Where did Zoom come from?
Jim Scheinman
Founding Managing Partner, Maven Ventures & the guy who named Zoom
18 de abril de 2019
I suspect that after all the press Zoom is getting for their successful IPO, if you’ve never been invited to “Zoom,” you’re probably wondering: where did Zoom come from? Amid the IPO hype of other consumer behemoths like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb and Pinterest, Zoom Video Communications is the single profitable company of the newly minted unicorn IPOs, and boasts the happiest customers and employees. It’s gratifying to finally see Zoom get its fair share of recognition, and I bet there’s still so much more success ahead.
When I first met Zoom founder & CEO, Eric Yuan, in 2011 soon after he left Cisco to start Zoom, I found him and his vision so compelling that I became one of the earliest advisors and investors. I’m so grateful to my cousin Dan Scheinman, a Zoom board member, successful tech executive and investor, who introduced me to Eric whom he knew from their Cisco days. Dan told me that Eric was a very special entrepreneur with an idea to bring a better video communication platform to the world. Much has been written about Eric’s background
as an immigrant from China, his work at Webex, and the founding of Zoom. I’m also so grateful that Eric agreed to let me help him and his team in those early days and to have been a part of this very special journey.
At the time, Zoom was just an idea in a seemingly very competitive video conferencing space and most investors incorrectly thought that the existing products like Skype, Webex and others were solving this problem. But, what most people didn’t see at that time was that Eric had
a vision to build a new type of video communications experience that would solve a massive need.