Zoom

Eric Yuan saw frustrated customers and wanted to make the product he worked on better – but couldn’t convince his bosses. So he struck out on his own and founded a competitor: Zoom. Yuan talks with host Jeff Berman about building Zoom into a massive player, how it handled 30x growth when the Covid pandemic hit, how he led the company through a painful round of layoffs, and more. Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/newsletter/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Eric Yuan

CEO and Founder

Zoom

Eric Yuan turned a simple belief into Zoom, the platform that kept the world moving through a once-in-a-century shutdown and redefined modern work.  On this episode of Grit, the Zoom CEO shares why velocity beats size, how a family-first ethos powered his leadership during COVID, and why the coming wave of AI dwarfs the original internet boom.  He details how he’s refreshing Zoom’s culture for 7,500 people, opting for virtual deal calls over in person meetings, settling into life as an empty-nester, and keeping Zoom nimble enough to outpace Big Tech and the next wave of AI startups. Guest: Eric S. Yuan, Founder & CEO of Zoom Chapters:  00:00 Trailer 00:44 Introduction 01:47 Walking with swagger 03:48 Extremely exciting moment 10:05 Classic innovators’ dilemma 12:59 Laser-focused bandwidth 17:56 Family first: lead by example 22:09 Everybody was doing their road shows 25:34 The entire world was dependent 28:04 Community care 31:57 Valuation and a co-founder 35:17 A lot of unhappy days 39:25 Building Zoom for consumers 46:57 Holograms? 52:01 Home 53:23 Huge competition, high velocity 1:00:33 Where companies get wrong 1:04:52 Giving back 1:13:12 Who Zoom is hiring 1:13:24 What “grit” means to Eric 1:14:24 Outro Mentioned in this episode: Webex by Cisco, Glean, Apple, HP, Netscape, Yahoo, Brian Armstrong, Emilie Choi, Coinbase, New Limit, Elon Musk, Windy Hill, Magic Leap, Rony Abovitz, Jony Ive, OpenAI ChatGPT, Bill McDermott, ServiceNow, Carl Eschenbach Links: Connect with Eric X LinkedIn Connect with Joubin X LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com Learn more about Kleiner Perkins

Eric Yuan

CEO and Founder

Zoom

After unveiling 45 new product announcements this week, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan joined the show to share how he’s thinking about the future of work. He shared how he prioritizes which features to build, his approach to rebuilding company culture, what he’d do differently if he were starting Zoom today, and much more. (00:00) Intro (01:14) Eric Yuan on Zoom's Recent Innovations (02:02) AI Companion and Its Capabilities (03:23) Zoom's Open Platform and AI Features (04:36) Customer-Centric AI Development (06:21) Innovative Features and Real-World Applications (11:15) Balancing Core and Future Innovations (13:32) Zoom's AI-First Transformation (25:05) Security and Data Privacy in AI (27:46) Customer Feedback Driving Innovation (29:36) Eric Yuan's Leadership Style (33:22) Navigating the Pandemic: Rapid Growth and Cultural Challenges (34:44) Rebuilding Company Culture: The Culture Playbook (35:45) Continuous Improvement: Daily Self-Reflection (37:25) Hybrid Work: Embracing the New Normal (40:31) Founding Zoom: Insights and Challenges (48:50) Lessons from Early Days: Perseverance and Timing (53:12) Hiring and Leadership: Building the Right Team (57:05) Reflections and Future Planning (01:01:27) Choosing the Right Investors (01:03:04) The Future of AI and Industry Transformation Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎙 Listen to the show Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-logan-bartlett-show/id1606770839 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.

Eric Yuan

CEO and Founder

Zoom

SaaStr 788: Going Multi-Product in the Age of AI with Webflow, Rubrik, Zoom, and ProductBoard At SaaStr Annual's AI Summit, we asked product leaders from some of the fastest-growing SaaS companies to share their insights on navigating the AI revolution while scaling multi-product strategies. This panel of product leaders featured Anneka Gupta, CPO at Rubrik, Mahesh Ram, Head of AI Product at Zoom, Hubert Palan, CEO at Productboard, and Rachel Wolan, CPO at Webflow. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet. Hey everybody - thanks to the 10,000 of you who came out to SaaStr Annual. We had a blast and big news -- we'll be back in MAY of 2025. That's right, the SaaStr Annual will be a bit earlier next year, May 13-15 2025. We'll still be back in the same venue, in the SF bay area at the 40+ acre sprawling san mateo county events center. Grab your tickets at saastrannual.com with code JASON50 for an extra discount on our very best pricing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Anneka Gupta

Chief Product Officer

Rubrik

Mahesh Ram

Head of AI Product

Zoom

Hubert Palan

Founder & CEO

Productboard

Rachel Wolan

CPO

WebflowDropbox

Zoom, a company that helped change the way people work during the COVID-19 pandemic, is continuing to reimagine the future of work by transforming itself into an AI-first communications and productivity platform. In this episode of NVIDIA’s AI Podcast, Zoom CTO Xuedong (XD) Huang shares how the company is reshaping productivity with AI, including through its Zoom AI Companion 2.0, unveiled recently at the Zoomtopia conference. Designed to be a productivity partner, the AI companion is central to Zoom’s “federated AI” strategy, which focuses on integrating multiple large language models. Huang also introduces the concept of “AUI,” combining conversational AI and graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to streamline collaboration and supercharge business performance.

Xuedong Huang

CTO

Zoom

Today, I’m talking with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan — and let me tell you, this conversation is nothing like what I expected. It turns out Eric wants Zoom to be much, much more than just a videoconferencing platform. Zoom wants to take on Microsoft and Google and now has a big investment in AI – and Eric’s visions for what that AI will do are pretty wild. See, Eric really wants you to stop having to attend Zoom meetings yourself. You’ll hear him describe how he thinks one of the big benefits of AI at work will be letting us all create something he calls a “digital twin," essentially a deepfake of yourself that can go attend meetings on your behalf and even make decisions for you. I’ll just warn you: I tried to ask a bunch of the usual Decoder questions during this conversation, but once we got to digital twins going to Zoom meetings for people, well, I had a lot of followup questions.  Links:  Zoom gets its first major overhaul in 10 years, powered by generative AI | ZDNet An interview with Zoom CEO Eric Yuan | Stratechery / Ben Thompson Zoom is cutting about 150 jobs, or close to 2% of its workforce | CNBC Zoom meetings are about to get weirder thanks to the Vision Pro | The Verge Zoom Docs launches in 2024 with built-in AI collaboration features | The Verge Zoom rewrites its policies to make clear that your videos aren’t used to train AI tools | The Verge Zoom says its new AI tools aren’t stealing ownership of your content | The Verge Zoom adds “post-quantum” end-to-end encryption | Zoom Transcript: https://www.theverge.com/e/23932774 Credits:  Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Today’s episode was produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt and was edited by Callie Wright. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Eric Yuan

CEO and Founder

Zoom

SaaStr 715: The 7 Biggest Mistakes CMOs Make (And How to Avoid Them) with the CMOs of Databricks, Zoom, and Okta In this CMO panel, Rick Schultz, CMO at Databricks, Janine Pelosi, Former CMO at Zoom, and Ryan Carlson, Former CMO at Okta, joined Carilu Dietrich, Advisor at Hypergrowth B2B Startups to talk about the seven biggest mistakes CMOs make. These CMOs have all taken their companies from the early stages through IPOs and have been apart of multi-billion dollar organizations. Here are the 7 big mistakes they made, so you can avoid them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet. Join us in 2024 at: SaaStr Annual: Sept. 10-12 in the SF Bay Area. Join 12,500 SaaS professionals, CEOs, revenue leaders and investors for the world's LARGEST SaaS community event of the year. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on tickets here: https://www.saastrannual2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave20 SaaStr Europa: June 5-6 in London. We'll be hosting the 5th SaaStr Europa in London for two days of content and networking. Join 3,000 SaaS and Cloud leaders. Podcast listeners can grab a discount on Europa tickets here: https://www.saastreuropa2024.com/buy-tickets?promo=fave200 -------------- This episode is sponsored by: Northwest Registered Agent When starting your business, it's important to use a service that will actually help you. Northwest Registered Agent is that service. They'll form your company fast, give you the documents you need to open a business bank account, and even provide you with mail scanning and a business address to keep your personal privacy intact. Visit https://www.northwestregisteredagent.com/saastr to get a 60 percent discount on your next LLC.

Rick Schultz

CMO

Databricks

Janine Pelosi

Former CMO

Zoom

Ryan Carlson

Former CMO

Okta

We sit down with the CEO founders of two of the most capital efficient success stories of all time — Zoom and Veeva Systems — to understand how they grew to billions of dollars in revenue (and tens of billions in market cap) on very, very little capital invested. With the fundraising environment changing rapidly, we couldn’t think of a better topic to discuss or better sources of wisdom for founders, operators and investors all to learn from. Very special thanks to Jake Saper and our friends at Emergence Capital for inviting us and putting this conversation together at their 2022 CEO Summit! This episode has video! You can watch it on YouTube. Sponsors: Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25 Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry WorkOS: https://acquired.fm/unpluggedPlaying Cards: https://bit.ly/workOSshop (Code: ACQDECK) Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26 More Acquired! Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes Join the Slack Subscribe to ACQ2 Merch Store! © Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC Links: Peter’s great Medium blog ‍Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Eric Yuan

CEO and Founder

Zoom

Peter Gassner

CEO and Founder

Veeva Systems

Mitch Tarica is Head of North America Sales at Zoom Video Communications. Before joining Zoom, Mitch spent over 5 years at RingCentral including as Senior VP of Worldwide Sales and Customer Success. Finally, before RingCentral, Mitch was at Oracle for over 7 years in numerous different sales roles. In Today's Episode with Mitch Tarica You Will Learn: 1.) Entry into Sales: How did Mitch make his way into sales with one of the first SaaS companies in the world? What were his early lessons on what truly great sales entails? What elements does Mitch fear we have lost in the art of sales over time? 2.) The Playbook: Should the founder be the one to create the sales playbook? What are the signs that the founder has a repeatable and scalable playbook? When is the right time to make the first sales hire? Should it be a Head of Sales or Sales Rep? How does the first hire depend on whether you are PLG or enterprise sales led? 3.) The Hiring Process: How does Mitch structure the hiring process? Step by step, what does he want to achieve? What questions does Mitch ask in the first interview, always? What are the 3 traits that Mitch believes all great sales hires have? How does he test for them? How do Zoom use practical sales tests to determine the ability of a potential sales hire? How does Mitch see many founders make mistakes in the sales hiring process? 4.) Sales Onboarding: What are the crucial steps to do sales onboarding right? How should leaders structure the first 30,60 and 90 days for their new reps? What are some early red flags that leaders should watch for with new reps? What more can leaders do to make sure their reps are as successful as possible in the early days?

Mitch Tarica

Head of North America Sales

Zoom

Ryan Azus, CRO of Zoom, has been selling all his life, from baseball cards as a kid to ads in the school newspaper to — crucially — books every summer in college. Every year, he and and thousands of other young people would be dispersed around the country to sell books door-to-door as part of an entrepreneurial program called Southwestern Advantage. That experience taught him valuable lessons about his own strengths and weaknesses as a salesperson, the diversity of people’s needs, and the joys of hard-earned time off. In this episode, Ryan and Joubin talk about the silver lining of growing up with divorced parents; what Ryan learned from his epic first job as a book salesman; how he talked his way into a job at WebEx after being screened by HR; the big thing a lot of people on the outside get wrong about working at a successful fast-growing company; joining Zoom in August 2019, right before COVID changed everything; what it feels like when your job is to keep the world connected; and why success is not created in a “sunny meadow.” In this episode, we cover: The biggest difference between Ryan’s childhood and that of his own kids (04:18) Why selling books every summer in college was a lucrative, life-changing adventure (10:45) Where his competitiveness comes from, and being a “student of business” (22:01) The early days of teleconferencing at WebEx, and how Ryan started working there (27:17) Building RingCentral from zero to a billion-dollar run rate, and being a “headquarters person” (33:54) “Falling forward” and the myth of instant success in business (39:00) Zoom fatigue and virtual backgrounds (44:37) Keeping up with the explosive growth in demand for Zoom, and the intense pressure of the job (48:23) The most important traits Ryan looks for when hiring (55:05) Zoom’s stock price and the “belief barrier” (01:00:05) Links: Connect with RyanLinkedIn Connect with JoubinTwitter LinkedIn Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com  Learn more about Kleiner Perkins This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm

Ryan Azus

CRO

Zoom

Hilary Headlee is Head of Global Sales Operations and Enablement @ Zoom. Prior to joining Zoom, Hilary was VP of Global Sales Operations and Productivity @ MindBody and before that enjoyed similar roles with Alteryx, Invoca and Lynda.com. At Lynda.com, Hilary grew the support teams from 6 to 60 people and supported more than 60 net new reps in just 3 years. If that was not enough, Hilary is also a Limited Partner in Stage 2 Capital, the venture firm focused purely on go-to-market. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How did Hilary make her way into the world of SaaS and come to be the sales leader she is today with the global communications leader, Zoom? When thinking about sales ops vs revenue ops, what are the 4 key points to consider for founders? How does lead management and onboarding alter the question of sales ops vs revenue ops? Where does Hilary see operational debt the most? How does she advise founders on removing it? Given the broad scope of sales ops and engagement, is it not just rebalancing culture, comms and change? As a business scales does there not come a time where it unbundles and scales out of sales vs revenue ops? How do the roles change with time and scale? Where do the breakpoints occur? Why does Hilary believe documentation is so important today? What is the toolset Hilary uses for documentation? How does Hilary train her team around the right strategy to document their processes? Where do many go wrong here? Where can you pick up small wins? Hilary's 60 Second SaaStr: What is the hardest element of Hilary's role today with Zoom? What would Hilary most like to change in the world of SaaS today? What does Hilary believe that most around him disbelieve? Read the full transcript on our blog: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-367-with-zoom-head-of-global-sales-operations-and-enablement-hilary-headlee/ If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr

Hilary Headlee

Head of Global Sales Operations and Enablement

Zoom

Salesloft CEO Kyle Porter, Zoom Head of Sales Ops Hilary Headlee and Fireeye VP of WW Sales Christina Foley share the seven tips and tricks to getting more revenue per AE. This episode is an excerpt of a SaaStr Annual 2019 session. You can see the full video on our YouTube channel.

Kyle Porter

CEO

Salesloft

Hilary Headlee

Head of Global Sales Operations and Enablement

Zoom

Christina Foley

VP of WW Commercial Sales

FireEye

Janine Pelosi is the CMO @ Zoom, the next-generation enterprise phone system. Prior to their very successful IPO, Zoom raised funding from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, Emergence Capital, Horizons Ventures and 2 of my favourites in the form of Matt Ocko @ Data Collective and Dan Scheinman. As for Janine before joining Zoom, she spent 11 years at Cisco where among many incredible achievements she led worldwide demand gen for WebEx and led their worldwide digital marketing team with a $25M annual budget. In Today's Episode We Discuss: How Janine made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the leading CMOs today with Zoom? How has the role of the CMO changed over the last 5 years? Would Janine agree with Jason Lemkin that "the role of the CMO is to execute the vision of the CEO"? What makes Janine and Eric's relationship so successful? What makes Eric the special leader that he is? How does the changing power of the CMO affect their relationship with the CEO? When is the right time for startups to hire their first CMO? What should they look for in that ideal candidate? What should they have in place in terms of infrastructure, prior to hiring the candidate? What does the right onboarding process look like for a CMO? Where does Janine see many going wrong when hiring their first CMO? How does Janine look to create alignment between sales and marketing? Why does Janine not believe in having the labels of "MQLs and SQLs"? How does Janine look to reduce the friction when handing off between marketing and sales? What are the common causes? How are we seeing marketing also blend with customer success? Janine's 60 Second SaaStr: What does Janine know now that she wishes she had known at the start of her time at Zoom? Who does Janine most respect in the world of marketing today? Why? What would Janine most like to change about the world of SaaS today? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Janine Pelosi

Janine Pelosi

Former CMO

Zoom

Eric Yuan is the Founder & CEO @ Zoom, the video and web conferencing service that just last week raised $100m in venture funding from Sequoia Capital. Prior to founding Zoom, Eric was Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco's collaboration software development. As one of the founding engineers and Vice President of Engineering at WebEx, Eric was the heart and soul of the WebEx product from 1997 to 2011. Eric proudly grew the WebEx team from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. Eric is a named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real time collaboration. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Eric make his way into the world of SaaS? What was a-ha moment and founding story of WebEx? How does Eric think about building products, customer first? What does that mindset and approach look like What are the main questions to ask? What are the challenges in doing so? How should one approach growth with startups? Is growth ever in need of control? If so, what can be done to control growth? How can this be done without angering investors? Eric has said before that founders must 'spend more and burn less'. What does he mean by this? What does that look like in reality? What should be the main focus? Does Eric agree with the notion that founders always undersell? How does Eric approach the situation of leaving money on the table? What are the challenges of doing so? 60 Second SaaStr What does Eric know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? Eric's Fave SaaS Reading Material? Biggest advice to SaaS founders? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Eric Yuan

Eric Yuan

CEO and Founder

Zoom