No. 033 · 2011 · San Jose

Zoom

Built because a 10-hour train ride was too long.

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Make my startup a legend
  1. 1 China, the '80s: a 10-hour train to see his girlfriend.
  2. 2 He dreams of seeing her without the ride.
  3. 3 Denied a US visa eight times. Ninth try works.
  4. 4 He leaves Cisco to rebuild video calls.
  5. 5 It just works. That's the pitch.
  6. 6 March 2020.
  7. 7 10M to 300M daily participants, in months.
  8. 8 You're on mute.
Founders
Eric Yuan
Founded
2011, San Jose
What they do
Video meetings.

The story

Yuan left Cisco's WebEx team because customers kept telling him they weren't happy with it. His bet was video calls that simply worked. In 2020 the pandemic took Zoom from 10 million to 300 million daily participants in a few months.