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[MUSIC] Eric, it is an honor to have you here today welcome back to the GSB.
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>> Thank you, I'm very, very excited to be back every time.
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>> [APPLAUSE] >> Now I'd like to start off by thanking you for not only helping to keep the world connected during the pandemic but for creating a product that brought all of us a lot of joy, and laughs too.
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Everything from Zoom weddings to Zoom attire, I'm thinking professional tops and pajama bottoms, and everything in between so, thank you.
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>> That's why I like Stanford GSB because I know Stanford GSB only use Zoom never use any other product.
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>> [LAUGH] >> That is a true statement.
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Now few founders can say that their companies have turned into a global verb.
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Take us back to the very beginning.
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How did you first come up with the idea for Zoom?
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>> Back into 2010 timeframe I was at Cisco, I was Corporate Vice President over there.
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When I came to America in 1997, I joined WebEx as one of the first recevoir founding engineers.
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I work as extremely hard try to make WebEx better, unfortunately after 10 years, 11 years hard work back to 2010 timeframe every time I can tell you my talk with the customer I didn't see a single heavy customer.
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Every morning I woke up I did not want go to office.
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because when you talk to the customer, text the customer everytime, share their pinpoint, the mission, we do quality not a very good, mobile experience horrible, I really wanted to fix that problem.
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Unfortunately, they told me that that's not a good idea you still can sell a lot of WebEx why do you want to cannibalize WebEx.
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And it took me one year I failed to convince others.
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I guess I should have come to GSB learn how to convince others, so I guess I did not take that course I failed to convince others.
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But anyway so finally I decided to leave to build my own solution.
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>> And a key part in your story you mentioned coming to the United States in the late 1990s.
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That path to get to the US wasn't necessarily smooth was it.
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What kind of challenges did you run into coming to Silicon Valley?
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>> That's a long time ago.
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I thought it was pretty straightforward I was very good engineer I should have get a visa unfortunately it took me nine attempts to get here.
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My visa application got rejected eight times.
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But luckily, I got the final visa and came here but looking back I really appreciate because the reason why is more like to practice my perseverance, right?
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And again took me one and a half years to come to America to pursue my American dream, so.
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>> Wow, and keeping on the international fame, I don't know if you know but we have quite a few of our classmates in the audience who are internationals, and are living in the US for the first time.
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What were some of those first years like in the US as someone who had never lived in Silicon Valley or the United States before?
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>> That's a good question.
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I would say back to 1997, and I remember before, I came here, I was extremely excited, right?
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because when I was a kid, always read the stories of HP, and Silicon Valley, Apple very exciting.
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However, after I landed here I realize is not that easy because you have to learn the culture, history, how to make new friends, build trust, language barrier, all kinds of things.
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Luckily I live in Silicon Valley, in Silicon Valley not only the worldwide innovation center but also the people here are extremely friendly.
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A lot of leaders they would like to help you.
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I think after several months, I feel like already part of the Silicon Valley and looking back I was wow, this is the best experience.
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>> And I love your optimism.
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You came from China to the United States, not speaking English applied for a visa nine times, rose up in WebEx and Cisco, and then you came to the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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What role did being at the GSB play in that vision to turn an idea you had back in 1997 into a company that is now known around the world.
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>> That's a good questions.
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Anytime if I have time I take a break I want to be part of GSB group.
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I want to sit here like you guys I think very excited.
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The reason why I said so is back to early time before I came here, I was very confident in wow, America huge opportunity as long as you work hard, you can achieve your dream.
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I worked for WebEx for awhile, quite often I've worked very, very hard and made very good progress.
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However sometimes your confidence level is suddenly not as high as the first day when you landed here and because you makes some progress you do not want to take risks you do not want to start over, right?
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And back to 2006 I participated the Stanford and the GSB SEP program.
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I can tell you actually just literally after the summer, the day after I left Stanford, I felt more like the first day when I landed in San Francisco Airport.
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My confidence level I was extremely high, I almost quit a job into starting a new company at the time.
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But anyway being here just one summer my confidence level is at least twice high for all the GSB students you're here 2 years I guarantee you you're confidence level probably four times or five.
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If you're not, I can tell you back on program SEP program also pretty good too.
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But anyway, I was so grateful to Stanford GSB integrated curriculum, right, all of case studies, and greater professors, and yeah.
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By the way, after that, every time to manage a company, manage a team is pretty challenging and sometimes you feel like very lonely or down time.
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Every time I feel like that if I come back to GSB and to Stanford Campus I can tell you I sort of fully recharge myself that's another reason why I'm here today I need to fully recharge myself so yeah.
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>> It's definitely a special place I agree with you.
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>> Very special and also not to mention entrepreneurial atmosphere here in GSB.
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I think a great opportunity, I think, for all of you after you graduate.
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>> Well, fast for that company that you had the idea for way back when you were inspired at the GSB, that company has fundamentally changed the way that we all stay connected.
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>> That's what GSB taught us, right?
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>> [LAUGH] >> To build something to change the world.
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>> Absolutely, but Zoom is seen as something that was an overnight success but that wasn't the case, was it?
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>> Yeah, it too cost many managers effort, I think prior to Covid probably most of the people never heard about Zoom.
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But we were very patient as long as we keep improving the product experience to make sure our customer happy, I know sooner or later, we are going to achieve something.
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>> And so it sounds like a lot of hard work, went into it and part of that hard work was finding investors for Zoom.
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It's hard to fathom but, back then investors weren't jumping at the bit to invest in Zoom.
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What lessons do you have from that period of time that you can share with the entrepreneurs and the aspiring entrepreneurs in the audience today?
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>> Is good to know we sit here, so I can share the story.
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So And after I left the Cisco, I thought I was Vice President of Engineering, I view the web bugs.
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I have also a lot of connections, it should be straightforward, right?
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Talking to me since they all want to invest you, that's my thought.
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But I was completely wrong, and I try to talk almost every VC I knew, nobody want to invest in me.
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And plus some other VC friend told me that Eric, as long as you do something else, out check was ready for you.
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So meaning you should now build another video collaboration solution.
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And I remember I told you that when we see and again the VC mission that's a horrible idea, you should not do that.
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But on the way back and I told myself, you are wrong, I gotta prove you're wrong.
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So after that begged office, I changed the screensaver to be you are wrong.
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>> [LAUGH] >> And I remember that after we became on NASDAQ a public company.
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So actually when you try to raise the capital, right?
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For sure we are humble, right?
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There's a reason why VC did not invest you, right?
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You got to understand why it's good for you, right?
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But sometimes, and VCs might be wrong, if you think you're right and VCs are wrong, it's not a bad thing, right?
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It give you more reasons you got to work harder to prove they're wrong, that's what had happened to us.
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>> I think that's an incredibly important lesson that I know a lot of us starting companies will keep in mind.
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>> Yeah, don't give up, yeah, yeah. >> Absolutely.
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>> Often, VC will not be right, especially for those VCs who never got educated here at GSB, right?
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>> [LAUGH] >> And I think another important lesson in that story is learning to pivot.
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As you mentioned Zoom was a successful company before the pandemic, serving mainly B2B clients.
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And then boom, the pandemic happens, and you have to add B2C into that portfolio.
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What were some of the big lessons that came away and how did you rapidly adjust to such a significant expansion in your customer base?
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>> Yeah, I think that's a tough experience because you're so right, Zoom was built to serve for enterprise customer prior to pandemic crisis.
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And during a pandemic crisis, and we had so many new users, consumers all kinds of new use cases like a K to 12 schools or telemedicine, telehealth.
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We never thought about those consumer use cases.
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And the mistake we made is, prior to COVID crisis we had a lot of security features, but normally we work together with enterprise ITT.
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They are going to test our product with some QC process.
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They are going to enable some security features or privacy features.
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And horror for those first time consumers experience is very different.
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They do not have ITT, right?
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Then we realize we made a huge mistake.
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Not only did we play the role of offering the service, but also we should have played a role of serving the IT for long.
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And so we'll learn a hard lesson, we quickly took actions and we want to trust the back.
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Because when you sort of lost your trust, you got to make sure take actions as crooked as possible.
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And also keep everything open and transparent. Why you made a mistake?
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What's the effort, right?
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How to fix all those problems?
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Keep everything open, transparent to communicate with the customers, that's a lesson learned and finally we win the trust back >> Absolutely, and I want to pick up on a word you said, which is mistake.
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Something that I admire so much about you as a leader is your honesty and transparency like you were talking about.
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And for example, when you're data and security issues were brought up during the pandemic, your response was to publicly roll out a statement of how we're fixing it.
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Here are the problems that we see, and this is how we're going to take feedback into account.
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You touched on this a little bit, but would love to dive in a bit more.
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How do you see transparency being important in leadership?
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And how can we as future leaders, and leaders in the business world think about being transparent in difficult situations?
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I think first of all during the difficult situation, you got to take a step back, right?
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Try to understand what had happened, right?
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Those end users, why need to share with you all those issues, because I think they care about us.
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Ultimately, for us if we can address all those problems, who is going to benefit? Zoom, right?
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Ourselves, that's why we embrace all those challenges, right?
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And at the same time we go to and take actions, right?
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First of all, I needed to publicly tell them sorry, I mess up.
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We got to do fix for all the issues we know, what's the problem, what's root cause, what's a pass and a solution to address all those issues, right?
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And I personally hosted a weekly in a security meetings and with all the end users and also share with them transparently about those efforts, plans, programs, how we double down on security and privacy, a lot of things, right?
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Any user they're pretty smart, they understand, are you going to try hard to fix those issues or do you just talk about that, right?
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So that's in the what will be everyday, two years ago at Zoom and prior to COVID crisis, look at our privacy security, very small, around a dozen people.
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And now we have more than 200 full time employees, right?
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And because of that, we took privacy and security very, very seriously because a lot of security companies, they deploy Zoom, Garmin customers who use Zoom, and finally, the customers really like Zoom.
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And saying, yeah, you guys admitted those mistakes and quickly fix that problem.
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And also make it better, even better than any of our competitors in terms of security and privacy.
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>> because you had a lot of people relying on you, can I get a show of hands, how many people used Zoom during the pandemic?
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I think I know the answer, but- >> Thank you, I use it too.
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>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, there we go, John G Levin mentioned this stuff before, but I want to bring it out again because I think it's incredible.
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The number of Zoom users increased from 10 million to 300 million per day.
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>> Sorry, that's meeting participants.
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>> Yes, meeting participants, yes, meeting participants per day in just four months.
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I mean, Zoom was really pushed into the spotlight and also given a chance to shine.
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Walk us through your thought process, when did you realize that Zoom could play a critical role during the pandemic?
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>> I think of course, and I remember I think the first time in my thought in school and also include the school of an online.
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I remember it's a Monday morning, the first time I worked so hard and my daughter even don't know what I was doing.
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But as she asked me the first time, hey, dad how to raise my hand during the Zoom call?
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I realized wow, I never thought about my kids they are going to use Zoom.
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And I think the first time I think I realized, wow, this is a huge potential.
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And they didn't realize it, and there's a huge opportunity, to guide them how to and help the world, how to help the community and the society, right?
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This is a responsibility on our shoulders, right?
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The good news we heavily invested in our company culture, the team brokerage worked extremely hard.
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I can tell you I personally had way more syllables nice than any time in my career.
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And along with a lot of engineers because we need the added capacity in India, Brazil, a lot of other countries, quite often maybe this small glitches you got to fix quickly.
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I can tell you wow, that's six months time frame and the good news was it's pretty tough, very challenging. Can't even imagine.
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I have to ask hearing about the responsibility, hearing about all the things you were thinking about the sleepless nights.
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How do you stay grounded and how do you prioritize what really matters?
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>> That's why I like GSB.
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I learned a lot of stuff I was already mentally prepared well, right?
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Because on one hand if you really want to do something to make the world better, to change the world, for sure, you are going to face all kinds of challenges, right?
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Mentally you got to prepare well, meaning may not be today, maybe next year, maybe next week, right?
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So, mentally at least I was prepared very well.
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So when that happens and I realized on the one hand, you're facing the challenge and on the other hand also I realized, if you can overcome all those challenges, right? Guess what?
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Your company, your team, yourself will become very different, become much better, right?
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That's why we level that opportunity, look at every corners of our business.
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What we can do differently to improve our inner team size for example, prior to COVID we're going to have a little bit of over 2000 employees.
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For now actually we hired over 6000 employees over the past 18 months, right?
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And to make sure for the scale our business this is a great opportunity for us for the future.
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And then to position us very well, to transform our business from being a videoconferencing killer app company to be a platform business. That's huge opportunity.
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>> And the opportunities that Zoom has even in the future are huge.
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I want to come to a question first though, that is something that we talk a lot about here at the GSB, which is work life balance.
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I've heard that you are in addition to running one of the biggest companies, also an active parent on your children's basketball teams.
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How do you balance and how do you think about that work life balance between spending time on your company while also spending time with your family?
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>> Yeah, that's one thing I guess during my time in GSB, I didn't learn how to balance that and the reason why at that time I also thought of a balance.
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And I talked with many other classmates and some professors tried to figure out a way how to balance and later on realized as long as you think about balance, there's no answer.
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So meaning don't listen my balance.
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Think about if you like work and it's part of a life, you're passionate about something and especially you're good at something and you also can create a value.
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And if you like that, that's a part of life, and work is life, life is work.
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Listen my balance that's.
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Two is, what if there's a conflict between work and life?
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At Zoom and our principle is very simple, whenever there's a conflict between work and life, your family first, always like that.
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Take my personal experience for example, many years ago and I think that's our Christmas party.
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And my son's high school they're going to have a basketball game.
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And is in San Francisco, I told our team, Sorry, there's a conflict.
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I'm going to enjoy my son's basketball game.
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I will be very late to the Christmas party, right? That's our philosophy.
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Don't see my balance, finding your passion.
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Work is life, life is work, at the same time, if there's a conflict, family first. That's very simple.
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But doing single balance.
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If you single balance every day, you are going to struggle.
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Every month you are going to struggle, yeah.
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>> In addition to putting family first, it sounds like happiness is something that is so important to you.
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How do you take that personal value of happiness and then translate into a company culture that's also based on happiness?
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>> Yeah, so company culture is extremely important and looking back I think that that's one thing I personally feel proud of.
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Because on the first day when I started Zoom, I remember only two things I wrote on company culture and value.
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And it was the border use the furniture, buy two for a table.
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But anyway, so our company culture, just two words. Very easy, right? Very catchy.
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Deliver happiness and meaning.
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And for me, as a CEO of a company my number one priority.
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Is to make sure Zoom employee are happy.
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I believe if you have happy employees, you are going to have happy customers, right?
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So I do all I can to think about how to make sure Zoom employee happy, and at the same time employee they are going to make a customer happy.
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That's our company culture.
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>> Wow, and it sounds like as CEO you have a lot of people to keep happy your customers, your employers, shareholders.
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What happens when one of these stakeholder groups isn't happy?
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How do you keep them on board?
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>> So first of all, we should tell them why was the purpose of life, right?
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The purpose of life is really about happiness, right?
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And also the sustainable happiness comes from making others happy right?
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And for those shareholders, right?
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Like a stock price is down they're not happy with tell them, Hey, this is more short term thing, right?
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And a plus and we should have communicate with them very well about why let's say, you want to buy Zoom stock.
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Why you become a stakeholder, right?
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And ultimately we want to make sure the employees or shareholders and retool and extend our company innovation, right?
21:35
When you look at it the short term stuff, right?
21:40
And if we do not understand the purpose of life is just focus on the short term happiness, right?
21:46
For sure that's not our company the culture.
21:49
We always think about what you can do differently to focus on long term sustainable happiness, right?
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Rather than just the short term happiness.
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Sometimes employee is just to focus on the money or the power or the title.
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Those are the short term happiness.
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Longer term why you got to look at make sure that the happiness is sustainable.
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Always and in the long run, make a customer happy, make employ happy and down the road I think you will get a much better return.
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>> And keeping on that happiness thing because I think it's so unique to who you are as a person.
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Something else that we think a lot about here at the GSB is what kind of leader we want to become.
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We have a class where we ask ourselves, why would someone follow us?
22:31
Given your background being an immigrant to the US being an engineer, overcoming adversity, putting happiness at the center of everything, how would you describe your leadership style.
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And how has that evolved over the years?
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I think of my leadership style for sure again, and I was very fortunate to live in Valley and I've been doing my career here, had so many mentors.
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Truly helped me, shaped my leadership style and I think many years ago, I will say my leadership style is more like a very hands on leader, right?
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And I tried to work so hard trying to understand, again, this is kind of should have come a gap first otherwise, I'm not going to spend so much time to learn marketing, sales and support and the strategy.
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And I learned a lot because I really wanted to understand how business operates, right?
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And it's more a very hands on leadership.
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That's kind of my personal style and but later on I realized that's not a scalable, right?
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How to delegate some of the burden pointed works to a team, how to make sure you are surrounded by a lot of leaders, probably they're even better than you.
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I think I learned a lot otherwise, especially over the past two years and I do not think I can sleep, right?
23:50
Why they've given us so many challenges, so many opportunities, right?
23:54
That's my leadership style I think completely changed, right?
23:58
How to balance between the hands on leadership and also the dedication.
24:02
So it sounds like as Zoom scaled, you had to adapt your leadership style to fit that so it could scale with it.
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>> Yeah, otherwise there's no way to scale up your business.
24:12
>> Exactly, we talked about Zoom pre-pandemic, we talked about Zoom during the pandemic.
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Let's look to the future.
24:19
In five years from now what is Zoom going to look like and what are you excited for?
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>> Five years later, Zoom will be for sure five years better, and so [LAUGH] after five years.
24:30
But anyway, I think from our perspective we truly believe and in the future from a technology perspective, Zoom can deliver a much better experience than face-to-face meeting.
24:46
You can sit at home, I can sit anywhere, let's say local Starbucks coffee, I shake your hands, you feel my hands shaking, I give a hug, you feel my intimacy.
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And even if we speak a different language, we can understand each other and you get a cup of coffee, I can enjoy the smell remotely.
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All those technologies will be part of our offering in the future.
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At the same time, we would like to transform our business to be a platform company.
25:11
Video, voice, team chat, conference room systems, events webinar, and also all other collaboration solutions.
25:18
Essentially, the end user, they can live within the Zoom platform, can get most of the work done, rather than always switching back and forth to other applications.
25:31
The switching cost is very high, right?
25:33
Essentially, Zoom more like a hybrid work operating system.
25:37
That's why we are very excited.
25:40
>> I'm excited for that, too.
25:41
>> If any of you like that vision, feel free to join us, yeah.
25:45
>> [LAUGH] >> So you kept the world connected during a global pandemic and brought happiness to millions.
25:53
10, 20, even 50 years from now, what do you want people to remember about you, and about Zoom? >> It's good questions.
26:01
I think one thing I really want Zoom and myself to be remembered is that, if someone write a book, they will say during the 2020 COVID-19 crisis, there's a company called Zoom.
26:17
Truly helped the world, truly enabled global connections.
26:23
That's what I want the world to remember myself and also the Zoom, also all the Zoomies, and yeah, that's pretty much.
26:32
But again, and we just started our chapter two and we are embarking on Zoom 2.
26:38
0 journey, some more exciting stuff down the road, yeah.
26:44
>> Wow, principled and purposeful leadership, you must be a GSB alum.
26:49
>> Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
26:51
>> So, a final question before you, before we move into audience Q&A.
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This is a question we'll be asking each of our speakers as they come throughout the year.
27:00
And the question is, principled leadership is paramount at the Stanford GSB.
27:06
What do you view as your role in leading with responsibility to not only your company but to society at large?
27:13
>> Yes, it's good question.
27:14
So, one thing like Cisco and when I was there, the Cisco former CEO Chairman John Chambers is such a greater leader.
27:23
I learned a lesson from him.
27:25
As a leader, right, when you look at the business and organization you work for, don't always think about your organization.
27:35
Always think about your organization's social responsibility, what you can do to help the community and society, right?
27:44
That's what I learned, that's why when it comes to Zoom's value, our company value, just one word, care, they care about the community, customer, company, teammates, as well as ourselves.
27:56
To care about community, that's extremely important.
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Make sure your business, your organization, is part of a society.
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You think about how you can play differently, right?
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Not only think about day-to-day work, but also play a bigger role.
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Make sure you can contribute back to the community, to the society.
28:14
>> Spoken as a true GSB alum, [LAUGH]. >> Thank you.
28:17
>> We are now going to move- >> I have a positive test, right, to be a very qualified GSB alum. >> 100% >> Thank you.
28:22
>> Passed with flying colors. >> Thank you.
28:24
>> We're now going to move into audience Q&A.
28:27
>> I still remember that particular day, October 27, 2020, when I was in China, having a Zoom interview with Harvard Business School, and right in the middle of the interview, >> [LAUGH] >> No, the severe connection issue or censorship that might have captured my twisted sense of humor, whatever it was, forcibly shut me out of the meeting and never allow me to log back in.
28:50
And a month later, I received a rejection letter from Harvard Business School.
28:53
>> [LAUGH] >> Which spurred me to apply for the even better business school, Stanford GSB, where I proudly find myself at this moment.
29:01
And I really appreciate Zoom for having changed my path in a very meaningful way.
29:06
>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] >> Anyway, so regardless of the countless efforts made by Zoom to improve the security and transparencies, I think there are still not a few people who have concerns over Zoom's association with Chinese government.
29:29
And in fact some organizations including the Taiwanese government, Japanese government, and some private company in the US still banned official use of Zoom.
29:38
In my view, that Zoom has been particularly susceptible to this kind of China-related speculations.
29:45
Because of your personal background and the fact that Zoom was actually complicit in China's censorship and repression in 2020.
29:54
So my question is, how would you go about reconciling your personal identity as a former Chinese national holding American passport?
30:03
What's the need for navigating multinational tech company like Zoom in such complex and sensitive business environments shaped by the US-China relationship these days? >> Yeah, good question.
30:15
First of all, I think that's one of the best use cases, right, experience about Zoom.
30:20
So how lucky you are, you are part of GSB.
30:23
>> [LAUGH] >> And I think it boils down to one thing, right?
30:27
How to build trust, right?
30:29
This is very important, all those issues you just described boils down to one thing.
30:34
Because the other side, see the customers who never use Zoom because of some other government.
30:39
They do not know who we are, right, how to establish that trust, right?
30:43
That's why at Zoom, the Speed of Trust is our favorite book, right?
30:48
The problem you mentioned, yeah, I was born in China, right?
30:51
When pandemic crisis came, a lot of us is in the corner of Zoom for some mission-critical application.
30:59
They do not know who I am, right?
31:01
And I'm American citizen, right? They do not know that.
31:05
They say, Zoom is, maybe it's kind of registered in other countries.
31:09
That's not the case, right?
31:11
All those issues, guess what?
31:13
We did not do a good job.
31:15
We should proactively communicate with the world.
31:19
Who is Zoom, what kind of the company that Zoom is?
31:25
And also what's our company, the culture, and the value, and mission, all these kind of things.
31:30
We lever that opportunity, right, to communicate with whoever may not understand our business, may not understand our team, may not know me, right?
31:40
We lever that opportunity to build trust.
31:42
That's why today, you look at President Zelenskyy, right? He's using Zoom, right?
31:48
And also a lot of government that also use Zoom as well, right?
31:50
By so many security companies as well.
31:53
Ultimately, that's a way for you to always take a step back to understand what had happened.
31:59
And then understanding their problem, the root cause and if there is a good solution.
32:03
I think that's why today we're doing pretty well on that front.
32:08
>> I just want to maybe ask you how you share your secrets, to be such a big success as a minority of the Asian?
32:17
And today we also have a lot of international student, Asian student here, do you want to share how to make such a big impact as a minority in the United States, and please share some advice and experience?
32:32
>> I think it's good question.
32:35
First of all, I think again, sitting well in America, right, cultural wise is where I will say is open minded.
32:43
As long as you work hard and contribute, right?
32:47
And I think they will embrace you, right?
32:50
The community and also the business industry, I think that's a huge opportunity, right?
32:56
I think don't think about your background that much, just think about what you can do, right, to contribute back to the community, to society, right?
33:08
If you can show the world, you can create a lot of value, here you will be very successful.
33:17
Quite often the reason why it's not successful, because don't think about from other's perspective, always think about what you can do differently.
33:26
Everyday you become better version of yourself, you completely get better, and also you make the world better.
33:33
And then actually you'll be recognized wherever, your business also will be successful.
33:38
Ultimately, I think the common mistake is because you do not get better, your business do not get better and you think about, maybe actually you're a minority.
33:48
And also there's some discrimination.
33:51
I think that's not root cause, right?
33:54
Root cause always focus on yourself, focus on your business, and create more value to the society, that's the key.
34:03
>> My name is Jowin Ting, I am a second year here.
34:05
My question is about the role mentorship has played in your life and your career development.
34:12
Can you tell us who your most influential mentor was and how they shaped your life?
34:17
>> Wow, we do not have a lot of time, otherwise I can share a lot of mentors.
34:22
So, and I think one of the, let me take a step back, right?
34:28
So one of the leaders I truly think influenced me most in terms of leadership style is the former CEO of Walmart, H Lee Scott, right?
34:38
He talked about leadership and Cisco upside, has a huge influence.
34:44
I even wrote a blog and so had a poster on the wall in my office.
34:50
And I think he is for sure is the best in terms of influence to my leadership style.
34:58
And also over the past several years, quite often see some progress and while I was facing challenges, I can call all of the CEOs, like Salesforce CEO Mark, and Oracle CEO Larry, and HP CEO Enrique, and also Ray Dalio, and he's such a great leader.
35:19
He and his team is stop by near my office to talk with our leadership team, help us a lot.
35:24
Yeah, quite often I can call many CEOs, right?
35:27
And it will help our business.
35:30
That's one the reason why Silicon Valley has a great culture a lot of leaders, they want to help you out.
35:37
Actually you got to proactively reach out to them, I pretty sure a lot of leaders, even if they do not know you, they want to help you out, right?
35:46
Because it's how to give back, this is part of Silicon Valley culture.
35:51
>> It's Alex, I'm an MBA too.
35:54
So at the beginning of the pandemic, there are obviously a lot of video chatting services out there, Google+ and Skype and, of course, Zoom.
36:05
And why was it Zoom the one that triumphed in the end? >> Good question.
36:13
I think the founder is a GSB alumni, that's the reason.
36:19
>> [LAUGH] >> Yeah, that's really cool, that's a reason.
36:24
>> [LAUGH] >> But anyway, I think to build a better solution, you got to spend more time with your customers, ultimately what's innovation?
36:34
Innovation read about you want to be the first company to understand customer pain point, and also take actions quickly and it will be the first window to build a solution.
36:46
If you keep doing that, sooner or later you are going to win. So that's our approach.
36:55
That's the reason other competitors, I think, they lost, yeah.
36:58
>> My name is Yu Chen Zhou and I'm a first year MBA student here.
37:01
My question is what was the most frustrating moment in your professional career and how did you overcome the difficulties and what did you learn from it?
37:12
>> That's great question.
37:14
So I think, again, there's too many frustration moments in my career.
37:22
Very often in the past, however, as a number one thing, you got to calm down, that's very, very important.
37:28
Because to be a CEO, the most important thing is you want to make a better decision, right?
37:35
If you do not calm down and if you're very frustrated, very likely you're going to make a wrong decision.
37:43
That's very important, you got to make sure, take step back, calm down, make sure you always try to make a better decision, that's number one thing.
37:53
Number two thing is, at Zoom, we also have a formula.
37:57
The problem, root cause, solution.
38:00
Frustration will not have you anything, right?
38:03
Every time you see the problem, right, and huge problem, right, you've probably feel frustrated.
38:08
You got to take a step back, just focus on problem, root cause, and solution.
38:12
And you think about, if you can have a better solution, guess what?
38:16
You are going to become better company.
38:19
And every time you think, wow, because there's a problem, Zoom will get better tomorrow, I'm going to become better leader tomorrow.
38:27
Then you should be happier, right? Why you feel frustrated?
38:31
And that's my principal >> I'm Eb Shetta, an MBA too, you talked about the importance of patience as you were building Zoom and that it took time.
38:39
But now that you're a listed company, there's also share price pressures, there's pressures of quarterly results.
38:46
So how do you balance the short term share price responsibility that you have versus the long term customer pain point view?
38:54
>> That's a really good question.
38:56
I think that one, yeah, this is another mentor, my mentor also.
38:59
And I learn a lot from him as well.
39:04
The company called Nvidia, right?
39:07
And by the founder and CEO, Jason, also the Stanford alum as well.
39:11
See, all the student alumni accomplishment very well, so.
39:15
You look at Nvidia, the company history.
39:18
I remember there's a time, ten years in a row, the stock price was flat.
39:23
Look at it today, number one semiconductor company, because make sure as a leader, right, always focus on long term goal, right?
39:32
Do not focus on short term, and also you got to add a good team, communicate with the team.
39:37
The mission of the company is extremely important.
39:41
You want to recruit, retain those employees who share the same mission.
39:46
And then you can focus on long-term goal rather than just short-term goal, right?
39:50
Also I learn a harder lesson.
39:52
Over the past several years, I can tell you, our engineering team very stable, I did not lose a single top talents, but we do lose a lot of salespeople.
40:03
Because they may not understand the compensation, right?
40:06
That's why I see no folksong and recruiting those talents.
40:11
Okay, share the same mission focus on long term.
40:14
Immediate is such a good example.
40:17
So >> I'm sorry I was on mute.
40:19
>> [LAUGH] [APPLAUSE] That's the best feature, >> [LAUGH] >> For Zoom.
40:33
>> So Eric, my name is Shantel. MBA one as well.
40:37
My question to you is, your Zoom really transformed within the first three to six months.
40:42
I went from talking to my grandfather's forehead to actually hosting thousands of people on it and you said customer was in the center of your development, but you also had so many different types of customers.
40:54
Customers wanting sophistication of the product. >> Yep.
40:56
>> And others wanting more basic needs.
40:58
So how do you optimize for the product development phase and the growth phase and the communication phase of your product ad. >> Yes, good question.
41:07
So, as time goes on, right, so the founder assumed the role you'll have to change dynamic, right?
41:17
So for the first several years, I was heads down to product side for the first point of four, four and a half a year, five years.
41:26
>> And after that I probably saved most of my authority or work to go to market and as sales and marketing.
41:33
But later on I realized that's not a scalable, we have to kind of take their turn right and a sort of a company that focus apart from product focus to go to market folks.
41:43
And as in back to the product focus, I needed to shift the micro to focus on product, that's what had happened over the past six or nine months right?
41:52
You have to make sure from the top, right from a CEO perspective I always.
41:57
>> Look at the product side otherwise we're assuming that your product may not be best right?
42:01
So that's why I dedicate a lot of our go to market the responsibility that the task was to other leaders and spend most of time on the product side.
42:11
And the lag is key features and designs.
42:13
Sometimes the features using very good for enterprise customers may not work for consumers and vice versa, all right? By how to balance that.
42:22
Make sure you always simplify the product experience.
42:25
And also make sure every product managers, engineers, they work they truly understand why you added the feature.
42:33
Not when you build the, product is very easy to edit so many features.
42:37
>> But guess what, it's not very easy to use anymore is so crowded, right.
42:43
So how to balance that the ease of use and a feature set in diverse customers and also consumers, right.
42:50
The case make sure you got to focus part of that studying from the CEO and a founder and all the team and will fall.
43:00
>> Eric, thank you for sharing those insights, and thank you for all of your excellent questions.
43:11
>> [APPLAUSE] But before I click end meeting, it's a view from the top tradition to close with a lightning round.
43:21
So I'll say a short statement and you answer with the first thing that comes into your head. Ready? >> Yeah. Always ready.
43:30
>> Most annoying Zoom habits, mute.
43:34
>> [LAUGH] >> Favorite basketball team?
43:38
>> Warriors for sure, so yeah. >> Got some fans.
43:41
Number of Zoom weddings you've attended? >> More than a dozen.
43:47
>> [LAUGH] >> Well if you're looking for any more, I have quite a few friends getting married this year, so we can, >> I can do, the wedding ceremony host on Zoom.
43:55
That's the best use case. >> [LAUGH] >> .
43:58
Cause you even do know, you need to put more make up.
44:00
Zoom has a very cool feature called catch up your appearance. Right?
44:04
>> [LAUGH] So, I'll keep that in mind.
44:08
Best advice you've ever received from your parents.
44:11
>> How to work and to be humble.
44:14
>> And something you can't live without? >> Love.
44:19
>> And I think the world that we live in today that's something that we could all use a bit more of. Eric, thank you. It's been a privilege. [APPLAUSE] [MUSIC]