How Eric Yuan Zoomed To Success

The vision of Founder and CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, helped him build a video conferencing empire totalling $35 billion in 9 years reaching this peak. Owing to his success journey, he was also named under Times 100 most influential people in the world. 

Chinese born American millionaire, Eric Yuan, had the most luck with the incoming of the coronavirus pandemic, also pushing him into the list of 400 richest people in America. 
He and his company, Zoom Technologies made $12 billion since March as most companies in the world observed negative growth. 

The vision of Founder and CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, helped him build a video conferencing empire totalling $35 billion in 9 years reaching this peak. Owing to his success journey, he was also named under Times 100 most influential people in the world. 

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Born and raised in Tai'an, Shandong province of China, Eric was a bright son to two geology engineers as parents. He enrolled for a bachelor's degree in 1987 in applied mathematics from Shandong University of Science and Technology. 

But what prompted his interest towards developing a video telephony software was his long-distance relationship with his then girlfriend and now, his wife with whom he has a lovely marriage and three wonderful kids. Back then, as a first year university student he had to take 10-hour train rides to see his girlfriend, he wanted to come up with a software that could connect him to her easily without having to commute. 

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After completing his masters degree from China University of Mining and Technology, Yuan took up an executive program in Japan where he got inspired by Bill Gates and moved to Silicon Valley in 1997. 
Being a young techno graduate, he joined WebEx, a web conferencing startup, where he worked and eventually became vice president of engineering in 2007 after the company was acquired by Cisco Systems. 

But Yuan had a unique video conferencing idea of his own which he pitched to the management but got rejected. That's when he decided to quit Cisco and establish a company of his own, Zoom Video Communications. 
After 8 years of persistent hard work and dedication, Zoom became a public company in 2019 making Yuan a billionaire. But there were better times to come ahead in 2020 with the outbreak of coronavirus and the whole world observing a huge shift to online work and school. 

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Zoom witnessed a major boom and on September 1, 2020 Yuan's net worth was estimated to be US $16.4 billion, an amount 360% higher than his net worth at the beginning of the year.  

Eric has been an advocate of online networking even before the pandemic, he never used to take work trips, instead he insisted on Zoom calls with clients so he could give time to his family. 

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For a man, who didn't even know how to speak in English when he first moved to the US, Yuan has become one of the very few Chinese Americans to lead a major Silicon Valley company. From struggling to get support for his startup to being involved in every aspect of the company personally, Yuan truly deserves the sole credit for Zoom's blockbuster success. 
 

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