Now, it is my great pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker, Eric Yuan. He's the founder and CEO of Zoom Communications.
Eric earned his bachelor's degree in applied mathematics with a minor in computer application from Shandong University of Science and Technology and also a master's degree in geology engineering from China University of Mining and Technology in Beijing. He came to the US to join the tech boom and became one of the founding engineers and vice president of engineering at WebEx. Then WebEx was acquired by Cisco. So Eric became corporate vice president of engineering at Cisco where he was responsible for Cisco's collaboration software development. Time magazine named Eric its 2020 business person of the year and one of the 100 most influential people of 2020. If you might remember that's during the pandemic. He was elected to the NAE last year in recognition of his leadership enabling worldwide video communications. We are grateful to Eric for coming to share his experience, perspective, and insights in a fireside chat with moderator Deian Bell, who is a television host and the founder and CEO of Future Engineers. Please join me in welcoming Eric and Deian to the stage.
Thank you everyone. What a full audience. I'm excited for today. Thank you so much for joining. As you heard SUJ say and others say the theme of today's meeting is engineering the future innovation for people and the planet. And I can't be more thrilled to be joined on stage today here to talk about this and so much more with the founder and CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan. Thanks so much for being here with us today, Eric. Thank you.
So we are going to talk, I'm excited to get into everything Zoom, the past, the present, the future. Also talk about you as an individual, as an innovator and a leader within Zoom, but also an innovator and a leader across the real-time collaboration and communication industry as a whole. Before we get going, I just want to make sure our audience knows that we're going to start with our little chat and then we're going to save about 20 minutes at the end for questions from the audience. So, if you have any burning questions that come into your head over the course of our conversation, save those and we're going to be passing around the microphone later. And speaking of the audience, I know we mentioned there's National Academy of Engineering members. You were inducted last year in 2025. Congrats. We also have our early career engineers and of course we have so many students and educators in the room. Thank you so much for joining. And because we have so many students in the room, I thought we would start by going back to the very, very beginning. And I'd love for you to give us a glimpse of young Eric Yuan. I know you live in California now, but I know you were born and raised in China. What influences in your life really have shaped you into who you are today? What passions really motivated you and drove you to being an innovator that you are today?
Yeah, thank you Deian. So first of all, it's a great honor to be here and President Suji and all other members, all the high school students. It's great to meet you here. I thought I can use Zoom to join today's fireside chat and fortunately did not work. So, and flew here from San Jose. And by the way, Max's career journey is so inspiring. And back to your question and mine, when he was in high school is a paper boy, right? So when I was in high school, I call myself a poker boy. So meaning I was in high school and based on the introduction you know that I did not go to the top university in China because when I was high school I did not spend a lot of time on learning and later on realized that's a huge mistake. So when I was at a middle school and at that time I like science a lot but I do not work hard enough. I do not know what's my passion but one thing actually I know I want to learn and I was not like a top student in my class and maybe top 20% only until I was in college I realized you have to work hard to make a progress no matter how you think you're smart it's not good enough you have to work hard and prior to going to the college I think that's I want to make sure every high school students know that no matter how smart you think you are hard work is very important and I didn't work hard that's why when I was in K to 12 like middle school before I went to college I really don't know what's my passion and just if I start over for sure I going to spend more time to look at all the science everything what I can do what I should do and at that time I don't. But in the college I realized science very important. My major was applied mathematics minor is a computer application. I started working very hard. I knew in the future after I graduate I wanted to become an engineer.
And so you started having this interest in engineering. You started getting this lifelong love of learning. When did you really get captivated with real-time communication with this idea of video conferencing and all of that? Was that in college or was that much, much later in life?
Much later in life because I moved to Silicon Valley in 1997 to pursue my American dream and I joined WebEx as one of the first several founding engineers and I did write a lot of code. So that's why if anyone still use the WebEx product, I still have some code I wrote in 1998. And yeah, because when I moved to Silicon Valley for the first few years I just worked so hard just to write code and around the clock and later on company got acquired by Cisco and after a few years I left Cisco to try to build a much better solution to deliver happiness back to web customers and I think around nine or 10 months after started the company and engineers build sort of prototype and when I play around a prototype I realize ah this is idea I thought about before because when I have a college and my girlfriend she lived in a different remote, different city very far away so at that time more like a daydream I thought about wow if you have a smart device if you can just one click can talk with her and see her that'd be amazing and the moment I saw the demo say wow finally I can connect dots. Yeah.
Yes. And what Zoom has done for long-distance relationships, we are forever grateful for.
Okay. So, you ended up in Silicon Valley. I read online that that took a lot of perseverance to get there. How many times did you apply to get to Silicon Valley to get your visa?
Ninth attempt. I was successful.
The ninth attempt. That is some perseverance for sure. Okay. So, you're in Silicon Valley. What is that like? When were you in Silicon Valley and what was that culture of innovation like for you and how did you really thrive in that?
Yeah, I really love Silicon Valley because since I lived there in 1997 I very, very soon I feel like oh that's more like a home. The reason why is Silicon Valley has a very diversified culture. So meaning no matter where you are coming from as long as you work hard you think about what you can do differently to help the community help a society and you are very welcome there. So plus if you have any good idea you have a lot of supporters around you VCs and also a lot of successful leaders and they all want to support you right so as long as you dream big and very healthy, very innovative ecosystem in Silicon Valley so I think that's reason why Silicon Valley is worldwide innovation center right so for all the high school students right so whenever we have time please visit the Silicon Valley so and also a lot of great universities there as well.
Right and then so when you're in Silicon Valley you were at WebEx right got acquired by Cisco and I know some of our students in the room may not have been familiar with WebEx at the time but then you made that big move to start Zoom in 2011. If my dates are correct 2011 is also when Skype got acquired by Microsoft. So this is a big time for telecommunications. What made you want to take that risk? I mean there's definitely competitors in the market. What made you feel like there was this opportunity? What did you want to innovate different with Zoom?
Yeah. So when I was a kid and I was already inspired by a lot of great stories, in Silicon Valley like in Apple or HP and a lot of great companies, right? When I was a kid, I already read a lot of stories. So when I moved to Silicon Valley, and at that time 1997, that's internet era, a lot of competition public, a lot of billboard along the highway 101. At that time, I already told myself I got to work as hard as I can. Somebody I wanted to build a company to go public. That's my dream actually when I was 27 years old. And back to the 2010 time frame and because I was still at Cisco I lead a web team every day I did not want to go to office because I did not see a single happy web customer. So I felt pretty bad. So I thought about what I can do differently to really bringing happiness back to those customers. There's no way to kind of tweak the existing solutions. the only way is to build something from the ground up. So that's finally I failed to convince others to support me to build a new solution. So finally I decided to leave. You are so right. You know this not that easy decision because you have a family, a lot of uncertainty, a lot of risk. However I feel very fortunate that I live in Silicon Valley because so many companies, failure is okay right? I mean as long as you try hard and so a lot of friends they encouraged me you know it's time for you to leave to start something so and looking back I was the right decision but the reason why the day after left Cisco when I started my own company I realized wow I should have done that earlier I should have left to build a company and plus I have a kids and I feel like I always work for a big company. I feel like my kids would say, 'Wow, you're not bold enough to work for a startup.'
Great note to self, start your companies even younger.
Yeah, seriously, the younger is better. So, yeah.
And I mean, you've proven that you can make your dreams come true. You wanted to start a company. You wanted to have an IPO and fast forward to 2019, I believe. Zoom had one of the most successful IPOs of 2019. I guess talk to me just a little bit about the pinch me moment of that. Like, whoa. Like, I mean, so much pressure I can imagine, but so much exhilaration and excitement, so much support with your family. Just walk us through some of the emotions that were going through ahead of that year.
Yes. So I think probably for our company to go public and to travel to New York right to ring the NASDAQ bell and standing next to my friend the NASDAQ co Adena right standing next to her ring the bell you know I think that's probably the most important highlight in my life the reason why as I mentioned earlier why in 1997 already dreamed someday I want to build a company go public. you work so hard for many many years and finally dream came true you are very very very excited and my family is there as well a lot of zoom employees and but one thing I realized and that's a long journey journey itself is more important than celebrating the final sort of outcome because I remember we went public Thursday and Friday we flew back to San Jose and Monday started to go back to office to work. So meaning the journey itself is most important you got to enjoy the process don't focus on the outcome and you think about what you can do differently become better of yourself and learn new things and lead the team and build a better product serve a customer well I think that's the most important thing so I realize that just we just celebrated for one day that's pretty much so.
Wow, celebrating for one day this huge accomplishment building Zoom into what it is. And to give you guys some context, 2019 is one year before 2020 when the pandemic hit. And obviously that's when for many of us, Zoom became a household name. I know for myself, my child is part of the Zoom generation. My daughter was starting kindergarten, her very first year entirely on Zoom. I don't know how many of you and the students here had some middle school years on Zoom. most of you I think all the hands are raised here. And so this was a very pivotal moment for your company. Talk to us about like when I reflect to that moment there were so many different players in this space and I remember I was actually talking to my husband about this last night. I remember going yeah but we use Zoom because it just worked. It just worked so well. And I think when you think about that from an engineering perspective, that statement can sound so simple, but that's usually because of such a very solid software architecture and foundation and so much innovation behind it. So I guess talk to me about this COVID moment and how Zoom was able to scale so much so fast and really address the societal needs that were so emergent at that time.
Yeah, you are so right. I think back to early 2020 right there were so many solution out there including zoom and luckily zoom just works right know all other solutions and luckily they all sucked so at that time. And it's just great is finally the moment is we realized wow it's time for us to really help the world right because our tools to make the world a better place. So that's a moment I realized all other Zoom employees we all worked so hard and around the clock because the traffic was coming all over the world right so we have to add a service and every night every day and at that time I still remember and the Harvard University the president called me Harvard University was the first university to send all the students back to home to learn online literally mention Eric can you guarantee your service reliable? I'm going to make a decision to send all the staff members students to home can I count on your platform. I told him I personally guarantee you zoom work. Reason why because engineer hard work. So this is back to the engineer because on day one and we know if you want to build a very scalable architecture you need to make sure anytime if you have like a 1 times, 1,000 times more traffic that your architecture support that or not. So on the event we have that philosophy. So meaning in 2020 we have a huge amount of traffic. We do not need to change our code. The architecture beautifully worked so well. we just add more servers. So that's the big difference and also a lot of work around the video codec or audio codec is again that's also a lot of engineer work. So video quality is just better and if you want to use a virtual background the quality also better again we have lots of great engineers work so hard for so many years for that moment you feel like oh zoom just works but behind a big engineer team work so hard for so many years and finally that's more like a moment to sort of show off our technology.
Right and the marketing I would say the term from Zoom was so catchy. I mean, Zoom is not only your company's name, but it has become, I think, a noun and a verb.
I'm an engineer. That name did not come from me.
Did it come from you? Well, it was a great addition to the company for sure because I know we all say I'm going to zoom. I'm going to do this and so there's this real beautiful synergy there with the marketing and the engineering side of this. And obviously Zoom had this big COVID moment. So I mean in general terms, how many users did you have before the pandemic and then how many users did you have a year later? Like what kind of growth were you dealing with from a technology perspective?
Yeah, around the end of 2019 on a peak day we had around 10 million daily meeting participants. I think in 2020 April time frame all the way up to more than 350 million daily meeting participants.
300 from 10 million to 350 million.
Yeah daily meeting participant more than 350.
Wow. That is some scaling and your software did it that's impressive. And thank you so much because so many of us relied on that during those really difficult times to connect not only to be productive in business but just to connect with other humans. And I think we're starting to see that obviously real-time collaboration communication video teleconferencing it's here to stay. And during that time I can imagine you learned so much about how to improve that technology and really dove into this idea of how do you create real connection with people in a virtual space. So what really emerged as you had 350 million users developing this product, what new features emerged that really pushed on that envelope of true connection.
So you know by the that's 350 million daily meeting participants. I think over the past many years well we beyond a video conferencing solution and we built a entire collaboration platform you can deploy zoom phone or contact center whiteboard I have zoom doc a lot of collaboration services already built into our platform and for sure we keep improving the quality as well like echo cancellation noise reduction a lot of technology we improving but most important thing is really about AI and led by our CTO XD he's also a member as well so we heavily invested into AI like meeting summary transcription and also zoom is not a communication collaboration company anymore we are transforming to be a system of action company so meaning after the conversation is over we leverage AI lever the workflow to get thing done to take actions automatically so that's what we're working on and it's a huge opportunity ahead of us so especially given the AI technology innovation speed right I think let's say you and I have a zoom call after the meeting is over guess what maybe the sales call all the sales content data will be automatically stored back to the sales system or maybe interview system right so you do not need to manually do is new information to completion. That's kind of our AI investment. So everything is about AI now.
Great. Yeah. I mean I saw in kind of the company description there's this sentiment of an AI first platform and so and I think XD is here. Is that correct? Shout out to XD CTO. Hey thanks for joining here today. So I know you talked about tangibly what that looks like in a workspace this action-oriented like what happens after the call, right? Just take me for a moment like way in the future like what kinds of things do you envision that are possible with zoom with the virtual space and connection AI but even beyond like just give me some future thinking.
I think it's not about future I think it's probably soon is going to happen imagine any two people and no matter where they are in the world they might speak a different language. In the future when they join a zoom call, they can give each other a hug. I can or shake your hand remotely. You will feel my hand shaking and you feel like that, right? And anyone speak a different language, you do not need to learn foreign language anymore in real time. You can understand each other very well. And also we get a cup of coffee or tea. I can enjoy the smell remotely as well. So that's a world to help people stay connected. So imagine today's world a lot of issues coming from the misunderstanding about the culture about the language right in the future the core will be very I would say is led by AI technology led by AR technology you feel like it's very immersive experience feel like the experience like this we are sitting together that's a world we're going to live in the future plus if you don't want to join some of the calls like all hands meeting you can send your digital twin to join and your digital twin my digital twin can work.
They send digital twins to school.
Hopefully. Maybe not yet. That's one of the thing I don't want you to do that right so better yourself to be the school but digital twin can help each other like you and I negotiate a contract right yes your digital twin my digital twin can work together to come up with a preliminary contract and then you and I can sign right so I think in the future world AI and AR, certainly can change the way we work, live, learn, and play.
Love that. And I think that's going to be here even before we know it. Like the way AI is advancing so fast, a lot of these ways for us to connect are going to be here very, very soon. I want to pivot a little and talk about leadership. So, I think I read and this number may have changed that you are a named inventor on 29 patents related to real-time communication with.
XD has more and more pending as well. But you have been there from the beginning, on the innovation side, on the technology side, on the engineering side. And throughout this whole journey, you have led this company. I mean there are so many companies that hire CEOs. You know they really separate those two but you are interwoven as rooted in technology and also a leader of your company and you were named Times business person of the year on the cover of Times magazine. How do you wear those hats? like how does the engineering side of you, your passion for technology and innovation, how does that really feed into your leadership skills and how you view qualities of leadership that thrive at your company?
Yes, great question. That's why I think my engineer background really helped me to launch the company, build a company and also every day improve our company the process a lot of things I can give tons of examples why engineer mindset is so important right we also have a big go to marketing team and over the past many years I realize even you are part of the marketing or sales team if you have engineer mindset everything is easier you can get a thing done quickly. You know like quite often if you do not have engineer mindset that whenever you're facing a problem you always want to jump to a solution so quickly even do not understand the problem well even do not deep dive to understand root cause we are very well trained engineers before we talk about solutions we always want to take step back to see what's the problem you're talking about what's the problem we're trying to address make sure we are all on same page about the problem and then deep dive to understand what happened what's the root cause make all on same page and then we focus on solution. No, that's a engineer approach. If you take that approach quite often, you can save a lot of time to deal with a very complicated problem. So that's why engineer mindset is very important and another thing is I think you take a ethical approach is also very important and when no matter what you do make sure your solution approach is very responsible take AI for example we made a commitment you never want to use our customer content to train our AI model right because we want to take a responsible approach so engineering mindset responsible approach and plus the reason why I mentioned like engineer mindset engineers always want to learn new things right the self-learning is very important to be an engineer to be a leader to be a manager working for zoom for others if you want to motivate yourself everybody want to learn everybody want to become better either you have a mentor have a coach and or daily self-reflection or read a book they keep learning lifelong learning that's a very important either work for somebody or the leader team.
Great, that's the second time we're
Hearing again lifelong learning, such an important note there. I think it's so important to hear this. I think not just for our younger students but also for everyone to know that you don't have to choose. I think sometimes when we go to college we feel like I have to choose engineering or I have to choose business, but you can do both and you can thrive in both, that they can feed together. This engineering mindset that you just have to ask the right questions, find the right answers, and turn that idea into reality is so important. But there's so much to leading a business that's about company culture, that's about hiring others that are leaders in your company. So why don't you talk a little bit about the culture at Zoom and how you really nurture innovation within Zoom as a company?
Yeah, you're so right. I think culture is probably the number one thing if you want to build a sustainable business. So I remember back to 2011 when I started the company, and the first day I only did two things: write down our company culture and value, and also buy used furniture to assemble. So the company culture at Zoom, our culture is just two words: deliver happiness. So meaning I'm the CEO, my number one priority is not about the customer, product, or partner. My number one priority is to make sure Zoom employees are happy. So together we make customers happy. That's kind of our company culture. And back to 2020, if not because we had a wonderful culture, given all the traffic, a lot of employees probably would have complained. No one complained about anything. They all worked so hard. They all wanted to level this time to care about the community, care about the customers. So the daily happiness is our company culture. And the reason why we have this culture, I realized when I was young I did not know what the purpose of life was, and I kept asking myself what the purpose of life is.
Yeah. But later on I figured it out. The purpose of life is really about pursuing happiness. But so many things you can do to make yourself happy, but sustainable happiness comes from making others happy, right? You do all you can, you build a product, make the world a better place, you benefit other people, you'll be happier. Money or other things really cannot make you happy in a sustainable way. So that's the reason why we focus on the happiness culture. And looking back, I think that's probably the most important thing we invested.
Great. And to go on this lifelong learning, I read somewhere, and correct me if I'm wrong, that you have kind of a book club at Zoom as well to nurture lifelong learning, that your employees can invest in books essentially to keep nurturing their love of learning.
