20 Things You Didn’t Know about Zoom Video Communications
In 2012, Zoom Video Communications was launched, heralding a new age in video and audio conferencing, chat, and mobile collaboration. Since its inception, Zoom has been equally embraced by both businesses and personal users, all of whom have applauded its ease of use, reliability and unparalleled functionality. The growth of the company, which is headquartered in San Jose, California, has been phenomenal, and it now employs almost 2000 staff across its numerous global locations. Find out more about the company with these 20 keys facts.
1. It was founded by Eric Yuan
Zoom was founded by Eric Yuan, an American billionaire who grew up in Shandong Province and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in applied mathematics and computer science from Shandong University of Science and Technology. After eight unsuccessful attempts at getting a visa for the US, Yuan finally made his move in the mid-1990s, whereupon he quickly secured a position at Webex. When Webex was bought up by Cisco Systems in 2007, Yuan was appointed the vice president of engineering. Since launching Zoom in 2012, Yuan has maintained an active interest in the company as its CEO, while his shareholder stake in the firm is believed to be worth $3.7 billion.
2. Yuan likes the personal touch
There’re not many CEO’s that take the time to reply to their customer’s emails personally, but Yuan is clearly not representative of the typical business leader. So surprised are some of his customers about receiving a personal reply to their emails, it’s led to some interesting situations. “One customer replied to my note and accused me of sending auto-generated emails “impersonating” the CEO — he said Zoom was a dishonest company!” Yuan shared with Thrive Global. “I wrote back that the email was indeed from me, and that it wasn’t generated by one of our marketing tools. He still didn’t believe me, so I wrote back again and offered to meet him on a Zoom call right that minute to prove it was me writing the emails. That call never did take place, but he stopped accusing Zoom of being dishonest!”
3. Yuan’s idea for Zoom came from his hatred of traveling
Given the scale of Zoom today, it’s hard to imagine the seeds of its foundation came from nothing more than a teenage Yuan’s hatred of travel. “I first envisioned Zoom when I was a freshman in college in China and regularly took a ten-hour train ride to visit my girlfriend (who is now my wife),” he told Thrive Global. “I detested those rides and used to imagine other ways I could visit my girlfriend without traveling — those daydreams eventually became the basis for Zoom.”
4.. Richard Branson will appear at the annual Zootopia
Every year, Zoom holds Zootopia, an event that places its customers firmly at the heart of the action. Held over two days, the event is intended to serve as an interactive learning experience, giving customers the opportunity to share best practices and discover more about video-first unified communications. It also presents the ideal opportunity for attendees to hear leaders in the field share their thoughts. This year’s keynote speakers will include the founder of the Virgin Group, Sir Richard Branson, Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan, “Star Trek” and “American Horror Story” actor and film producer, Zachary Quinto, and former NASA Astronaut, Mike Massimino.
5. It works in partnership with industry leaders
Zoom works alongside a host of value-added partners to help customers get the most of Zoom cloud meeting solutions. Current partners include the likes of Dropbox, DTEN, SHURE, AMX by Harman, Nytanix, Urben, Extron, AiSense, and Logitech.
6. It hosts regular webinars
Zoom is all about getting customers engaged (and engaging) in the product. Far from being the kind of company that ends its relationship with customers as soon as the contract is signed, it aims to keep the involvement going for as long as customers keep using the service. Part of the way it achieves this is through a series of educational webinars that give useful information on how customers can get the most out of Zoom. In September 2019 alone, it hosted such events as Zoom Phone: Bring Your Carrier to Our Cloud; Top 10 Workplace Trends that Will Dominate 2020; How to Level Up Your Meetings with Zoom; Six Actionable Ways to Improve Your Conference Rooms; and Product Update: New and Expanded Zoom Video Webinars Apps.
7. It’s been named a Leader in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions
Each year, Gartner assesses companies across a range of different criteria, evaluating both the strength of their vision and their ability to action it. This year, Zoom appeared for the fifth time in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, making it the fourth year in a row they’ve been honored with the title of leader in the Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions. “We are very happy to receive this recognition from Gartner and to be placed in the Leaders quadrant again,” said CEO Eric Yuan. “We are gratified that Gartner has recognized our completeness of vision and ability to execute.”
8. It’s got some seriously satisfied customers
In addition to being named a Leader in Gartner’s 2019 Magic Quadrant for Meeting Solutions, Zoom’s achievements have also been recognized by its customers on Gartner Peer Insights in the Meeting Solutions market. Zoom currently holds an overall rating of 4.6/5 stars based on 3077 reviews, giving it the highest overall rating in the category.
9. HSBC has standardized on Zoom
In September 2019, Zoom announced that HSBC, one of the largest banks in the world, has plans to standardize on Zoom. The move is intended to allow the financial services giant to consolidate costs and create an enhanced, seamless experience for end-users. The collaboration marks Zoom’s largest account sold by initial revenue to date and is understandably generating a lot of excitement in Zoom’s executive team. “I am proud to welcome HSBC to the Zoom family,” CEO Yuan announced in a statement. “My team looks forward to continuing to work with HSBC to provide their users frictionless communications experiences, quickly innovate new features and functionality, and deliver them happiness every day.”
10. It’s working in partnership with HP
In March 2019, HP announced it had teamed up with Zoom in an effort to expand its presence in collaboration and conference rooms. The result of the partnership is the introduction of “HP Zoom Rooms”, which marry Zoom’s video conferencing services with HP’s mini PC for conference rooms, Elite Slice.
11. It’s been named 2019’s best video conferencing software
Each year seems to bring about a new series of awards and honors to Zoom’s door, and 2019 is proving to be no exception. One of its latest honors is to be named best video conferencing software by G2. The title comes as a result of scoring 4.5 out of 5 in 11440 customer reviews (narrowly beating off competition from Skype for Business, which scored 4.2 out of 5 in 1441 customer reviews.
12. It was named 2015 Hot Vendor by Aragon Research
In 2015, Zoom achieved the rare feat of being named a Hot Vendor by Aragon Research. “We consider our inclusion in the Hot Vendor report by Aragon Research to be recognition that Zoom provides over 85,000 businesses the best video conferencing, mobile collaboration, and conference room experience on the market today,” said Eric Yuan in a statement. “We continue to innovate our collaboration suite to enrich the value we bring to our customers.”
13. It’s helping women-led startups
By working in partnership with Astia, Zoom is helping address one of the biggest problems in the entrepreneurial world – the chronic underfunding of women-led startups. Astia began life as the first incubator for women-led businesses and is today supporting its investments by using the Zoom platform to run all its programs, including Astia Angels Support, Astia Expert Sift process and all internal meetings.
14. It was named to the Forbes Cloud 100 in 2016
In 2016, Zoom made its first-ever entry to the Forbes Cloud 100 at number 84. A year later, it had jumped in the rankings to 18th place, demonstrating the phenomenal growth the firm has achieved on a year on year basis since its launch in 2012. “We are delighted and honored to be among the world’s top private cloud companies recognized by Forbes for the second year in a row,” CEO Yuan noted at the time. “We want to thank our dedicated employees and customers for their hard work and support.”
15. It’s transforming education
Zoom isn’t only transforming the business world, it’s revolutionizing education. Using Logitech Room Solutions for Zoom Rooms, Zoom has made it as easy as 1,2,3 for educators to connect with their students via a one-tap-join and wireless-sharing video classroom. As well as allowing teachers to provide interactive learning experiences, the technology provides an invaluable means of allowing students to connect with other students across the world; creating an efficient way for administrators to administer staff training; and letting parents attend parent/ teacher conferences virtually when they aren’t able to attend in person.
16. It launched its IPO in April 2019
In April 2019, Zoom launched its first public offering with shares priced at $36 per share. Since then, it’s performed exceptionally well; in August, the company’s stock was estimated to be worth 158% more than its offering price, with the stock price currently over $93.
17. It’s won the Asia-Pacific Cloud Video Collaboration Provider of the Year Award twice
2019 marks the second consecutive year Zoom has received the honor of winning the Asia-Pacific Cloud Video Collaboration Provider of the Year Award. The award recognizes companies that have raised the bar on excellence in Asia-Pacific and is a great indicator of Zoom’s achievements in the region. The company opened its first office in Japan in 2018 and has made significant increases in its customer base in both Australia and New Zealand in the past few years.
18. “Delivering Happiness” is a core value
The stellar growth Zoom has reported over the last few years may be largely down to its exemplary technology, but its core values have just as big a role in its overall success. At the heart of its mission statement is the idea of “delivering happiness”, something its Customer Success (CS) team takes great pride in doing. As well as giving each customer experience the personal touch through little dashes like video-enabled calls, Zoom leverages its technology to give customers access to the full Zoom team: whether it’s the CEO or a product leader, every member of the team is available on chat.
19. It’s not invulnerable
While Zoom’s technology may be transforming the world of video conferencing, it’s not without its limitations. In November 2018, it was found that Zoom was vulnerable to attack from remote, unauthenticated users that could spoof UDP messages from a meeting attendee, effectively given them the ability to remove attendees from meetings and hijack shared screens. In 2019, a further problem was identified by security researcher Jonathan Leitschuh, who discovered a zero-day vulnerability that allowed any website to force a macOS user onto a Zoom call (with the camera activated) without their consent.
20. It’s been described as “love at first byte”
The early reception to Zoom was tremendous, with its technology wining huge applause from users. In their review for Construction Executive’s Tech Trends, Judy Schneider and Paul Doherty summed up the general consensus by describing their experience as “love at first byte”. “The first meeting was seamless,” they went on to note. “Everyone arrived on time with little to no wait time”.
