challenges that
you’ve faced
um of growth at this kind of speed like
are you able to be deliberate about that
when things are changing so quickly
yes so first of all silicon valley is
not a only
for the worldwide innovation center but
also from ethical perspective
also got to set up a great example for
all
others to follow i think first of all
you know we got to take step back
always listen to listen what’s happening
what’s happening in the community in the
society
and don’t be eager right to make a
decision
really sit down listen to end user to
the community to society
to understand what and then take a step
back
and try to think about what we can do
to further leverage the technology to
embrace the potential changes i think if
we can follow this
formula i think the selling tamale still
can deliver a much better job
than anywhere else than any other places
in terms of
embracing new changes increasing ethical
challenges i think that’s a path
but when things have been changing this
quickly
are you able to do that
yeah i think so because you look at the
culture here of
silicon valley you know as so many great
entrepreneurs
is this the open and exchange of ideas
everyone trying to help to help to make
the world a better place
we all share the same vision what we can
do
to leverage technology to make the world
a better place
that’s the culture of silicon valley
that’s why i have high confidence yes
we can adapt to anything quickly
great um so let’s take a couple of
questions from the community
how did zoom beat out the googles apples
facebooks of the world did you see this
crisis coming in a way that they did not
well i don’t think we are beating out
our competitors so on day one
you know when i started the zoom a lot
of people already told me that there’s
so many solutions orders there
how can you compete against those
competitors are very very big
so we do we never wanted to focus on
competitors
we spend all the time talking with our
users
customers we try to be the first
vendor to really understand customer
side
problems and we got to take a step back
understand why and then we want to be
the first vendor
to come up with a solution to serve
the customers in terms of ease of use
in terms of functionality the quality we
do not look at the competitors
so but we are working harder right to
really you know
figure out a way to serve our customers
better than any others
got it next question please
what are some of the innovative ways in
which people have been adapting to your
platform to stay connected
when we build a platform the the main
use case is about the business
collaboration of business communication
like i talked with our
employees or employee talking with
customers or partners
i think during this panel crisis a lot
of
the consumer-driven use cases like the
yoga class
online wedding ceremony or zoomed
marriage
is legal in new york right how those
users
leverage zoom platform how people truly
stay connected
i think this is something very creative
we never thought about that before like
a wedding ceremony
maybe you’ll be able to conduct one
yourself soon you can be the officiant
um let’s go to another question please
concerns have been raised about privacy
and security on zoom
and zoom has responded but how have you
been
approaching privacy as zoom continues to
grow
yeah that’s a great question so as i
mentioned earlier
when we built a business and services
when we started
all the user cases are around serving
enterprise and the business customers so
in terms of
security we already had a built-in
security features to serve enterprise
customers
a lot of security features normally the
way it works
works is that we’re working together
with you know enterprise
itt enable or disable
secure features and also with the
onboarding process
before any employees start using zoom
in terms of serving first time users we
should have done a better job because we
cannot assume those consumers like to
take a k212 schools
they may not have itt we need to
simplify
a package that enable those security
features
for them by default so from that
perspective we got to change
over the past 90 days we made it a
bigger change right
always look at how to serve those
first-time users better
in terms of privacy as zoom continues to
grow
we need to change our company open
because not only
not only do we serve for enterprise and
business customers anymore
how to make sure when it when it comes
to a balance
between the privacy security and
functionality innovation
privacy security always very very
important
always number one priority i think
if we can change our company culture
to embrace that i think we will be okay
so i know company culture is actually
very important to you you’ve talked
about it
quite a bit how how do you make that
change and is it harder to change when
everyone is remote
i think first of all you’re so right
company culture
is indeed the number one important thing
right
as we evolve our company called our
comedy culture used to be delivering
happiness
meaning we do all we can to develop
happiness
to our customers we work remotely as
long as you have very well defined
as long as an employee they wanted to be
part of this journey
they want to embrace the new changes
i think it’s done no matter where you
work in the office or working remotely
for you to evolve your company culture i
think the key
is by do you have a culture where
you you all your employees they want to
embrace
the changes they want to evolve your
existing culture
so a little earlier we just you were
talking about how
rapidly sort of the the number of uh
users
increased during this pandemic um and
all the work you and your team have had
to done to kind of keep up with
that and to improve the product as
you sort of found these you know
weaknesses in it in some way
how has how have you been hiring during
this
like have you been hiring engineers have
i know you’ve made some a couple of big
hires but how do you hire
right now to keep up with the speed at
which you’re having to deliver
yes good question so yeah even prior to
pandemic crisis
we have so many open racks meaning we’re
still
aggressively hiring and during this
dynamic crisis
you know based on demand based on the
the need and also for our service
we are hiring very aggressively you know
for
engineers for security researchers and
also suicide you know not only here all
over the
uh all around the globe and the ticket
united states for example we just
decided to open up two offices
for rnd offices like phoenix
and pittsburgh right and how can we
quickly hire
as many engineers as possible because
used to be we wanted to hire engineers
here in silicon valley
for now giving everyone the work
remotely
give us more flexibility we can hire our
employees i think
in any other cities i think give us more
opportunity
i think that’s why look at our pace of
hiring i think
our team did a good job we hired a lot
of people
over the past several months i’m happy
to hear that you’re still
actually taking office space
because as as good as zoom and some of
these other products are i’m not really
looking forward to
to a world where we only interact
through our screens
so you were
you’re a naturalized american citizen i
believe um
but you were also denied a visa i think
about eight or nine
times so i’m just curious given the
uh recent immigration announcements and
restrictions
from the current administration if you
have any comments or thoughts on that
yes yes i i moved to silicon valley in
and yes since then i happily lived here
in silicon valley but you look at the
second silicon valley
the one of the key reasons why
silicon valley is a worldwide innovation
center
is about its culture where no matter
where you are coming from
and the culture here is true is to
embrace
diversity and no matter where you are
coming from
they all respect each other respect each
other and still can get
the job done right i think this is a
great culture here you know you look at
all the startup companies a lot of
startup companies
founders they were not a bunker they
or to other cities i think this uh
immigration
policy i think we got to keep that
in other words i think in 10 or 20 years
suppose you have a great company
the engineers or co-founders you know
they might be immigrants
now if you do not keep that a policy i
think that’s not
healthy that will break the potential
sustainable greater culture for silicon
valley or high-tech
economy um if you were your you know
20 22 year old self now would you choose
to come here and start your company here
i still think so because uh silicon
valley
is still the worldwide innovation center
you look at the great
leaders entrepreneurs vcs
engineers access you know to those
you know the greater companies greater
technology
is still i think the best place if you
want to focus on high-tech innovation
okay you’re very positive that’s great
um
so well i’ll ask one more question and
then go to
another community question um so you’re
you’re the chinese-born leader
of one of the hottest u.s tech startups
right now
um how are you handling sort of the
increasing
tension and friction between the us and
china
and do you think your background allows
you
to navigate it better than someone who
hasn’t had a lot of experience in china
i think i i do not think that my
background
can help actually my background
sometimes in some cases
maybe even even is causing a little bit
more problems
because you know they look at it oh you
were born in china oh
you are u.s citizens now and you already
live here for
a longer time they probably assume i can
have a solution
unfortunately i don’t because i’m more
like an engineer
or a business entrepreneur really focus
on video collaboration but
for anyone to figure out a way to help
especially for those very complex
problems you go to the deep dive
to really understand the problem try to
understand
what’s the root cause don’t be eager
to have a solution you know like the the
entrepreneurs like or business leaders
i think normally you know if you do not
spend enough time
to deep dive to really understand what’s
really cost
it’s really hard you give others advice
you know this is a challenge people
think oh eric what do you think
you might have a solution unfortunately
i even do not spend a lot of time
to work on that how could i have any
solution that’s why
i’ve been bigger challenged
okay we’ll go to um one last community
question
has the pandemic changed your future
business outlook
and vision on the company’s purpose what
are zoom’s strategic priorities for the
years ahead
it does because we truly believe
video is a new voice and working
remotely
we become mainstream but this pandemic
crisis
literally accelerated a lot of vision
so we got to work harder right how to
quickly
and you know have more innovative
features to support this
new paradigm shifting to work working
remotely
and essentially how to support you know
every business to allow their employees
working remotely
still can get a job done without any
frictions
that’s our priority we got to work
harder because used to be you know we
think maybe take
us will take us two to three years to
get there now
it’s already happening now we’ve got to
quickly
adapt to that change to add more
innovations
to support a working remotely culture
got it um we have one more question from
the community so i think we have a
little bit of time left so let’s take it
ah what does zoom look like in 2050
i hope you know we are going to keep
working as
hard as we can to make the world a
better place
and with that in 2050
hope a lot of people are still counting
on zoo
and i hope zoom can deliver a much
better
experience than face-to-face meetings
meaning no matter where you are any
device
you can leverage zoom you feel like in
the same
place and the technology can really help
people
stay connected better without any
language barrier
without any distance barrier without any
cultural barrier
we said we were proud
can make the world a much better place
that’s great um so i’m going to ask one
last question to kind of wrap this
up what
opportunity do you think this crisis has
brought us for some
lasting positive change and it cannot be
just working hard
i think a lot like the way for us to
work together the way
you know when you make a decision you
got to look at it from
employee perspective not from employer
in terms of
hiring you can hire the talents all over
the world
right you may not need to only book on
you know your local city anymore
and also technology digital
transformation for every business
regard to embrace digital transformation
otherwise their employees they cannot
work together
when they are at home i think that
overall for every business
they got to embrace digital
transformation
i think that’s a key trend i think that
will drive
the changes for many years to come great
thank you so much eric um it’s great to
see that you’re so positive on the
future
um thanks for spending some time with us
today
my pleasure thank you so much thanks