Eric Yuan, CEO and founder of Zoom Video Communications

Today we’re here with Eric Yuan, the founder and CEO of Zoom.
Especially in the age of COVID-19 and remote work, hundreds of
millions of people have used Zoom, the company delivering
frictionless video communication. In many ways, he’s built a
platform that shapes a generation. I’m thrilled to have Eric here
today to share the story of this epic journey and how he’s built
the company that so many people depend on to stay connected at
work and in our personal lives.


Key takeaways from this episode include: 



How focusing on customers’ perspective helped drive
Zoom’s pricing strategy: “In the early days of Zoom,
quite often our sales team told me, ‘Eric, we’ve got to
increase the price. We added more features,’” Eric said. “But I
always told them no. Our philosophy is always to make sure you
add more value, and at the same time keep the same price.
Because down the road, the customer will realize, ‘Wow, I paid
$14.99, and you keep adding more and more features, gaining
more and more value, but you still keep the same price.’ With
that, you can establish trust. That’s one. The second, the
reason why I’m personally involved is because I wanted to build
a culture. Everyone’s got to look at everything from a customer
perspective. Always care about the customers. You’ve got to
lead by example. When it comes to price, provide a greater
product and more value, but don’t increase the price. At the
same time, build the culture, be customer-focused.”


The importance of making business principles and values
tangible: “When I started the company, over the past
several years, if you asked me what’s the most important thing,
I’d always say the company culture and the company value. We do
all we can to think about the greater culture, to make sure we
have a greater value and hire those people who can fit well
into your company culture and value. That’s our focus,” Eric
said. “But this pandemic crisis truly taught me one more thing:
That’s not good enough. I still remember the Bridgewater
Associates founder and CEO Ray Dalio. He taught me, ‘Eric,
there’s one thing missing for you. You’ve got to write down
your company’s business principles.’ I know that’s very
important, but I didn’t quite really get what he said. Until
recently, I realized that’s a big mistake, that’s a huge
mistake I made. We should have written down all those business
principles. The reason why is when suddenly you have a crisis
like this, a pandemic crisis, suddenly your metrics grow 30
times. There are a lot of areas that might’ve been broken. You
have to delegate it to your team to fix all those issues, to
embrace the growth. If you do not write down your business
principle, guess what? Quite often, you are going to make a lot
of mistakes here and there. But how can you make sure you
follow your business principles? That’s the key. Now, actually,
we are doubling up on that. We are going to have a full-time
position to focus on writing our business principles on many
fronts.”


The key to Zoom’s success in a competitive product
space: “If you look at any competitive landscape,
there are three things: Your company, your competitors, and
customers,” Eric said. “If you laser-focus on just your
customers, your users, don’t look at what your competitors do.
Then you can sleep well. Then you can make the right decisions.
Then you can deliver better service, more innovations to serve
your end users. Otherwise, you look at all those competitors’
names, you will think, ‘Oh wow, they might catch up tomorrow.’
The more you are thinking, the more you are going to look at
what they are doing. Then you spend less time on serving your
customers. Don’t look at any of your competitors. Double down,
triple down, on your customers. That’s our secret sauce.”