Who is Eric Yuang: Bio, Career, and Zoom Empir

296Roses May 09, 2021 | 01:04

Eric Yuang is the Founder and CEO of Zoom platform, the worldwide popular video communication tool. Let's have a look into his background, career and his video communication empire.

Eric Yuan

Meet Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, who has made $12 billion in the Covid-19 pandemic.

Biography

EDUCATION

Master of Engineering Management, China University of Mining and Technology; Bachelor of Engineering, Shandong Institute of Business and Technology, according to Forbes.

Eric Yuan was born in China on the 20th of February 1970. He graduated from the Shandong University of Science and Technology. He later earned a Master’s degree in Engineering from China University of Mining and Technology.

After hearing a speech by Bill Gates in 1994, Eric decided he wanted to move to the US to get in on the growing dotcom industry. His visa application was rejected eight times over a two year period. Finally, he landed a job at WebEx in 1997. A decade later, he was the Vice President of Engineering. In March 2007, the same year of his promotion, Cisco acquired WebEx for $3.2 billion. Eric eventually rose to the title of the Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco Systems, according to Vyapaarjagat.

Yuan was born with a silver spoon in his mouth as he is the son of mining engineers. Moreover, his parents always supported him for his dreams. His father died two months after he told him about starting a new company. For his father, he once said:

"My beloved father passed away just two months after I told him I was going to start a company. Whenever I make progress in my career, I wish I could share the news with my father."

Coming to his educational background, Eric went to Shandong University of Science and Technology and received a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in applied mathematics and computer science. Shortly after completing his education, he began applying visa for the United States. On this, he was stated:

"The first time I applied for a U.S. visa, I was rejected. I continued to apply again and again over the course of two years and finally received my visa on the ninth try."

After trying for the eight times, he finally got a US visa on the ninth try in the mid-1990s, according to Wykie.

Career and Achievements

At the beginning of his career, Eric Yuan joined WebEx which was a success. He joined the organization in August 1997 and served there till April 2007. However, in his career, Yuan built a team of 10 engineers to more than 800 engineers across the globe. He also contributed to the company's revenue growth from 0$ to $700 million.

After serving for the company for a long time, he left it and started in charge of collaboration software at Cisco’s Corporate VP of engineering.

About Zoom

Eric Yuan founded in 2011. By 2014 the company had 10 million total users. By 2015 it reached 40 million customers. That same year Zoom secured $30 million in Series C Venture Capital funding from investors included the Yahoo founder Jerry and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.

The company private market value hit $1 billion for the first time in June 2007 thanks to a $100 million investment from Sequoia Capital.

The platform has over 30,000 corporate clients including Samsung, Uber, Walmart, Captial One. The company is worth $35 billion at present which will surely increase in the upcoming future. After the break out of the world pandemic, COVID-19,

Yuan’s net worth grew to $7.57 billion. If we check his capital figure in 2019, he had US$5.6 billion. His net worth will also step-up with the growth of his company. Matter of fact, he listed his name on Forbes for the first time on its annual list of billionaires in 2020.

Moreover, his company could be seen to have an explosive growth than its past few week growths. On this fact, Yuan also mentioned:

"Our service was built to serve business and enterprise customers. However, due to this COVID-19 crisis, we moved too fast."

Yuang finds it tired of endless meetings via Zoom

Even the founder of Zoom has admitted he’s sick of endless virtual meetings on his company’s videoconferencing software.

Eric Yuan, 51, told a virtual summit of leading CEOs hosted by the Wall Street Journal that at his peak he once had 19 Zoom meetings in a row in one day.

“I’m so tired of that,” Yuan said, chuckling when asked if even he had “Zoom fatigue.”

“I do have meeting fatigue. I do not have any back-to-back meetings anymore, and I feel much more comfortable now,” he said.

Yuan’s company, which he founded in 2011, was relatively unknown before becoming ubiquitous when workers around the world were forced to start working from home during the pandemic.

He is now worth $13.2 billion, according to Forbes, which lists him at No. 133 in its list of billionaires.

Still, Yuan now wants his own staff to go back to old-fashioned meetings, saying Zoom staff will be expected to return to the office at least two days a week.