21 April 2011 - Zoom founded

When Zoom was launched on the 21st of April, 2011, it entered a very competitive video conferencing market. Today, it stands as one of the biggest beneficiaries of the remote work boom due to the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. With astonishing statistics such as 300 million daily meetings and 3.3 trillion annual meetings, it is no wonder that Zoom is among the leading video conferencing giants in the world with a market cap of $78.92 billion.

Funnily enough, Zoom was indirectly founded out of embarrassment. Eric Yuan, co-founder and CEO of Zoom, used to be the vice president of Cisco-WebEx. A year before he left the company, in feedback by customers, it was revealed that WebEx did not have a single happy customer. This was a huge wake-up call for Yuan who tried to introduce good services to customers. However, he left the company when he did not find success there and started Zoom. The aim was to build a simple but better video communication service.

Zoom was a game-changer in the industry because of the ease it offered. All that is required is simply clicking the invitation link, eliminating the need to download software, understand the setup process, and work through the dial-in activities. In addition to this, Zoom was the first cloud-based video architecture in the world. This was to leverage public cloud platforms such as Amazon and Oracle Cloud, in order to scale business. Zoom also highlighted the significance of accessibility as it is available on laptops, Android devices, desktops, iPhones, and iPads. This service also stood out from much of its competition by offering free video hosting. Moreover, along with Zoom’s ease of use and scalability, the customers can have fun by using its filters and backgrounds - something most video conferencing services consider completely unnecessary.