Welcome to the Killer Innovation Show, the longest continuously produced podcast in history. Each week, Phil McKenna brings you the insights and strategies to amplify your creativity and innovation skills. Here's your host, Phil McKenna.
This week's guest on the show is Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom. Eric and I were at an industry event at my invitation. Eric joined me on stage virtually to have a fireside chat where I had an opportunity to ask Eric a wide range of questions. Eric is a well-respected engineer and innovator, having been one of the original engineers and ultimately becoming the VP of engineering for WebEx over at Cisco. He left WebEx and founded Zoom. During this chat at this industry event, Eric and I cover a wide range of topics including COVID and what was its impact on Zoom, collaboration and innovation during COVID, and also the plans and directions of collaboration and innovation in the new features that Zoom is constantly introducing. We talk about the future of video-first communication, Zoom and its impact on telehealth, education, business. What does the future of work look like in a hybrid environment? And I asked him my key question as to what innovation does he hope to see in his lifetime that does not yet exist. But before we jump into this week's episode, I have a favor to ask. Can you like this show? Can you follow us on social media? And can you share if you know of somebody who would benefit from hearing Eric's story? How innovation, collaboration in the world of online virtual events and virtual meetings and virtual activities, this is the episode you want to share. So please take this link, share it with others. We would greatly appreciate it. And with that, let's jump into this week's episode.
So Eric, one of the questions I know you probably get asked or have been asked a thousand times is how well did Zoom do throughout the COVID. I think people were familiar with Zoom but Zoom got weaved into everybody's daily life when we all got impacted by COVID in March of 2020. How did Zoom do from a product perspective? You were kind of out there ahead of everybody and became a critical technology for us.
Yes, Phil. Yeah, that's a great question. As you know, on a peak day in the end of 2019, our daily meeting participant was around 10 million. Last March and April 2020, it all the way jumped to 300 million. So good news, we survived because of the product architecture. Because on day one, based on our design, we really challenged ourselves: could our architecture survive if suddenly there's a 10 times or 20 times more traffic? That's one thing. Another thing, we also support not only our own data center but also we support a public cloud as well. So essentially it's a hybrid architecture. If something really needs more traffic, we can add more servers from those public cloud vendors like AWS or Oracle Cloud. I think because of those two factors, we survived. Otherwise, I cannot imagine how we can survive.
Yeah, I mean, and you and I were talking in the early days of the COVID experience as you were seeing that kind of explosive growth. And I have to say I was impressed at the ability to take on because everybody was moving to Zoom but other platforms, but Zoom got the dominant play with schools going on at home, people having to work from home. The next question I'd like to talk about is what could Zoom do with a significant increase in available bandwidth? If there was more bandwidth not only to your data centers but more importantly to your customers, to consumers, to businesses, what could you do with that? You did great with COVID given what was in place, but as we go forward and we're delivering multi-gigabit types of speeds, is there something that Zoom can do with all of that increased bandwidth?
Absolutely. I still think the bandwidth is the number one important thing. You and I chatted last year, right? And when the pandemic crisis hit us, we had to make a bold decision, meaning we had to downgrade the video quality from HD, 1080p or 720p to 360p because we wanted to be a good citizen of the community, right? Because of internet bandwidth consumption problems. And if we have enough bandwidth, first of all, video quality is much better. And the second thing is a lot of features in the pipeline like telemedicine, telehealth, remote surgeries, AR/VR integration. I think you have to have enough bandwidth, right? That's very important. My personal experience last year, I have two internet service providers, Comcast and AT&T. Even if I have two, sometimes the bandwidth is still not good enough. And I think in the future with more and more bandwidth, a lot of new innovation can be built upon that. It's extremely important for the future innovation.
Well, and I know at Zoomtopia recently, the Zoom user conference, you've made a number of announcements, but probably one of the more exciting announcements from the standpoint of just the explosion of support for Zoom is from your third-party applications. And you look at the catalog and it's massive. What are your thoughts about that application layer that not only takes advantage of Zoom but delivering some different kinds of experiences?
Yeah. So great question. So when we started, we wanted to build a good video conferencing application. Essentially our goal was to become a video conferencing killer app company, and that's what we did over the past 10 years. Next 10 years, I would say, will be even more exciting. We would like to transform our business to become a platform company. So meaning not only do we have a video call like this, because imagine you and I, we turn on the video, if you and I we do not see anything, I think this video conferencing experience is useless. How to bring other contexts to this video call, especially to support a future hybrid work? You and I are not at the office at the same time, right? How you can improve my experience, or maybe before the meeting is over, what you and I can do to enjoy interacting with each other, like we play a game together. I think we can bring any kinds of business apps, all the consumer apps to the video-centric interface. Essentially, Zoom will become a people-centric interface. We can bring any other third-party contexts to this interface. That's the vision of Zoom platform. Recently we launched a bunch of Zoom apps. I can tell you, I can easily switch my virtual background. You and I can play a game together. It's very exciting.
Yeah. And in fact, I think there's been a couple of articles written about your view on travel, right? And this is even pre-COVID, and you and I have had this conversation, right? That your objective was to create an application that did not require you to travel to be away from your family. You were definitely on the leading edge going into COVID of yourself even during Zoom's IPO of not traveling as a traditional typical Silicon Valley CEO. That is out there. And with those kinds of experiences, I know in the back of your head because every time you and I talk, you're always asking about features, what features should be added to Zoom, and you add features all the time. What are some features or some things that you think are going to be absolutely necessary to really bridge the teams together? I mean, you can run all the applications, you can do all the collaboration, but I think there are things that you would like to do but are just limited by current technology constraints?
Absolutely. You know, we often talk about why do we need to travel that often. Prior to COVID, I told you several times, I only travel, business travels, and mostly twice a year. If I travel often, something I think Zoom may not work right. And also with greater internet, with the technology like Zoom, I think there's no reason for me to always travel. I can spend more time with my kids together. Having said that, for sure, I think with in-person meetings, I think today still better than Zoom meetings. Because even if our vision is to deliver a better experience than face-to-face meeting, but we're not there yet. We really need some social interaction. Like Phil, you and I, we did not see each other for a while since COVID. And if we meet in a Starbucks coffee, I will give you a bigger hug, right? And today we cannot do that. And you get a cup of coffee, I also cannot enjoy the smell as well. Plus, imagine any two persons who can meet online over Zoom, and if they speak a different language, what we can do to leverage AI to support real-time language translation. Essentially, with technology, in the future Zoom can deliver a better experience than face-to-face meeting. After the meeting is over, we can automatically generate a meeting summary, action items, take the meeting notes. That's the world where we are going to live in the future, but we are not there yet. Not to mention with AR integration, you and I feel like we're sitting together in the local Starbucks coffee. I think that's why we are very excited to keep adding more and more technologies to truly make video communication better than face-to-face.
So one question I'd like to ask you, this is actually a question I actually posed to Brendan, your CTO, who actually has been a great partner with the cable industry as we were working through the early COVID weeks and months in the early days. But the question I always ask is, how can the cable industry assist companies like Zoom to innovate? Where are there opportunities with the cable broadband industry and companies like Zoom? How can we help you? How can we help you innovate?
I think first of all, you look at Zoom's culture, right? We truly solicit feedback from our customers and partners like you and the cable industry. And together, we can innovate. As I mentioned earlier, with enough bandwidth and with AR/VR integration, every call should be minimum 720p or 1080p. Otherwise, you really cannot enable those innovations. Also, you look at the industry, like a vertical industry, take healthcare for example. I think a huge opportunity ahead of us. Telemedicine, telehealth are going to become mainstream. And also you look at even for the senior remote care, you also need enough bandwidth as well. Not to mention for the operating room, and how to support live surgery. Imagine a doctor here in Silicon Valley can serve a patient that might live somewhere in Africa. With enough bandwidth, we can support live surgery. That's for the healthcare industry. For education as well, online education. And I think with AR technology, every classroom should be equipped with the AR device and also like Zoom Rooms, and enable HD quality. I think those kind of features cannot be done without the support of enough internet infrastructure, specifically the cable industry. And that's why I think in the future, a lot of new innovations, new features can be built upon this partnership.
Yeah, let's talk about the telehealth. You brought that up, and I know that Zoom played a critical role and continues to play a critical role even as we get hopefully to the other side of the pandemic. But the role that Zoom plays and your thoughts on what does the future of telehealth look like in the form of video communication?
