How Chinese billionaire, Eric Yuan created Zoom

During the pandemic in the year 2020, the world came to a grinding halt. Businesses stopped and a huge chunk of the world’s population was made to stay indoors. For the first time in decades, a large population of the global workforce was forced to work from home.

Board meetings and other personal meetings carried on as usual through the help of a popular video calling app named Zoom. The founder of this app is an Asian immigrant who goes by the name, Eric Yuan.

Eric Yuan was born in Shandong China where he was educated. He has a master’s degree in Engineering.

Eric migrated to the United States in 1997 and got into Silicon Valley during the tech boom. He worked in the tech industry for many years before founding the video conferencing app, Zoom.

How Eric Yuan started Zoom

When Eric Yuan moved to the US, he could barely speak English but somehow, he ended up becoming the Chief Engineer at WebEx, a company founded by another Asian American, Subra Iyar.

Eric Yuan worked his way up the ladder and made a good reputation for himself. When WebEx got acquired by CISCO for $3.2 billion, Yuan had to move. He was able to pull many of the engineers from his former employment to join him in his new startup.

How Eric Yuan raised money for Zoom

After Eric started Zoom and launched it in 2013, he raised $3 million from a couple of Asian Americans for it. He got seed money from Jerry Yang, the co-founder of Yahoo and an Asian American. He also got seed money from his former Boss at WebEx, Subra Iyar, who is also an Asian American.

This seed money kickstarted the Zoom app. Eric Yuan and his Zoom company later went on to raise over $146 million from various venture capital firms. Today, Zoom is one of the most widely used apps on the internet for video calls and conferencing.

What you should know

Zoom was the most widely used app during the covid-19 lockdown. Its founder, Eric Yuan, is worth over $14.6 billion according to Forbes.