Simply put: it was hard to use and it didn’t work. When speaking with WebEx customers, I realized that the solution suffered from some deep flaws due to its older architecture, particularly a lack of usability, reliability and video quality. I stayed with WebEx for the next 14 years, and proudly grew the team I managed from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. In 1997, I immigrated to San Jose, CA and secured an engineering position as one of the founding engineers at a small start-up, called WebEx. My desire for an easier way to see her face-to-face without the arduous travel became the impetus for my long path from student to entrepreneur. I was born in mainland China and I first envisioned Zoom while I was a college student there in the late ‘80s, and it would take over 10-hours (each way) by train to visit my girlfriend.

My inspiration was to build a video conferencing solution that people love and this has been a long-time passion of mine.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

Zoom video communications eric yuan