Eric Yuan
Founder & CEO, Zoom. On 3 shows, 3 appearances, plus 173 compilation re-airs not counted. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@ericsyuan ↗LinkedIn ↗zoom.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Before founding Zoom in 2011, Yuan was an early engineer at WebEx and later served as Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco Systems. He guided Zoom to an IPO in 2019 and oversaw its growth into a global communications platform.
3shows
3appearances
35statements
7resolved
5supported
0contradicted
71%fully supported
891said about them ↓ Everything Eric Yuan said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Yuan: Could not find a single happy Skype or WebEx customer
“There were so many solutions out there. The market was extremely crowded. However, I did spend a lot of time on talking with those users. Do you like Skype? Do you like WebEx? I did not see a single happy customer who told me that Really like the existing solu…”
Yuan: Zoom's unpredictable self-serve online segment is its biggest business challenge
“In our case, actually, I can tell you today, the biggest challenge is our online business, right? It's very profitable. However, it's very hard to predict, right? They come today, next two months, we might leave, they cancel the service. This is not a great bu…”
Yuan: Startups need seasoned executives only after product-market fit
“Not early stage. You know, for the first four years, no need. But down the road, you already see the market of fate, right, the product of fate. You want to scale your business. At that time, you have to change your philosophy.”
Yuan: SaaS companies mistakenly settle for low marketing ROI instead of 4x returns
“Don't believe that. That's the mistake for all the SaaS companies. It's not one dollar and 50 cents back, not three dollars, it should be four dollars, right? It should optimize.”
Yuan: Designing SaaS for artificial customer lock-in is the wrong approach
“We never wanted to make our services sticky. The reason why I think that is wrong direction, because the reason why you want to make it sticky, you always say, hey, this customer don't switch to others. I think that's wrong approach.”
Zoom might have been built inside Cisco if John Chambers had known
“If he knew that, very likely I would probably still be at Cisco, right, to build a solution, right?”
Yuan: VCs rejected Zoom's seed round claiming market was saturated
“To start with, I tried to raise seed money from some VCs, and they did not think the world needed to have another solution. Luckily, I got the seed funding from a few of my friends and in Seneca Valley.”
Yuan: Zoom handled COVID traffic surges without changing its codebase
“That's the reason why, you know, during COVID, even having a certain access traffic, we do not need to change our code. You know, the architecture itself was very scalable.”
Eric Yuan: Enterprise Customers Avoid Standardizing on a Single Software Vendor
“No companies wanted to standardize a single vendor. It's really not as scalable, right?”
Cisco doubted Zoom's vision, believing enterprise collaboration belonged in social networking
“At that time, they saw it is, you know, they focused on the social networking. At that time, they saw the overall, the collaboration strategy should be around the social networking. I have a different opinion, and they probably thought, I do not understand the…”
Yuan: Zoom has achieved over 100% year-over-year growth for several years
“I think a minimum is 100%, you know, over the past several years, right? You know, and we got to the growth, you know, faster, right? I think that that's kind of a minimum is 100% over the past several years.”
Eric Yuan: Zoom's ultimate goal is connecting one billion users
“I, again, our goal is to connect a billion users to use Zoom.”
Yuan: WebEx's architecture was built for data collaboration, not video
“The way to fix that problem is you got to build something from the ground up because WebEx architecture was not a video collaboration. It's more like a data collaboration.”
Zoom daily meeting participants skyrocketed from 10 million to 300 million
“December of 2019. You can have daily meeting participant, you know, I think is around the, on a peak day, around ten million daily meeting participant. And a few months later, in April, May timeframe, all the way jumped to more than three hundred million daily…”
Zoom famously instituted a hybrid work policy requiring two days in-office
“That's how we decided to, you know, let employee back in office twice a week, three days at home, you know, twice a week in the office.”
Yuan: No VCs wanted to invest in Zoom when founded in 2011
“I started a company in 2011. First thing I did, I opened up a Wells Fargo bank account. I started, it's very easy for me to raise capital. That's why I opened up a bank account. Unfortunately, it took me for several months. No visits wanted to invest me.”
Yuan: Zoom raised a Series D round anticipating an economic collapse
“After the research meeting from emergency capital, as, at that time, seriously, we had a new plan, or so ever, to raise another round of capital. And the reason why we still went and moved forward to have a serious digs, because I thought the economy will win,…”
Yuan: Zoom operated without any marketing team until 2015
“For the first four years, we do not have any marketing team. Only until 2015, we started, you know, building up a marketing team, so.”
Yuan: Not building a second product years before IPO was Zoom's biggest mistake
“If you wanted to have new service, you cannot have a new service today, right? You need to think about, you know, trying to make a decision two or three years, you know, before that, right? That's, I clearly remember that conversation. You know, that's why, th…”
Yuan: Zoom will not sell, contrasting with WebEx's early acquisition
“No, no, no. We don't want to sell the company. And by the way, you know, I was not a CEO, right? So WebEx, you know, the two co-founders and You know, they are already a public company. They wanted to sell the company back in, you know, in our case, you know, …”
Top WebEx engineers left Cisco to join Zoom shortly after launch
“I left at Cisco end of June of 2011, and that's how I started Zoom, and one month later, some top Webex engineers, they quit and followed me to start, to join Zoom.”
Yuan: Zoom has not touched its Series C or D capital
“The C round and D round of money is still in the bank. We even did not touch that yet because we already generated, generated enough cash, you know, to help us to invest more into the backend operation or marketing side.”
Zoom serves over 850,000 unique business domains including Uber and Tesla
“We have a little bit over 800 or 50,000 unique business domains, you know, like Uber, like a Tesla, you know, like a Zendesk, Okta, you know.”
The other half of the tape: Eric Yuan's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 890 times in 840 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Nathan Latka 859Venki Balasubramanian 8John Kim 6Ray Rothrock 5Santi Subotovsky 3Casey Zeman 2Ben Gilbert 2Andy MacMillan 2
Statements about Eric Yuan, by other people (1)
Rosenthal: Zoom's massive cash flow stems from capital-efficient DNA, not pandemic hype
“They're two of the greatest of all time. Literally two of the goats at this, which is so funny. You know, now everybody thinks of Zoom as the, you know, pandemic, you know, high flyer, and it's like, I was just thinking every time over the last few years, like…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Top Founders 888
Acquired 2
2025 8 mentions in 8 episodes 1 per episode
- I spent $1m on Linkedin Ads and Added $3m of new Revenue, Paragon CMO
- This CEO Does $50m/yr and is moving to a Flat Org Structure, ChiliPiper CEO
- 3 Product-Led Strategies I Used to Generate $1B In Self-Serve Revenue For My Clients, Wes Bush
- Frame.io COO Shares How they Built Product to Hit 1m Users and Exited to Adobe for $1.25b
- Capacity Acquires $5m ARR Bootstrapped YouCanBookMe To Build AI Support Mega Platform
- These are the AI SEO Secrets that Clickup, Airbase, and Freshworks are using to win
- While Zapier Gets all the Press, Celigo Just Doubled Revenue to $95m, CEO Jan Arendtsz
- NYSE: PAR CEO Savneet Singh Shares How He Great from $200m/yr to $400m/yr
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 70 mentions in 70 episodes 1 per episode
- Here's how I added $10m revenue over the last 18 months, HiFello CEO
- Private, Bootstrapped, & Profitable: How Rajesh Jain Scaled to Over $100M As a Solo Founder
- Pavilion Breaks $10m Revenue using New Growth Playbook, CEO Sam Jacobs
- Sell SMB SaaS? He Generates $20m/yr using "Impossible" Outbound, Craver CEO
- AI SaaS for Hospitals Does $50m/yr up from $25m last year, Reveleer CEO
- They make $30m per year selling software to the EOS community, Ninety CEO
- 42 year old lawyer convinces 200+ Construction Companies to Pay $4k+ Per Year for his Legal Software
- Pendo Shares Board Deck Slides, Breaks $200m Revenue, Lessons with Co-Founder Eric Boduch
- 62 more episodes that year, every mention in 2024 →
2023 175 mentions in 175 episodes 1 per episode
- How to Generate $6m of Revenue and keep 100% Equity with BadgerMaps CEO
- How to turn your sales playbook into a revenue machine that adds $Xm in new ARR per quarter
- How to build a $4.5m revenue company with 0 Full Time Employees
- Masters of Debt: How I bought a $5m SaaS Company Using Debt, Grew to $20m, Then Flipped for a Huge Gain
- How PandaDoc Uses CI to Manage 800 Product Updates Per Month on Path To $100m+ ARR
- How I raised a $15m Series B in a downturn
- $100m in revenue selling software to 27,000 AirBNB hosts?
- How to build a $30m SaaS in 18 Months focusing on an unsexy niche
- 167 more episodes that year, every mention in 2023 →
2022 289 mentions in 285 episodes 1 per episode
- Look Back at $100m Salesloft Before Vista Deal
- Look Back: UserZoom Eye's 2022 IPO, $100m Run Rate in User Experience Management Space
- He hated his remote guitar lessons then spent $8m on new SaaS MVP, 5 patents later he's preparing for launch.
- How He Got First $2k in MRR From His Community of 1,000
- 24 Year Old Invests $340k of His Own Savings to Launch new AirBNB Data Tool
- FinTech Helps Hotel Bed Owners in US Hedge FX Risk Selling to Travelers in Other Countries
- He closed $3.2m at $17m valuation with $20k in MRR last week for Estate Planning Tool
- He got 17 customers to pay $80k/yr up from $40k/yr 1 year ago for Employee Onboarding SaaS
- 277 more episodes that year, every mention in 2022 →
2021 214 mentions in 204 episodes 1 per episode
- Prediction: Freshbworks IPO Coming Next Month? Founders Thinking in 2018
- UserZoom Eye's 2022 IPO, $100m Run Rate in User Experience Management Space
- Reviews.io Breaks $10m ARR Bootstrapped, Growing 150% YoY
- $500k Consulting to $45m Prop Tech VC Fund
- How To Bootstrap to $1m with VC Funded Competitors With Just 4 People
- Real Estate SaaS Did $2.2m Last Month, 140% Growth, Mostly Affiliate Sales
- Pet Land Riches! 60% Profit Margins on $100m SaaS Fintech Play
- They Grew 60% YoY to $4.2m Revenue By Spending $300k on FB Ads
- 196 more episodes that year, every mention in 2021 →
2020 116 mentions in 93 episodes 1 per episode
- 1751 SendBird Messaging SDK Sitting on $100m Cash, $20m in ARR
- 1718 CyberSecurity CEO: US Election Interference Happening Right Now, Virus Plans and more from RedSeal
- WhatConverts Hits $2.1m Revenue, $300k Profits in Call Tracking Space
- Supermetrics $40m Raise Included Secondary at $200m+ Valuation
- Kovai $8.5m Revenue, India Bootstrapped, 3 Core SaaS Products
- Ninety.io Used Community to Hit $2.8m Run Rate, Bootstrapped
- SendLane Hits $5m ARR Helping ECommerce Brands Do Email Marketing
- BounceX Breaks $100m in Revenue, 1000 Customers, Breakeven, 2020 IPO?
- 85 more episodes that year, every mention in 2020 →
2019 11 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
- 1293 How Plivo Broke $20m in ARR on Only $2m Raised Helping 70,000 Businesses with Communication Integrations
- 1442 Webinar Platform Breaks $2.5m in ARR, But Churn Too High
- 1409 $1.5B Freshworks To IPO: Growing 40% YoY, Passes $100M in ARR, $250M Raised, 150,000 Companies Using
- every mention in 2019, scene by scene →
2018 7 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Eric's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Founder & CEO, Zoom | 1 | 15 | 80% 4/5 | full record on Masters of Scale → |
| TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Zoom | 1 +172 | 12 | 100% 1/1 | full record on Top Founders → |
| ACQUIREDLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Zoom | 1 +1 | 8 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Acquired → |