2011
Eric Yuan raised a $3 million seed round for Zoom from friends after venture capitalists declined to invest.
“And finally, I talked to some friends and raised the $3 million seed funding.”
Topic
Zoom Video Communications
13 facts from 3 episodes, in date order. These are what speakers said on the shows, each linked to the moment it was said. They aren't independently verified.
2015
Zoom Video Communications had no marketing team for its first four years and began building one in 2015, according to Eric Yuan.
“Only until 2015, we started, you know, building up a marketing team.”
2020
Eventbrite announced a native app integration with Zoom in mid-2020 to support online events.
“a few weeks ago, we announced our integration with Zoom in a native app.”
2020
At the time, Zoom was growing about 300% year over year while Slack was growing about 49%.
“Zoom is growing at 300% and Slack's only growing at 49%.”
2020
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal estimate Zoom's market capitalization at roughly $130 billion at the time of the deal.
“Zoom's market cap now, gosh, if I recollect is 130 ish billion, maybe a little more.”
2020
Packy McCormick says Zoom had only a two-person corporate development team when he last wrote about it.
“I look this up, they have a two person or at least, you know, two months ago or a month ago when I wrote about it, they have a two person corp dev team.”
2020
Eric Yuan said Zoom's usage rose roughly 15 to 20 times and its revenue about seven times after COVID, and his leadership team was not ready for that growth.
“like usage, like 15 times, 20 times more. The revenue, like seven times more.”
Undated
Veeva Systems CEO Peter Gassner serves on the board of Zoom Video Communications.
“Peter is on the board of Zoom. And so as you'll hear, he and Eric know each other very well.”
Undated
Zoom Video Communications raised $30 million from Emergence Capital and a further $100 million from Sequoia Capital, according to the hosts.
“Zoom raised $30 million from Emergence and another $100 million from Sequoia afterwards.”
Undated
Zoom's early team grew to about 40 people, and Eric Yuan said everyone except himself was an engineer, funded by angel money.
“Very soon, we get another 15, total of 40 people, and myself included.”
Undated
A Walter Mossberg review in the Wall Street Journal brought Zoom about 50,000 users overnight, though most left within weeks.
“And over the night, we got 50,000. 50,000 users from that article.”
Undated
Eric Yuan said most early Zoom users paid only $9.99 a month, which was too little to fund product development.
“because most of users pay us only for $9.99 a month.”
Undated
Zoom's early search-engine marketing payment to Google exceeded $200,000 a month, according to the exchange between the hosts and Eric Yuan.
“Do you remember how large that check was for context? That's more than $200,000 a month.”
Episodes