As many of you all know, Eric co-founded or founded, say co-founded, sorry. That's my default state because of Teddy. Founded Zoom in 2011. You know, one of the most impactful technologies in the last 25 years or more. But prior to Zoom, just to give a little more context and we'll go into this, Eric was of course corporate vice president of engineering at Cisco, responsible for Cisco's collaboration software, was also founding engineer and VP of engineering at WebEx. So, has been like a defining defining builder of communication collaboration for a very long time. And you know, I think that you will probably want not me want not want me to talk about your accomplishments, but I'm going to talk about one which I think is really incredible. Eric was inducted to National Academy of Engineering which is the highest distinction accorded to an engineer in 2025, which is truly amazing. So, thank you for coming, Eric. I really appreciate it. And I want to get started at the beginning. I talked about great things start in little rooms. I'm sure I know that you have your version of starting in a little room, but can you talk about can you tell a little bit the story for founding Zoom? I want to start with actually like the personal problem part of it, which is the 10-hour train rides. And do you mind telling that story for a minute or two?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that first of all, I appreciate you know, for every customer and for using our Brighter Hire platform. For for any of those potential customers, I can tell you Brighter Hire is such a great platform. You know, please make sure you deploy that platform.
You you read the prep notes.
That's the whole reason I'm here. Um thank you. Yes, so back to your question and actually, yeah, I started a company 2011 and summertime 2011. I think around the springtime frame of 2012, I think the team they built it the prototype. I remember the first time played around our prototype and our video quality was so awesome and and I remember I I connected with one of the engineers just literally at that time from a usability perspective even better than today. I just did one click video works so well, audio works so well. You do not need to do anything. So, literally one click I can talk to the engineer and and at that time you know, suddenly I I could connect the dots. Meaning when I was in college and my girlfriend she lived in a different city, right? And once, you know, twice a year kind of, you know, I could have visited her. And it's a 10 hours, you know, the train, you know, and it's so hard. At that time I had a daydream. I thought about, ah, in the future if I can hold a smart device, one click I can talk to her, see her, that'd be amazing. I thought about it so many times, but I never thought we'd be building a product. Until we had a product, I could have connected dots. So, yeah, let's
I know you had a notion of, you know, you so much experience building a video conferencing stack and you had a notion of how it could be done better and you tried to do it in another environment and it didn't work out and you got the conviction to take the leap and do it yourself. Can you talk about that story and then why did you have conviction to say like I'm going to do it myself?
So, you know, every morning when I woke up and I I I can tell you not like now every day I when I woke up I was pretty happy. You know, back to 2010 time frame, every morning when I woke up I I I didn't want to go to office. I said, why should I go to office? Because every time I when I stop by at office and I receive all those complaints from customers, your video quality really sucks, you know, usability bad. You know, I said, ah, it's driving me crazy. And and you know, I managed a bigger team, you know, if if I was not happy
Yeah, at Cisco. Yeah, and I think I I tried to fix that problem within the you know, and at Cisco at that time. Because of there there were so many other priorities and they were unwilling to change. I couldn't suffer from that. I would say I I want to leave to build a better solution to deliver happiness back to our customers. That's pretty much. If they if they were willing to change, probably I was still stuck with Luckily, they did not change, so
But you had no no thoughts or doubts like will this work? Will this not work? You were just You were just singular minded and you were confident that
I I was for sure. I knew I could build a better solution. That's the only thing I knew. Yeah. Other than that, I I have no idea, actually.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh I want to talk about culture a little bit and and then we'll go into some of the more of the story, but you built Zoom around delivering happiness and you know, like the first thing that I think a lot of us noticed when we did the kind of the onboarding it was like culture of care and and kind of those ethos. Where did those come from? Like where did where did where did those originate? Like the culture of care, delivering happiness and and sort of like the amount of focus that you put on it, which is quite quite
You know, so I am moving to Silicon Valley in 1997. You know, the reason why I love Silicon Valley is because I think Silicon Valley has has a very unique good culture where there's so many successful people, they are willing to help you out whenever you you try to seek for help. So, along the way, I had a so many you know, mentors or or successful entrepreneurs CEOs helped me a lot. And they all told me one thing. And when you build a company, you really focus on culture. I really did not understand and when I was working for WebEx Cisco, but when I started I I I realized, you know, the culture indeed a number one the important thing. So, that's why on day one when I left and started a company I wrote it down the company culture and company value. It's very simple. Our company culture just in two words, deliver happiness. The value just one word, care. And the reason why we have that a culture and value is because you know, no matter what we do, right? We all try to get a clear answer about the purpose of life, right? What's the purpose of life? So, from my perspective the purpose of life is to pursue the sustainable happiness cuz every day we want to be happy, right? And the most sustainable happiness coming from making others happy. So, like I'm the CEO of Zoom, if I can make our employees happy, together we make make our customer happy, make you guys happy, I'm happier. That's pretty That's pretty simple. That's reason why I have the culture and the values. If I care about you, care about you know, our customers, you know, you are willing to pay us, we can survive. We keep delivering better solution, right? That's a win-win, right? That's That's reason why, you know, you have a very very different culture and value. And the stay with that and the double down on investing your culture and value, you know, eventually you can build a very successful company.
So, you weren't writing down lots of ideas like what the value should be and you know, cross it off that's not it. You knew right away and it was very very clear.
Yeah, yeah, on the first day. And also in addition to assembling a used furniture also. Uh-huh, first day so.
Every every business, every startup goes through twists and turns. Uh it's pretty much inevitable, right? Um so many people were introduced to Zoom during the pandemic. Uh and from the outside it was sort of like, you know, obviously over, you know, success story, uh you know, seven years in the making or or what what, you know, 10 years in the making, but
Nine years, sorry. Yeah. From the outside looking in is one thing, but can you talk about what that was like at cuz I know a little bit, but like from the inside, you know, what was that that was a truly crucible moment? Can you talk about what was the that experience like behind the scenes and what did you draw or learn from from that because I think you couldn't have imagined a bigger twist, let's call it.
So, yeah, you know, it's a few years later I looking back is still crazy time because you know, look at the our in terms of daily meeting participant end of 2019 around a 10 million daily meeting participant. March or April all the way jump to more than 350 million. Uh this is crazy, you know, the the jump in terms of a traffic. I think luckily, you know, because our great culture and during that, you know, few months time frame I did not see a single Zoomies the company about anything. They all worked very very hard around the clock. And cuz we know actually this is the best time, you know, for Zoom, right? To truly help the world make the world a a much better place. We offer free service services to so many categories schools and our service was so reliable and you know, look at my personal story I I can't tell you I had a way more sleepless nights than any time in my career because quite often you run working together with all the people around the world at more, you know, data centers, you know, our servers in the Europe or in the Japan and here. I I think you know, behind the scenes we were working so hard and we felt very proud, you know, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, right? I mean the world they count on you. You have to think about what you can do to make sure don't let the world down. So, looking back, you know, that's probably one of the highlights in our journey.
Were there any lessons learned that you took away because that's a you can't foresee that and so obviously it really an unique opportunity that
Great question. I think a few lessons learned. First of all, again, if you do not have a great culture when that happens, I'm pretty sure actually everyone will complain, you know, they say why should I work so hard? Why should I do this, do that, right? So, so the the heavy I would say the the you know, if you do not have a greater culture, I feel like I I I really think we probably already failed at that time because look at our competitors, you know, the the service is very and unreliable, something wrong, no one try to fix the problem in on the same day. So, we we we never had those issues. Uh that's why is greater culture really help us. That's why. The two, you have to make sure you have a greater right architecture for your product. You know, you know, because luckily we made the right decision even before we build the product. We always told ourselves, what if there's a 10 times more traffic or 100 times more traffic? Are you going to rewrite your code or not? Do you have a sustainable architecture? So, we did not change a single line of our code. We just add more servers. We survived it very well. So, the the culture and the architecture, I think those two things is extremely important. And another lesson I learned is no matter how hard you're working on anything, you have to enjoy it. That's very important and and I think at that time I remember I have a lot of great moments, right? So, we we we we we all joined on Zoom with our with our family, high school reunions with all of our friends. Otherwise, you know, you stuck at a home for such a long time, you know, if you do not enjoy that and I is you know, it could have caused a lot of, you know, I think a personal the mental health problem. So,
Yeah. That was obviously a unique twist in terms of magnitude. Are there any other ones that stick out even if they were a little bit smaller magnitude that were pivotal kind of twists and turns in the journey um that that you feel like could have sent the company in one direction or another thinking back a little bit?
For sure, you know, prior to going public, you know, and you know, some others might might want to acquire us, right? So, I I I I really cuz I moved to Silicon Valley in 1997, I have personal dream. I really want to build it a public company to ring the bell, right? Not not like a bell. So, in New York. So, and I think we made the right decision. So, and there's so many others they wanted to acquire us. I said no, let's go to New York. So, and so
Was ringing the bell as cool as you had hoped?
That's the best moment. So, Yeah, it's kind of a highest, you know.
Obviously, another twist in in every company's journey is AI, of course. Um
Yeah, well well, that's a good it's a good segue.
Uh can you compare AI to other inflection points you've lived through? Maybe it's like the internet, you know, internet 1.0 or 2.0 in terms of magnitude. How do you how do you compare it?
In terms of magnitude, I would say yeah, over the past 30 years like from PC, mainframe, PC, PC to internet, you know, mobile, cloud. You add it all of them up, still cannot compare with
still cannot compare. I think only one technology, my personal opinion, maybe electricity. Probably in terms of impact to society is more more than AI. I think AI probably ranks second. But even you compare with electricity, you know, when when electricity was invented, right? Still take a few years, right? To impact positive impact society. But AI literally within 3 years, look at impact today. It's unprecedented unprecedented. I did not see any other technology in terms of the impact to society within a short period of time. You know, like AI. So.
This is going to sound like a very elementary question. Why do you think that is it? Cuz it changes the nature of work? Is it just like all the things There's something specific about the nature of the technology itself?
If I know AI, I already built a AI company 3 years ago. But anyway, I think it's more like You look at AI. It's many years of hard work. You know, from so many you know, scientists, researchers, right? You know, it's not like a sudden name of AI. It's, you know, many years hard work over the past 30 years. And then with the Google's Transformer, the paper with a lot of like immediate GPU. Finally, I think, you know, it's kind of AI was built upon so many other technologies, right? Finally, AI is is kind of a right time. So, and yeah, that's that's pretty much, you know, the right time, you know, right technology. So.
To to go back, you know, you said like it's driving me crazy, but that's a great It's a good segue because obviously the impact is staggering as you as you noted. There's, you know, big companies that are declaring code reds, um you know, internally and and uh What's it Can you give us a sense for like what's it like actually sitting in a CEO seat observing like the rapid changes and how fast things move and trying to make bets, you know, trying to figure out what to do and where to take action when things are moving really quickly?
I would like to dedicate it to my senior job to AI. It is better to let AI make a decision for me. The reason why AI is so hard for now because I'm engineer. I even cannot catch up with AI speed. Because, you know, today you added a one AI model, new technology. You think you are ahead of others. Guess what? The next week you likely be had because of some other new technology, new models, new new framework is coming. So, you have to, you know, kind of really I would say is nimble, right? So, make sure either you or your team, everyone got to think about what if new technology, what if other company, what if this, what if that? It's kind of it's, you know, uncertainty is becoming certainty now, essentially. So, it's hard to make a decision like you build a new technology. You know, a few years ago, right? Before the AI era, you talk with the customer, you understand the pinpoint. You say come back, let's invest the 50 engineers, you build a product. You know for sure you can survive because this is customer pinpoint. But now, even if you understand customer pinpoint, you invest the 50 engineers, you build a solution, you need to think about what if a new startup with five engineers, they can use a advanced AI coding tools, they can build a technology maybe two days. Can you survive? If that's the case, are you still willing to invest to this new product? This is kind of a challenge we are facing. You know, it's opportunity there, also challenge. Are you willing to invest or you want to do build something else? This is everyday, you know, you have to make a tough decisions.
Nimbleness was sort of one, you know, it's like there's this idea like what kind of company thrives in in, you know, an AI environment. You know, nimbleness is one trait that's really important when when Is there Are there any other things that you think are going to separate the winners from the rest in
Yeah, for sure, like in physical world, you know, like you know, in San Francisco, right? You know, we all like Waymo, right? You know, if you service like this, Waymo, right? It's kind of my friend Kedros, you know, company. You know, if you company like this, you do not need to worry about AI impact, right? However, our physical world, and in the AI era, I think like we have more time, right? You you play sports, right? Entertainment, you play games, right? You know, like EA games, right? So, all those the business, I think will will thrive. We'll do very well. And the pure software, you have to think about do you have a solid mood or not, right? And what can you do to leverage AI to reinvent yourself? That's the key.
Yeah. You obviously think a lot about communication and collaboration. And and you know, can you talk about how AI is going to change and you've talked about this a little bit. How's it going to change communication and collaboration, right? We've talked about digital twins and agents and stuff like What's like your vision or what do How do you think communication's going to unfold in in an AI world?
I think AI world, for sure, in terms of communication experience, I for sure will be better and better. I'll give you an example. I we're a public company. I joined the quarterly earning call. Used to be I do not like that experience because either I recorded a script or needed in the Zoom webinar, I needed to read it a script. I hated that experience. So, and a few quarters ago, we leveraged our AI technology. I just created my AI avatar. You know, during the Zoom webinar, I just played back AI avatar. I I truly enjoy that experience
So, so just to be clear, you pre-read it. Is it How does this work?
I do not read anything. So, you know in a for for live Zoom webinar, right? And our marketing team use my AI Let me say I mean sorry, let me take a step step back. So, I created my own AI avatar, which is just a 30-second AI avatar. I'm a dumb. I give this AI avatar to our marketing team. Marketing team use the the quarterly earning transcript, regenerate a video. And I feel like, you know, it's my own video. It works so well.
You've automated all the bad parts of being public, and you've got to ring the bell. That's pretty
And I joined a webinar just for live Q&A. That's pretty much like this is kind of I like this. And you you speaking speaking of a digital twin, you know, let's put this way. See, you are my potential customer, and you and I negotiating a contract, right? Probably we're not meeting 45 minutes to negotiate all the, you know, typical terms, right? What if you send your digital twin, I send my digital twin, let those two those two digital twins work together, right? To come up with a potential preliminary solution, and then you and I can jump on that, right?
Yeah, real last 10 percent.
Exactly. I think how cool it is, right? So, that's a digital twin, and also and avatar. I think I know especially for some meetings or even webinars, you don't want to join, but your boss there, right? You still want to join. What can you do? Send your digital avatar, right? Or digital twin, right? To join. But at same time, you know, for the very important meetings, you need to make sure you have a deepfake technology also built in, right? It's very important about the meetings, right? I meeting with the Ben. If you send a maybe deepfake video, maybe, you know, it's you also need to make sure, you know, manage that well as well. But overall, I think give us flexibility.
I will not send a deepfake to a conversation with you.
You can, you know, as long as I know that's a deepfake Ben, that's that's okay. So, AI give us more flexibility.
Yeah. When you want to join in person.
Where w- what pieces communication, collaboration, business do you think are just need this fundamentally remain human, right? And
I think in person conversation like this, I do not think I can send my AI avatar here, so that no work. I think in person conversation we become more and more important and critical. I think no matter how powerful AI is, I do not think the AI can replace, you know, the emotions, right? So, that's is very important because in conversation like this is very important, so.
Yeah. Um building I did that like kind of the human connection in person is important, etc. Can you talk about the the team side of the Zoom story? Like how how What have you learned? How important has been like the talent, the team? What do you learn about during the the Zoom journey in terms of, you know, the team you build and and how that impacts your success and like you know, do you feel the same like has any of that changed in the age of AI in terms of the way that you view that?
So, prior to COVID, I I I would have say I I I I I felt very proud of a Zoom culture because every day, seriously, when I wake up, I think wow, this is the indeed the company I wanted to work for, I wanted to build. We had We had a such a great culture and everyone cares about the customer, care about each other. Is the this is kind of the the the best of time, you know, and look at our journey. The reason why because, you know, the talent is is probably the number one important thing if you want to build a successful company because even if you have a great product if you do not you know, recruit the top line talents, very soon your product will suck. Why? Because you have a those, you know, not the great engineers, right? And so, to re- to recruit the talents is extremely important, but you have to focus on quality rather than quantity. You cannot say this quarter, I have to hire 500 engineers. Don't know work. The quality is very important. That's why our, you know, philosophy back then was we wanted to do high slowly. Grow slowly. The reason why we want to focus on quality until 2020. And then during the COVID, I think I I made a huge mistake. And every department say, 'Oh, traffic 10 times, 20 times times more.' They all want hire more, you know, the they want want me to approve a lot of open wrecks. I did approve those open wrecks. That's why within the 18 months window we hired more than 6,000 employees. That's huge mistake. The culture completely broken. So, looking back, that's is one of the biggest mistakes, right? So, hire slowly, hire the top talents, focus on quality rather than quantity. That's the lesson I learned. Even today, we're almost there. We're almost out of the woods now in terms of culture, but that's the biggest lesson I learned. So.
Have you thought about people that are going to be successful in like in in the age of AI? You talked about in the business
In the age of AI, I think no big difference in terms of the culture. And It's Sorry, maybe I take a step back what I said. I think that talent will become even more important in the age of AI. The reason why I think this way, you hire a very good individual contributor, right? If it's good one, and it's just the just the one individual contributor. In the AI era, guess what? One good engineers or one good sales AEs, they can employ so many digital agents to work for you, right? Can amplify this individual contributor, right? If you hired a a a in not so good employees, guess what? The the the negative impact also much bigger. Because, you know, he or she can also deploy so many agents, right? And that's why you know, in terms of impact to the to the to the business in the AI era, I think it's even more critical if you do not have a greater team. So.
You obviously recently brought BrightHire into into Zoom.
Yeah, that's such a great team.
What What What What Why did you do that? What Like why was it a bet you wanted to take? What got you excited? You know, why why? You know, can you give a little bit more more on that? perspective.
Yeah, maybe a story and cuz we were a BrightHire customer and also we talked with the many we also invested, right? So, yeah. So, and we talked with the many mutual customers. And they all mentioned, 'Hey, they deployed a BrightHire solution. They really like it.' And more and more customer told us, I think, 'Yeah, if that's the case, why not to join forces together?' Because we were suffering from problem where, you know, we have to recruit the top talents. We do not have a great platform. After we deploy platform, because maybe I share with one of the biggest problem I had. So, no matter how good, how solid you think your recruiting process is, but after you recruit the talents, quite often 1 year later 6 months later, it did not work out. You have no idea what happened what had happened. You know, what if something wrong in the recruiting process? You do not know. It's have to manually go back to the who interviewed this candidate. You know, who gave the the the the rating high or rating low. Why is that? You cannot connect the dots. We want to have a end-to-end platform starting from recruitment until the contribution to the company. If it works very well, we wanted to understand, you know, the pattern, right? It's one of end-to-end process. We do not have the process. That's why I think you know, BrightHire can play a big role, right? To help you establish a end-to-end, you know, the talent recruitment process.
That's why we joined forces together. So, I think especially AI era, right? Because as we speak, you hire 500 people. 1 year later, how do you know, even without looking at the performance to leverage AI, those potential 500 candidate, you know, those 450 will do well, those 50 not do well with the AI technology. Now, in the AI era is very possible now.
And you can query the data at scale in a way that even 24 months ago you couldn't.
to find patterns and and so forth. Yeah, so it's an area that we're incredibly excited about and we're incredibly excited to build on the platform. I want to take it back and talk a little bit about your CEO role a little bit. What's a big open question that you struggle with as a CEO today? Uh can you just like unpack, you know, something that you know sort of keeps you up at night and that you're thinking a lot about?
There's a too many answer.
Shorter list. I think of you since maybe one is you know, sometimes cuz our culture is to deliver happiness, right? For me as the CEO, my number one priority is to make sure our our employees, my direct reports happy and together make our customers happy. But sometimes you know, in terms of some key decisions, I know we should have let's say, you know, go with this path. Our team, especially those people I trust, they all told me that no, that's not not the right path. You should go to a different path. My gut feeling is my decision should be right. But conflict with my team's recommendation. So, I also want to make them happy. What should I do? It's kind of us quite often I struggled. So, and and that's one. Two is maybe related to this. Sometimes it's you know, being a CEO is not is a little bit tricky because you need to balance the short-term goal and the long-term bet, right? Those two sometimes also struggle because how long the goal is, how short are the the you know, the goal is, right? It's a long-term and a short-term, right? It's kind of a little bit tricky. So, and those two things probably always keep me keeps me up at night. Yeah, yeah.
We talked about AI as a sea change moment. This is a very kind of disruptive time in work in general. There's a lot of executives in this room, leaders
that are navigating their own version of the moment. Not just for their company, but for themselves personally. I'm a leader in a company, the world is changing, my role is changing, the business is changing. So, operating in rapid, you know, kind of disruption, what's one or two piece of advice that you think is going to be important for leaders, executives in an organization to thrive in the next couple years as like things are the ground I'd say is moving under folks' feet really quickly and and you know, businesses you know, are shifting. You know, what what makes somebody thrive and be successful as in a leadership role and one of your direct reports and you think about those folks?
