Eric Yuan: The man who created zoom app for his girlfriend is now connecting world
Eric Yuan is the man who is behind Zoom- the video conferencing app which changed the way the world works. As you know, it was during the pandemic when Zoom came to the rescue of businessmen and students alike and allowed them to work from home conveniently. Eric Yuan- the CEO and the founder of the Zoom company- is a Chinese- American business billionaire and engineer. In order to see his girlfriend regularly and cut out his travelling time, this soft-hearted man Eric created the Zoom app. The success of Zoom made him stand among the top billionaires of the world. His current net worth is $5.89 billion. Let’s learn his inspiring story.
Quick Facts:
- Full Name:Eric Subrah Yuan
- Born: 20th-Feb -1970
- Age:52
- Zodiac Sign:Pisces
- Birth Place:Tai’an Shandong
Education: Master of Engineering Management, China University of Mining and Technology; Bachelor of Engineering, Shandong Institute of Business and Technology
- Occupation:CEO, Entrepreneur, Engineer
- Industry:Technology
- Net worth:$5.4 Billion
- Residence:Santa Clara, California
- Marital Status:Married
- Children:3
- Zoom’s original name:Saasbee
Early Life
On February 20, 1970, Eric Subrah Yuan was born in Tai’an City, Shandong province, China. His parents were mining engineers, which encouraged him to pursue a related major in college. Eric, then in fourth grade, gathered construction scraps and separated the copper in order to sell it for money.
He was seeking a quicker way to “visit” his fiancée while taking 10-hour train journeys in 1987 as a first-year university student. This search led him to create video telephony software. He graduated with a bachelor’s in applied mathematics from Shandong University of Science and Technology, with a minor in computer applications, and a master’s in geological engineering from Beijing’s China University of Mining and Technology. In 2006, Yuan finished an executive programme at Stanford University.
Career
Yuan resided in Beijing after receiving his master’s degree and spent four months in Japan participating in a training programme. He went to Silicon Valley in 1997 to participate in the tech boom after being inspired by Bill Gates’ 1995 speech in Japan. Yuan filed for a visa to the United States nine times since she could not speak much English at the time. Yuan joined WebEx, an online conferencing firm, as one of the first 20 recruits after coming to the US. In 2007, Cisco Systems bought the business, and he was promoted to vice president of engineering.
Customers were unhappy with Cisco and WebEx’s present collaboration solutions, so he decided to rekindle his proposal to build a video conferencing platform that he had begun to work on in college. The proposal was promptly rejected when he presented it to business leaders. Due to this, Yuan decided to leave his 14-year position at Cisco WebEx and started Zoom Video Communications.
Yuan became a billionaire in 2019 when Zoom had its initial public offering and became public. Because Zoom has benefitted from the move to online work and training during the COVID-19 epidemic, his fortune has risen. A 360 percent increase from his net worth at the start of the year, Yuan’s estimated net worth was $16.4 billion USD as of September 1, 2020. Yuan transferred $6 billion in Zoom shares to a grantor retained annuity trust, of which Yuan is a trustee, in March 2021.
Zoom History
In 2011, Zoom started off as Saasbee Inc. About 40 Cisco engineers joined Yuan in his new venture. Early on, the firm had trouble getting finance, but it finally secured a $3 million start up investment from Subrah Iyar, the inventor of WebEx, former Cisco SVP Dan Scheinman, and numerous other investors. After being inspired by Thacher Hurd’s children’s book “Zoom City,” Yuan called the business “Zoom.” In 2012, the Zoom app was released in beta. The software was formally released a year later, and the business secured $6 million in a Series A fundraising round that was led by Qualcomm Ventures. Zoom swiftly grew to more than one million users by May 2013.
In all, the firm had 10 million subscribers by 2014. It acquired 40 million clients by 2015. The same year, Jerry Yang, the creator of Yahoo, and Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong contributed $30 million to Zoom’s Series C Venture Capital fundraising round. Zoom rose to fortune as one of the most prosperous businesses in the world in 2020. According to year-over-year figures, the business alone achieved $777 million in revenue in the third quarter of 2020, an increase of more than 400%.
Personal Life
Yuan is married and has three kids. At the age of 22, while pursuing his master’s degree at the China University of Mining and Technology, he wed his long-time girlfriend, Sherry. Since 2007, the creator of Zoom has been an American citizen, and his business was founded in Delaware.
Work Philosophy:
As per Yuan, he had always placed a high emphasis on business culture, and he wanted his staff to live up to the idea of “care” both within and outside of the firm’s walls. “Our Caring concept isn’t a one-off that is conveyed in staff training and then never mentioned again, it is a constant theme in our all-hands meetings and it is the basis of the work at Zoom,” says Yuan.
The Zoom CEO is popular among his colleagues, and his popularity has been recognised by job website Comparably, which named him the “Best CEO of 2020.” Being humble, he also does not shy away from personally responding to consumer emails, taking time out of his hectic schedule to reach out to customers and answer their problems.
