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Refused U.S. visa eight times, Zoom CEO is now a billionaire
- ncmncm 8y ago"an American billionaire". Would be interesting to learn why he was denied eight times, or granted one on the ninth try.
- godzillabrennus 8y agoMoney buys powerful friends. America has been for sale for a long time.
- muzani 8y agoMore curious why he even tried 9 times. Australia is very accepting of Chinese migrants, and there's plenty of talent to hire.
- pnw_hazor 8y agoHe was probably going for an investors visa which is a permanent immigrant visa not a short term visa. Gotta get the paperwork right. And for such visas there is a lot of paperwork.
- wpasc 8y ago[0], [1],[2], etc. could be reasonably see as part of the Australian government's relative unfriendliness to tech companies and privacy laws at least compared to other countries. Whether the australian government is in fact friendly or not is immaterial if capital investment and companies do not want to put a large amount of money/effort into the Australian tech scene. [0]: https://kvoa.com/news/national-news/2019/04/14/foreign-governments-fed-up-with-social-media-threaten-prison-for-tech-employees/ https://kvoa.com/news/national-news/2019/04/14/foreign-gover... [1]: https://hothardware.com/news/australia-controversial-encryption-law-jail-time-tech-employees https://hothardware.com/news/australia-controversial-encrypt... [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/technology/australia-cellphone-encryption-security.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/22/technology/australia-cell...
- ikeyany 8y agoI know of someone who went on to interview at Google a total of sixteen times.
- manfredo 8y agoAustralia has an order of magnitude fewer people, has a different regulatory environment (e.g. their counter-terrorism bill that lets them coerce engineers into cooperation, and in the wake of the NZ shooting they're proposing to imprison website operates that don't take down content quickly enough - and apparently 90 minutes isn't quick enough) and is located in completely different region of the world. There are plenty of reasons why one would want to move to the US but not Australia.
- deminature 8y agoAustralia has little tech industry to speak of and software engineers aren't terribly respected or well-compensated. The US is a much better bet for technologists.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y agoHe could have just bought entry on H-5 with a $500K investment in "Harlem".
- TheCondor 8y agoThis is complete hearsay, but I know some real anti-censorship folks that believe zoom is unsafe and has been compromised by the Chinese government. It’s a great product, no idea on how safe it is from intercepts but the ease of use, quality and experience put it in a class of its own.
- ceejayoz 8y agoWell done. Zoom's the only video conferencing app I've come across that has been reliably pleasant to use.
- mc32 8y agoThey have some weird tiers where the max length of a web meeting is something silly like 40 mins. Ok laugh, why do people need more than 40 mins, but this makes that tier useless because any serious company is going to have people who need to meet over 40 mins. So it’s a tier of service which exists for the sole purpose of upsell.
- vincentmarle 8y agoYou mean, like, a profitable business model? If you’re a “serious company” then surely you can pay for a great service like this.
- andrei_says_ 8y agoYes the free tier is 40 min for meetings with more than 2 people. I switched to the first paid tier and am a happy customer. The best quality of service and software in the space I’ve seen so far.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sergiotapia 8y agoGood - they should make money. If you enjoy the service, you should be paying for it right?
- techntoke 8y agoThere are lot of good options and even open source solutions for video conferencing. The one thing I like about Zoom is that they have a Linux package, but their hardware acceleration support on Linux is crap.
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- nixgeek 8y agoGood for him. Nice to hear about success stories. Zoom is excellent. Markedly better than WebEx, in my experience.
- techntoke 8y agoTo be fair anything is better than WebEx. Glad it finally has Linux support in the browser though, but it was way too late to the game.
- Proven 8y agoIs the point that everyone who might become rich should be able to get a US visa?
- 75dvtwin 8y ago"Yuan, Zoom’s chief executive officer, joins Alphabet Inc.’s Sergey Brin, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Tesla Inc.’s Elon Musk as immigrants who became billionaires after helping create Silicon Valley companies. " Above, are all legal immigrants that applied (themselves, or their parents) -- for visa via a US embassy (sometimes the US embassy is not in their native country, happened to many immigrants from former USSR) They did not cross the US border illegally, and then demanded a refugee status, while avoiding the court system to prove their claim.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> They did not cross the US border illegally, and then demanded a refugee status, while avoiding the court system to prove their claim. The reason refugee applicants are recently crossing illegally is because the Administration has actively prevented lawful refugee application at ports of entry, going so far as to close ports of entry to prevent it. And they aren't avoiding the application process, they are actively seeking it out and being prevented from pursuing it and punished for doing so.
- kbcool 8y agoNo new tactics there. Australia has been doing that for a long time. Then when you are so frustrated with being stonewalled and come by boat (our version of crossing the desert from Mexico) and claim asylum you get locked up on an island for 10 years whilst they try to come up with any excuse to not let you in. However, if you have a million+ dollars you can waltz straight in no questions asked. "Here's a passport, why not buy a house whilst you're here? We don't ask questions about your criminal or corrupt past in your country of origin." Who's in genuine need there?
- reaperducer 8y agoThe reason refugee applicants are recently Not recent at all. The United States has received waves of refugees for centuries. French from Haiti. Basques re-settled in Idaho. Hmong that were re-settled in Wisconsin. Somalis resettled in Minneapolis. There are dozens and dozens of other examples. What sets a lot of those refugee groups apart is that they were fleeing war and persecution. They weren't economic refugees.
- NTDF9 8y agoThat was back when US immigration and state departments were sane. Imagine applying and going through those hassles today.
- evgeniysharapov 8y agoBeing contrarian, I would say, that he should be thankful to US immigration authorities. If they issues a visa first time he applied he might have become just an SDE at Amazon.
- flocial 8y agoIt does illustrate his tenacity and resourcefulness (nice traits to have as an entrepreneur).
- whoisjuan 8y agoHmmm, I think you're into something aside from the shitty jab. Tenacity definitely plays an important role in success. This person had to deal with a system that judged him unfairly and that probably helped him to built resilience for other situations where his ventures received the same scrutiny and rejections.
- Ayesh 8y agoI'm nobody compared to the person on the story, but I was refused a US visa that I needed to speak at a tech conference. The US visa system needs to get out there and see what people are doing. I'm a full-time freelancer and I am 27. The officer said that I don't have ties to my home country and that I'm still young... Damn right I am! I traveled to over 30coubtries so far and had spoken at various tech conferences. There is a lot of travel history on the passport. Unless you got to this outdated image of a person that's risk-free, you won't make it to US. It doesn't matter if your talk is selected among 700 others, you just won't make it. Bye.
- tomschlick 8y agoDid you have a return ticket scheduled and could prove you had the necessary funds to sustain yourself? From what I have read/watched those in combination with the "ties to home country" check are the biggest red flags for CBP.
- maguirre 8y agoNot the OP but it's likely the question he is referring to happened at the consulate not at the port of entry. Buying a ticket without a visa (as I did once) was pretentious and therefore my visa was denied
- gtirloni 8y agoUnfortunately buying a ticket and booking a hotel is necessary in most cases. At the embassy for your first short-term visa and for border control. I'm a nobody from a 3rd-world country and have always done that with 100% success rate over a decade. I keep visiting the US regularly and I always have a way to somehow ensure I intend to leave the country. The questions at the border keep getting shorter and quicker every time. Unfortunately, that's how it works, in my experience.
- mcny 8y agoWhy would you buy a ticket before you get a visa?
- drfuchs 8y agoSimilarly, Adi Shamir, bazillionaire founder of RSA (he’s the “S”), couldn’t get a visa this year to attend the RSA conference. https://www.cnet.com/news/adi-shamir-couldnt-get-us-visa-to-attend-rsa-conference-named-for-him/ https://www.cnet.com/news/adi-shamir-couldnt-get-us-visa-to-...
- pnw_hazor 8y agoWe don't know if it is similar. Zoom CEO was probably applying for an investor immigrant visa which are complicated and could be rejected for many reasons until the proper documents have been provided. Shamir sent in a visa request and never heard back from USCIS. Similarly, his US visa was delayed in 2013 also: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/17/crypto_guru_shamir_red_tape_bungle/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/17/crypto_guru_shamir_...
- klipt 8y agoVisas are issued by the Department of State, not USCIS. USCIS can adjust the status of foreigners already within the US but that's not the same thing.
- Abishek_Muthian 8y agoGood information. But be warned that CNET has popup auto playing video Ad which doesn't get caught by uBlock Origin.
- yourduskquibble 8y agoAre you using chrome and also have either uBO-Extra or Nano Defender installed? If not it's most likely the ads are being served by Instart Logic. [1] [2] [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-Extra/wiki/Sites-on-which-uBO-Extra-is-useful https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-Extra/wiki/Sites-on-which-uBO... [2] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/227 https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/227
- Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
- mattnewport 8y agoZoom is interesting. They don't really seem to have done anything particularly novel, they just made a product that works better than the competition. We use Zoom heavily on our fully remote team because it works better than free alternatives like Skype and paid alternatives that we're already paying for like Slack. It's quite refreshing to see a tech company succeed by just making a better product and expecting that people will be willing to pay for it. They were able to grow so quickly in part because it was relatively easy for people to switch from other video conferencing solutions however. I'm not sure they will be able to build much competitive advantage other than just continuing to be a better product though. If Slack worked just as well we'd happily use it and stop paying for an additional service.
- js2 8y agoThe top comment on the Zoom S-1 discussion said the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19465860
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dplgk 8y agoNever used zoom. I use Uberconference. What's the difference?
- paulddraper 8y agoZoom requires native install and has better resolution.
- neosavvy 8y agoI've used many different screensharing / video conferencing solutions. I especially miss the one called Screen Hero - purchased and killed by Slack. I must admit though Zoom has been great, and everyone on the team loves it. They also give you a great try-before-you-buy setup (unlimited 40 minute meetings)
- thetechlead 8y agoGood for him. However, the wind has already turned eastward. Given the insanity in US immigration policy and xenophobia among the public, talents are going back to their original countries in flocks. Check out top 20 most valuable startups in the world - used to be 100% American and now half[ref] are foreign owned. edit ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_companies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unicorn_startup_compan...
- highskilledimm 8y agoThis is highly misleading. High-skilled immigrants are now more prioritized than they were in the past administration. https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-changes-visa-process-for-high-skilled-workers-11548879868 https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-changes-visa-process-for-hi...
- nxc18 8y agoThat's nonsense. Masters degree is not high skill. Or really, I've seen basically zero evidence that it indicates any more skill than a bachelor's.
- actuator 8y agoAgreed on the master's degree bit. A lot of them are just for generating money for the uni. A bit anecdotal, but most east and south asians use it as a platform to get a job in the US.
- commandlinefan 8y agoHm - do you have a master's degree yourself? I've seen lots of people (here and elsewhere) who suggest that a bachelor's degree also doesn't indicate skill and is also therefore useless. It seems as if everybody assumes that whatever level of education they themselves have attained is the cutoff for "usefulness" and any level beyond that is just a waste of time.
- nxc18 8y ago
- highskilledimm 8y agoPOTUS is FOR high-skilled immigration, despite the "xenophobia" claims in this thread. Republicans in general support visas for high-skilled immigration while Democrats support more broad-based immigration.
- fooker 8y agoI could not participate in an internship at Google a few years ago because my US Visa was refused, seemingly because the consulate clerk was having a bad day.
- actuator 8y agoZoom's stock jumped around 81% on debut. They seem to have left a lot of money on the table.
- peteretep 8y ago> The U.S. is the favored country EU needs to up its game on this. It's a travesty we haven't managed to lure these people to the EU reliably yet.
- ghobs91 8y agoUntil you improve on the pitiful salaries offered in Europe's tech industry, that's not going to change.
- guitarbill 8y agoEh, some people will be tempted, knowing that their children will get a decent education that doesn't cost the world, healthcare, gun violence, etc. But you're right, we'll likely never convince the people who have never experienced another culture and who value money over everything. Edit: Even if we did pay more, the language barrier is still pretty high.
- qaq 8y agoThe above list makes sense for people outside of tech. People in tech have most of the above in US. Some countries in Europe have pretty competitive comp like Switzerland (Denmark, Norway have decent comp too but its getting destroyed by high taxes)
- guitarbill 8y agosure, it's a complex situation, and IT is booming, so the "high salary + throw money at it" approach works great for individuals
- nstart 8y agoCurious about the comment on Norway taxes. They are high but the benefits offered are very good for citizens. Education and healthcare being top benefits. Also the culture contributes a lot to viewing it more positively from what I understand. I don't work in Norway but I've been researching it as a possible location to migrate to in the future. Curious if there are any citizens from Norway who'd be interested in adding information to this though.
- ademup 8y agoGoogle's constant shifting finally lead us to abandon it in favor of Zoom. We used Google Hangouts, then Meet for 3 years. Finally switched to Zoom and happy. It always seems to be 5% better (our marketing guy always used it for external meetings).
- nimbius 8y agoMaybe its just the tone of the headline but it seems antiquated. Are we implying billionaires can only come from america? Or if america blesses their presence?
- jquery 8y agoZoom deserves the huge pop for adding the "touch up face" feature to the desktop app. I can look fresh for meetings even if I'm running haggard from taking care of an infant. :) Seriously though, that's one of those small features that shows real love and care was put in the product. I was skeptical of Zoom when I switched to it but it quickly became my favorite video conferencing software by a mile.
- inflatableDodo 8y ago>Zoom deserves the huge pop for adding the "touch up face" feature to the desktop app. Heh, I remember that from 'The Jetsons' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0idWiHiasKg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0idWiHiasKg They should have labelled it 'Morning Mask'.
- phamilton 8y agoBest zoom feature is the magic screen share. Just being in the physical room I can hit share screen and it will find the right meeting. I think it uses inaudible sound to identify them right room.
- Nition 8y agoAs someone who owns a Zoom H2 recorder this thread was initially confusing. Apparently there are two major companies called Zoom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Video_Communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoom_Corporation
- jcl 8y agoYou're not the only one who was confused... Apparently there is yet another Zoom company -- the one whose ticker symbol happens to be "ZOOM" -- who has seen an increase of 54,000% in share price since March, purely on news of Zoom Video's IPO. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zoom-ipo-stock-soared-54000-percent-for-very-bad-reason/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zoom-ipo-stock-soared-54000-per...
- sumanthvepa 8y agoI'm curious, why would a Chinese citizen feel compelled to apply for a Visa 8 times, to start a business? Surely it is far easier and faster for a Chinese citizen to start a company in China? I would imagine that capital would be almost as easily available, as would labor. As for market access, surely just opening branch office in Silicon Valley would have served the purpose? If high quality American engineers, were needed, that too could be achieved by opening a branch office. Why go to all the trouble of emigrating from China? Am I missing significant context here, was the visa granted the 8th time an investor visa?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y agoI have a sense (perhaps unfounded) that it's difficult for Chinese tech companies to make inroads outside of China. This is because of the Chinese government's role as a kingmaker within its own tech industry, and because of concerns of IP theft, surveillance, and state-backed hacking from the Chinese government. Big firms outside of China do not trust Chinese software firms with their data. As a big time software company in China, you can only really sell to Chinese buyers, with a few rare exceptions. On the other hand, a US company can operate essentially anywhere but China. Maybe he thought he had a better shot on his own merits outside China. Maybe he didn't want to get in bed with the party, or maybe he was just a guy who was enamored of the dream that was Silicon Valley in the 80s through the 00s.
- thetechlead 8y agoThat was in the 90s. He was rejected visa b/c he didn't speak any English. Almost all VC and Internet businesses located in the US at that time. Things are dramatically different now.
- samirillian 8y agoAy we got enough billionaires here already
- weiming 8y agoThe story of being denied a visa appears to be from years/decades ago. He attended Stanford Business School around 2006. He also worked at Cisco and WebEx for 10+ years. Heck, Zoom headquarters are in California. Way to spin an article about a great achievement, Bloomberg.
- philshem 8y agoI always though Zoom came standard on Macs, and that is was made by Apple. It works that well. Turns out my wife had installed it before she gave me her MacBook.
- agapon 8y agoA bit offtopic: what happened to gotomeeting? I recall that 10 years it was a go-to software for conference calls / distributed meetings / etc. Now it's mostly zoom.
- sdfsdfsdfsdf3 8y agoappear.in, does what it says on the tin, no fucking about. Played about with zoom but it was a multi-minute ballache of signup steps and a screen sharing plugin the doesn't work properly on i3wm, I can't even begin to imagine the others if Zoom was mean't to be straight forward.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y agothe problem with proprietary tools like Zoom (and Skype, hell even Slack) is that people are forced to use them when working for remote companies. At least if they want to keep that job. But ofc you're still using your own hardware to run this shit on to do your job. I suppose this is better than the atrocious idea of using WhatsApp as team collaboration tool on your personal phone.
- austhrow743 8y agoEveryone I know who has worked remote has had their tools supplied by the company or has been reimbursed for purchasing them on behalf of the company.
- bayesian_horse 8y agoSelecting immigrants doesn't work, in my opinion. Regardless of the selection criteria, any screening will deter "desirable" people. It will not deter those who choose to circumvent that process, especially those who immigrate "illegaly" or "irregularly", like refugees in Europe, who are not eligible for asylum, but can't be deported for all sorts of perfectly valid reasons. In the end, and we see this all over the world, such screening leads to adverse effects even considering the intended screening criteria.
- creaghpatr 8y ago>Regardless of the selection criteria, any screening will deter "desirable" people. Is there any evidence this is true?
- bayesian_horse 8y agoAt the very least immigrants would need to fill out a ton of paperwork and endure multiple bureaucratic round trips, assuming the destination country even has the capacity to deal with all applications. Then the message behind a detailed screening is: "We consider you as an extreme risk, which is only worth taking if we can exploit you enough." You can't bring your spouse or family, at least not without significant hurdles, and if that process is too easy, screening for the original criteria is undermined. Considering restrictive immigration policies against your people, you won't be able to find a supportive immigrant community and are totally dependent on fitting in with the locals, and the locals letting you fit in. Just ask Westerners in Japan. For any kind of screening to work, you also need a ruthless border control and immigration enforcement, including mass deportations if neccessary. An effective enforcement has to - at the least - "inconvenience" anybody looking remotely like an immigrant, before being shown any paperwork. Many of these factors don't play out in many countries, but mostly with the result that the screening doesn't really work that well. The US and Canada have rather big populations of undocumented immigrants, despite having detailed and sophisticated "screening" processes.
- raylangivens 8y agoAlternate opinion, I work at Microsoft as an Engineer. We (obviously) use Teams for meetings. For one thing, it integrates well with the MS/Office ecosystem (sharing videos is easier etc). But the video conferencing system is really poor. Meetings sometime start with one party not able to hear properly, the other one. Usually, we spend the first 5 minutes saying "Am I audible?", "Can you hear me?" and their variants with that a feeling of deja-vu hits me. Usually, there aren't issues once the meeting starts (not with the software at-least). But the starting a meeting is certainly painful. SfB is a whole different ball of wax. I have never used Zoom but I understand why someone would be willing to pay for a video-conferencing solution that works. Think about your hundreds of thousands of employees losing 5-10 meetings of all their meetings, everyday. That is the problem Zoom must be solving.
- soniman 8y ago"America succeeded in spite of Americans" - Immigrants
- victor106 8y agoAnyone knows an open source alternative to zoom that is good.
- bootcat 8y agoRespects !
- ausjke 8y agowhat about polycom? the one used to have more markshare before Cisco purchases its major competitor Tanderberg, it seems zoom does not build its own hardware, the legacy players like polycom/tanderberg(cisco) still do, maybe it's the time to use off-the-shelf hardware with zoom software these days.
- yosito 8y agoGod forbid we let freeloaders like this into our country! /s
- presty 8y agoit's ironic that 8 is the chinese number for luck