14 ms·

A Profile of Zoom CEO Eric Yuan

182 points by dsr12 8y ago

gcb0 8y ago
> Each time users logged on to a Webex conference, the company’s systems would have to identify which version of the product (iPhone, Android, PC or Mac) to run, which slowed things down. are all executives really that clueless about tech or do they say those dumb things to target investors that they know are clueless about the tech?
- kgc 8y ago
  There was probably some error in communication on this. Or they really are talking about shaving milliseconds.
  - zackbloom 8y ago
    Identifying the device is probably on the order of nano to microseconds.
    - jamisteven 8y ago
      In present day yes, but 5-10 years ago when you went to download the client their web interface didnt know what OS you were running, it would prompt and ask you to download either the .dmg or .exe
      - mangamadaiyan 8y ago
        Anecdote: Sometime last week, I was given a Skype for Business link to login from my Linux laptop. Since regular Skype works fine on my Linux laptop, I thought this would be ok. Wonder of wonders, it wanted me to download and install an MSI :)
        teddyh 8y ago
        Please note: “Skype for Business“ is an entirely different program from Skype. They are completely unrelated.
- zackbloom 8y ago
  It's very possible he explained something entirely reasonable to the reporter who then misunderstood it.
- juskrey 8y ago
  The second, I was working with very smart CEO who was tech savvy, but had to invent exactly such kind of narratives because our not very tech clients were never understanding normal, real, even very very simplified, explanations. Tech was something mystical to them, and required mystical tales.
- patmcguire 8y ago
  That really might have been the tech, codebases can get pretty weird after a while.
adnanazadsg 8y ago
I'm surprised at how big Zoom became. Video conferencing is a competitive market and other players in the space were spending a lot on sales to get all the big clients. Microsoft, for example, has a lot of deep integrations of Skype for Business with the Office suite and I'd imagine they'd make it compelling for their enterprise customers (who I'd imagine is the main user of video conferencing) to use it. How did they win the market in the face of competition from all these large players?
- amrrs 8y ago
  I think it's very similar to how Trello made an impact in their segment. After a point, simplicity is what literally what people want. You can check the customer acquisition page of WebEx and Zoom and you'd know the difference of how easy it's for someone to get started with Zoom and set up a webinar or video conference.
- daniel_iversen 8y ago
  I suppose complacency and other things (bureaucracy, politics, risk adversity etc etc), especially by the big leading companies is what makes them not always continuing to innovate, thus allowing smaller players to enter. Look at Tesla for example. Also, in software, I’m always amazed by how successful Slack is but I suppose they’re competing with a lot of old legacy tools like Skype (again) that even though they have a lot of usability things they probably should fix, they are doing quite well.
- paxys 8y ago
  IMO there was a point at which Microsoft, Google, Cisco etc. just stopped innovating in the videoconferencing space and relied on their sales teams to get new customers and keep existing ones. Zoom has really stepped up in their absence and moved the experience a few years into the future. It used to take thousands of dollars and loads of specialized equipment to get a videoconferencing solution for a single room, and even then half of every meeting would be spent getting it to work. Now you need an iPad Mini with the Zoom Rooms app and everything just works.
dba7dba 8y ago
> I'm surprised at how big Zoom became. Video conferencing is a competitive market and other players in the space were spending a lot on sales to get all the big clients. Focus on sales is what doomed other video conferencing. Sales in such context usually means they focused on convuncing some exec to buy the product, who inevitably used it personally not that much. Zoom seems to have focused on tech and end user experience.
- z2 8y ago
  Totally agree on experience--hardware competitors were $3000+ systems with terrible interfaces resembling DVRs from the late 90's. It seemed for corporate conferencing, the competition was sort of diffuse, with many being rigid and expensive hardware sets from Cisco, Polycom, and not just Skype/Bluejeans/Google Hangouts. Zoom had great value, they took advantage of existing tech so that companies could set up reliable conferencing gear for a fraction of the cost, using a cheap PC, an iPad for the remote, a Bluetooth speaker, and a generic webcam.
wardb 8y ago
As a remote worker who is on video conferencing calls most of the day, I have a lot of experience (aka strong feelings) with the tools mentioned in the article; - Zoom is indeed great. Reliable and clean UI. Local recording to MP4 makes for easy sharing. - Webex is a bit less intuitive, but still reliable. Proprietary video recording protocol makes it video's hard to share. - Skype Business should die in a fire. Unreliable and terrible UI. The Mac version of it is pretty much broken. A lot of folks can't find out how to screen share. - BlueJean. Trying too hard to be fancy with their UI. They are also very proud with their Dolby Voice, but I find it harder to properly understand people (My hearing is not that great). - Google Hangouts / Meet doesn't work in Safari for no good reason IMHO. High CPU usage and could use some more features, like a personal room and default meetings settings (no vid/mute by default on join, default audio devices etc)
- benjaminwootton 8y ago
  Google could clean up in this market. Hangouts is an abomination though, very unintuitive to use.
  - ilikehurdles 8y ago
    Google has lost all goodwill in this space in my opinion. They’ve built, sunsetted, and rebuilt multiple solutions for video conferencing and at this point who can trust them with putting out a long-term product?
    - ariwilson 8y ago
      What solutions are you referring to?
    - izacus 8y ago
      Can you explain which ones? The only product I know of is Hangouts and Google is right now rolling out updated Hangouts which is a compatible upgrade? (Having said that, Hangouts is far from perfect.)
hydroflask 8y ago
Personally, I don't think it can be understated how impactful Zoom's IPO is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Eric Yuan is the first Asian billionaire created from running an American tech company. Others have come close (Justin Kan/Twitch, Tony Hsiehs/Zappos), but Eric is the first. And I think this really marks the start of an increase in Asian/Indian-American entrepreneurs making waves in the upcoming decades. For all the talk about overrepresentation of Asian-Americans in tech, most are limited to technical/individual contributor/engineering roles. Very little Asian representation in management/executive roles, but it's quickly rising. Andrew Chen, Connie Chan @ a16z. Jessica Lee @ Sequoia. I'm Asian-American, grew up in SV (currently in college). An explanation for the pattern I described above is that my and most of friend's parents are immigrants from Asia. Often went to the top universities in their country, and came to US for graduate school, then work for the big tech companies. And so for them, they weren't able to take any risk - they were there to settle down and start a family. But the new generation of Asian-Americans go to these top colleges, and are able to have the ambition to do entrepreneurship. I'm extremely excited and optimistic to see more AA representation in startups and driving real-world impact.
- dba7dba 8y ago
  I think founders of Wang Laboratories deserve such recognition. Sure they were not billionaires but not many were back few decades ago.
  - hdpq 8y ago
    They were billionaires of their time.
- tootie 8y ago
  Jerry Yang? Charles Wang?
  - WillPostForFood 8y ago
    Ben Silbermann
- 8y ago
adventured 8y ago
The US made Eric attempt to get a visa eight times before he was finally successful. We should be poaching the world's talent belligerently, strategically, handing out citizenship and saying thank you for choosing our country over others. Instead, the clowns in Washington DC make the best and brightest go through hell just to come here and contribute. Only either a malevolent or incompetent government would sabotage its own nation in such a manner. Were I briefly king, one of the first things I'd do is task the Federal Reserve to create a large 'steal the talent fund' (by another name) and set out on draining the world of as much talent as possible. I'd use clever funding programs to make it easier for the best to move to and transition to the US. A tiny bit of inflation in exchange for a massive long-term return. The rest of the world would in part pay - via the international holdings of dollars - for my program to steal their own best and brightest. Every graduate of a major US university gets automatic citizenship. The best scientists, engineers, doctors, and so on, I'd want all of them. I'd do almost anything it takes to get them to my shores. Half of everything America is in its wealth or accomplishments, spanning two centuries now, is owed to brave immigrants that chose to abandon a life elsewhere and seek opportunity here at great risk. It's hard to comprehend the enormity of the mistake that is the US immigration system. We don't even take a neutral approach, we take a make-it-difficult approach.
- AFascistWorld 8y ago
  Visa fraud is a big thing in China, if there's a way of easy visa, it's destined to be abused, won't be surprised that half of China would want to come to the US if given the chance.
- photonios 8y ago
  This sounds very similar to what I would do and I am not even American or in the states. I think America's greatest power comes from the ability to attract the best and brightest and giving them an environment to thrive in.
- basetop 8y ago
  We've always had a "make-it-difficult" approach. And as you pointed out, it's worked out really well for us. If you are using america's success as an example, then you are really arguing for highly limited immigration policy. The idea that america welcomed immigrants with open arms is historically false. As a matter of fact, for much of US history, we've highly limited or even banned immigration. From Benjamin Franklin ( on his anti-german immigration ) to the immigration bans in the 1800s ( mostly anti-irish and anti-chinese and much of 1900s ( quotas banning almost all immigration ). Your idea of giving every international college graduate citizenship sounds nice, but when we have a major underemployment problem in the US of college graduates, more graduates is going to cause further problems. https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/06/08/underemployment-persists-throughout-college-graduates-careers https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/06/08/under... I know we are that immigration is what caused america's greatness. But things are a lot more complicated than that. We became the largest economy and the greatest military power under extensive immigration bans. For example, the The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 banned almost all immigration for much of the 20th century. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-a... I am for legal and vetted immigration but you are painting a false picture of the history of america and the reason for america's success. Also, china, japan, south korea, etc became wealthy nations little to no immigration. So the immigration and economic success argument is a lot more complex than people think.
hrdwdmrbl 8y ago
I still don't understand how 1. Companies are paying so much for their software. How much do they charge for licensing to make so much money? 2. They intend to defend their position from competitors 3. How they will ever grow to justify a PE ratio of 2,123.29!!! I actually use their software and love it, but do they really have a secret sauce that won't be copied soon?
- jeena 8y ago
  The secret sauce for Zoom seems to reliability. For some reason it just always works, independent of how many people join the call (we have calls with more than 100 people calling in independently), which OS you use (most of us use Linux, but also Android, Windows, macOS and iOS). It just always works, in the last two years I had zero problems with it, no idea how they do it.
  - pg_bot 8y ago
    Last I checked Zoom avoids using WebRTC in favor of using media over websockets. This should obviate a lot of the reliability problems with enterprise networks that you would normally need to solve with STUN/TURN/ICE. I think the other thing they do is decrease the image quality when multiple people are simultaneously connected. This is a nice hack since you don't really notice the difference, and users blame bad images on the network not the product. The biggest challenge to their business IMO is if/when WebRTC becomes stable between all browsers. There are still many kinks that need to be worked out. Everything falls apart in the P2P version when you have more than like 5 people connected as the amount of information that needs to be transferred across the network scales exponentially.[0] So you need to add a gateway and connect everyone over a single pipe. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
  - NowThenGoodBad 8y ago
    pg_bot covered the technical side, I'll take the social side. That's the great thing. There might be an entire market of options out there for an idea, but if they don't get something like reliability right, then that's the easiest foot in the door.
ulfw 8y ago
Is there any competitive comparison on what underlying technology and codec/compression the various video conferencing players use? Does one have better quality/datarate than others?
- iKevinShah 8y ago
  I do not have the metrics / data required but in my very limited experience, I can confirm zoom does the video conferencing / remote troubleshooting better than webex. That, while Webex is also good at what it does, zoom feels slightly better.
pojntfx 8y ago
Recently switched from Zoom to Jitsi. FLOSS and much, much simpler.
- skinnymuch 8y ago
  Jitsi is buggy. CPU usage is unnecessarily large. I dislike everything about Jitsi.
Halluxfboy009 8y ago
Brought to you by the Chinese government.
sjg007 8y ago
The only issue I have ever had with Zoom is that sometimes dial-in audio users have terrible audio quality and drop outs. I was never able to get their support to resolve it.
sonnyblarney 8y ago
It's shocking how FAANGS have not utterly dominated what should be a utility market by now. Shame on them - not for 'not doing a good job' but for arguably getting in everyone else's way with crap. I'm thinking of you Skype. It really goes to show how inefficient things can be when there is not product focus, and tons of money coming in from some other division.
- r00fus 8y ago
  Part of what makes FAANG so profitable is ignoring the supposedly not-profitable segments. Combine this with the dominance of Cisco and Microsoft and you have big giants who don't see enough money to complete with other giants. So the insurgent player is the only one who breaks through. btw, doesn't Amazon have a similar software (Chime?). So they are competing but only really recently.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    I think there is definitely enough money to interest MS and Cisco, as we see with MS's move to compete with Slack. MS, more than any company is very well positioned for this - they have the relationships and sales force. Cisco has that, but in kind of another way. Google has the tech, but they need 'Enterprise Oriented Product Management' - which they don't quite have, and a kind of Enterprise Sales, which they don't quite have. Their Cloud offer has suffered due to this, granted, that's a much bigger nut to crack, with other kinds of overlapping issues. I think if Bezos, or another CEO decided it should be a focus, it would be. I don't think Salesforce is hot on this area yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if eventually they did, as Benioff seems to be keen to extend horizontally, and they are good at integrating stuff. Good on Zoom though, I hope VC's take note and back quality efforts in classical markets.
    - r00fus 8y ago
      No I'm saying FAANG (ie, not Microsoft or Cisco) don't want to jump in to compete with MS/Cisco who already have strong offerings. Amazon have an offering, but it's relatively recent (last year?).
andrei_says_ 8y ago
Zoom is a great example of how it is possible to enter a saturated space with big players and carve a growing slice of the user base by providing better UX and technical execution. Inspiring.
s_tech 8y ago
Zoom is a useful tool, competition is always healthy!

182 points by dsr12 8y ago

gcb0 8y ago

> Each time users logged on to a Webex conference, the company’s systems would have to identify which version of the product (iPhone, Android, PC or Mac) to run, which slowed things down. are all executives really that clueless about tech or do they say those dumb things to target investors that they know are clueless about the tech?

kgc 8y ago
There was probably some error in communication on this. Or they really are talking about shaving milliseconds.
- zackbloom 8y ago
  Identifying the device is probably on the order of nano to microseconds.
  - jamisteven 8y ago
    In present day yes, but 5-10 years ago when you went to download the client their web interface didnt know what OS you were running, it would prompt and ask you to download either the .dmg or .exe
    - mangamadaiyan 8y ago
      Anecdote: Sometime last week, I was given a Skype for Business link to login from my Linux laptop. Since regular Skype works fine on my Linux laptop, I thought this would be ok. Wonder of wonders, it wanted me to download and install an MSI :)
      - teddyh 8y ago
        Please note: “Skype for Business“ is an entirely different program from Skype. They are completely unrelated.
zackbloom 8y ago
It's very possible he explained something entirely reasonable to the reporter who then misunderstood it.
juskrey 8y ago
The second, I was working with very smart CEO who was tech savvy, but had to invent exactly such kind of narratives because our not very tech clients were never understanding normal, real, even very very simplified, explanations. Tech was something mystical to them, and required mystical tales.
patmcguire 8y ago
That really might have been the tech, codebases can get pretty weird after a while.

adnanazadsg 8y ago

I'm surprised at how big Zoom became. Video conferencing is a competitive market and other players in the space were spending a lot on sales to get all the big clients. Microsoft, for example, has a lot of deep integrations of Skype for Business with the Office suite and I'd imagine they'd make it compelling for their enterprise customers (who I'd imagine is the main user of video conferencing) to use it. How did they win the market in the face of competition from all these large players?

amrrs 8y ago
I think it's very similar to how Trello made an impact in their segment. After a point, simplicity is what literally what people want. You can check the customer acquisition page of WebEx and Zoom and you'd know the difference of how easy it's for someone to get started with Zoom and set up a webinar or video conference.
daniel_iversen 8y ago
I suppose complacency and other things (bureaucracy, politics, risk adversity etc etc), especially by the big leading companies is what makes them not always continuing to innovate, thus allowing smaller players to enter. Look at Tesla for example. Also, in software, I’m always amazed by how successful Slack is but I suppose they’re competing with a lot of old legacy tools like Skype (again) that even though they have a lot of usability things they probably should fix, they are doing quite well.
paxys 8y ago
IMO there was a point at which Microsoft, Google, Cisco etc. just stopped innovating in the videoconferencing space and relied on their sales teams to get new customers and keep existing ones. Zoom has really stepped up in their absence and moved the experience a few years into the future. It used to take thousands of dollars and loads of specialized equipment to get a videoconferencing solution for a single room, and even then half of every meeting would be spent getting it to work. Now you need an iPad Mini with the Zoom Rooms app and everything just works.

dba7dba 8y ago

> I'm surprised at how big Zoom became. Video conferencing is a competitive market and other players in the space were spending a lot on sales to get all the big clients. Focus on sales is what doomed other video conferencing. Sales in such context usually means they focused on convuncing some exec to buy the product, who inevitably used it personally not that much. Zoom seems to have focused on tech and end user experience.

z2 8y ago
Totally agree on experience--hardware competitors were $3000+ systems with terrible interfaces resembling DVRs from the late 90's. It seemed for corporate conferencing, the competition was sort of diffuse, with many being rigid and expensive hardware sets from Cisco, Polycom, and not just Skype/Bluejeans/Google Hangouts. Zoom had great value, they took advantage of existing tech so that companies could set up reliable conferencing gear for a fraction of the cost, using a cheap PC, an iPad for the remote, a Bluetooth speaker, and a generic webcam.

wardb 8y ago

As a remote worker who is on video conferencing calls most of the day, I have a lot of experience (aka strong feelings) with the tools mentioned in the article; - Zoom is indeed great. Reliable and clean UI. Local recording to MP4 makes for easy sharing. - Webex is a bit less intuitive, but still reliable. Proprietary video recording protocol makes it video's hard to share. - Skype Business should die in a fire. Unreliable and terrible UI. The Mac version of it is pretty much broken. A lot of folks can't find out how to screen share. - BlueJean. Trying too hard to be fancy with their UI. They are also very proud with their Dolby Voice, but I find it harder to properly understand people (My hearing is not that great). - Google Hangouts / Meet doesn't work in Safari for no good reason IMHO. High CPU usage and could use some more features, like a personal room and default meetings settings (no vid/mute by default on join, default audio devices etc)

benjaminwootton 8y ago
Google could clean up in this market. Hangouts is an abomination though, very unintuitive to use.
- ilikehurdles 8y ago
  Google has lost all goodwill in this space in my opinion. They’ve built, sunsetted, and rebuilt multiple solutions for video conferencing and at this point who can trust them with putting out a long-term product?
  - ariwilson 8y ago
    What solutions are you referring to?
  - izacus 8y ago
    Can you explain which ones? The only product I know of is Hangouts and Google is right now rolling out updated Hangouts which is a compatible upgrade? (Having said that, Hangouts is far from perfect.)

hydroflask 8y ago

Personally, I don't think it can be understated how impactful Zoom's IPO is. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Eric Yuan is the first Asian billionaire created from running an American tech company. Others have come close (Justin Kan/Twitch, Tony Hsiehs/Zappos), but Eric is the first. And I think this really marks the start of an increase in Asian/Indian-American entrepreneurs making waves in the upcoming decades. For all the talk about overrepresentation of Asian-Americans in tech, most are limited to technical/individual contributor/engineering roles. Very little Asian representation in management/executive roles, but it's quickly rising. Andrew Chen, Connie Chan @ a16z. Jessica Lee @ Sequoia. I'm Asian-American, grew up in SV (currently in college). An explanation for the pattern I described above is that my and most of friend's parents are immigrants from Asia. Often went to the top universities in their country, and came to US for graduate school, then work for the big tech companies. And so for them, they weren't able to take any risk - they were there to settle down and start a family. But the new generation of Asian-Americans go to these top colleges, and are able to have the ambition to do entrepreneurship. I'm extremely excited and optimistic to see more AA representation in startups and driving real-world impact.

dba7dba 8y ago
I think founders of Wang Laboratories deserve such recognition. Sure they were not billionaires but not many were back few decades ago.
- hdpq 8y ago
  They were billionaires of their time.
tootie 8y ago
Jerry Yang? Charles Wang?
- WillPostForFood 8y ago
  Ben Silbermann
8y ago

adventured 8y ago

The US made Eric attempt to get a visa eight times before he was finally successful. We should be poaching the world's talent belligerently, strategically, handing out citizenship and saying thank you for choosing our country over others. Instead, the clowns in Washington DC make the best and brightest go through hell just to come here and contribute. Only either a malevolent or incompetent government would sabotage its own nation in such a manner. Were I briefly king, one of the first things I'd do is task the Federal Reserve to create a large 'steal the talent fund' (by another name) and set out on draining the world of as much talent as possible. I'd use clever funding programs to make it easier for the best to move to and transition to the US. A tiny bit of inflation in exchange for a massive long-term return. The rest of the world would in part pay - via the international holdings of dollars - for my program to steal their own best and brightest. Every graduate of a major US university gets automatic citizenship. The best scientists, engineers, doctors, and so on, I'd want all of them. I'd do almost anything it takes to get them to my shores. Half of everything America is in its wealth or accomplishments, spanning two centuries now, is owed to brave immigrants that chose to abandon a life elsewhere and seek opportunity here at great risk. It's hard to comprehend the enormity of the mistake that is the US immigration system. We don't even take a neutral approach, we take a make-it-difficult approach.

AFascistWorld 8y ago
Visa fraud is a big thing in China, if there's a way of easy visa, it's destined to be abused, won't be surprised that half of China would want to come to the US if given the chance.
photonios 8y ago
This sounds very similar to what I would do and I am not even American or in the states. I think America's greatest power comes from the ability to attract the best and brightest and giving them an environment to thrive in.
basetop 8y ago
We've always had a "make-it-difficult" approach. And as you pointed out, it's worked out really well for us. If you are using america's success as an example, then you are really arguing for highly limited immigration policy. The idea that america welcomed immigrants with open arms is historically false. As a matter of fact, for much of US history, we've highly limited or even banned immigration. From Benjamin Franklin ( on his anti-german immigration ) to the immigration bans in the 1800s ( mostly anti-irish and anti-chinese and much of 1900s ( quotas banning almost all immigration ). Your idea of giving every international college graduate citizenship sounds nice, but when we have a major underemployment problem in the US of college graduates, more graduates is going to cause further problems. https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/06/08/underemployment-persists-throughout-college-graduates-careers https://www.forbes.com/sites/prestoncooper2/2018/06/08/under... I know we are that immigration is what caused america's greatness. But things are a lot more complicated than that. We became the largest economy and the greatest military power under extensive immigration bans. For example, the The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 banned almost all immigration for much of the 20th century. https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-act https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/immigration-a... I am for legal and vetted immigration but you are painting a false picture of the history of america and the reason for america's success. Also, china, japan, south korea, etc became wealthy nations little to no immigration. So the immigration and economic success argument is a lot more complex than people think.

hrdwdmrbl 8y ago

I still don't understand how 1. Companies are paying so much for their software. How much do they charge for licensing to make so much money? 2. They intend to defend their position from competitors 3. How they will ever grow to justify a PE ratio of 2,123.29!!! I actually use their software and love it, but do they really have a secret sauce that won't be copied soon?

jeena 8y ago
The secret sauce for Zoom seems to reliability. For some reason it just always works, independent of how many people join the call (we have calls with more than 100 people calling in independently), which OS you use (most of us use Linux, but also Android, Windows, macOS and iOS). It just always works, in the last two years I had zero problems with it, no idea how they do it.
- pg_bot 8y ago
  Last I checked Zoom avoids using WebRTC in favor of using media over websockets. This should obviate a lot of the reliability problems with enterprise networks that you would normally need to solve with STUN/TURN/ICE. I think the other thing they do is decrease the image quality when multiple people are simultaneously connected. This is a nice hack since you don't really notice the difference, and users blame bad images on the network not the product. The biggest challenge to their business IMO is if/when WebRTC becomes stable between all browsers. There are still many kinks that need to be worked out. Everything falls apart in the P2P version when you have more than like 5 people connected as the amount of information that needs to be transferred across the network scales exponentially.[0] So you need to add a gateway and connect everyone over a single pipe. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law
- NowThenGoodBad 8y ago
  pg_bot covered the technical side, I'll take the social side. That's the great thing. There might be an entire market of options out there for an idea, but if they don't get something like reliability right, then that's the easiest foot in the door.

ulfw 8y ago

Is there any competitive comparison on what underlying technology and codec/compression the various video conferencing players use? Does one have better quality/datarate than others?

iKevinShah 8y ago
I do not have the metrics / data required but in my very limited experience, I can confirm zoom does the video conferencing / remote troubleshooting better than webex. That, while Webex is also good at what it does, zoom feels slightly better.

pojntfx 8y ago

Recently switched from Zoom to Jitsi. FLOSS and much, much simpler.

skinnymuch 8y ago
Jitsi is buggy. CPU usage is unnecessarily large. I dislike everything about Jitsi.

Halluxfboy009 8y ago

Brought to you by the Chinese government.

sjg007 8y ago

The only issue I have ever had with Zoom is that sometimes dial-in audio users have terrible audio quality and drop outs. I was never able to get their support to resolve it.

sonnyblarney 8y ago

It's shocking how FAANGS have not utterly dominated what should be a utility market by now. Shame on them - not for 'not doing a good job' but for arguably getting in everyone else's way with crap. I'm thinking of you Skype. It really goes to show how inefficient things can be when there is not product focus, and tons of money coming in from some other division.

r00fus 8y ago
Part of what makes FAANG so profitable is ignoring the supposedly not-profitable segments. Combine this with the dominance of Cisco and Microsoft and you have big giants who don't see enough money to complete with other giants. So the insurgent player is the only one who breaks through. btw, doesn't Amazon have a similar software (Chime?). So they are competing but only really recently.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  I think there is definitely enough money to interest MS and Cisco, as we see with MS's move to compete with Slack. MS, more than any company is very well positioned for this - they have the relationships and sales force. Cisco has that, but in kind of another way. Google has the tech, but they need 'Enterprise Oriented Product Management' - which they don't quite have, and a kind of Enterprise Sales, which they don't quite have. Their Cloud offer has suffered due to this, granted, that's a much bigger nut to crack, with other kinds of overlapping issues. I think if Bezos, or another CEO decided it should be a focus, it would be. I don't think Salesforce is hot on this area yet, but it wouldn't surprise me if eventually they did, as Benioff seems to be keen to extend horizontally, and they are good at integrating stuff. Good on Zoom though, I hope VC's take note and back quality efforts in classical markets.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    No I'm saying FAANG (ie, not Microsoft or Cisco) don't want to jump in to compete with MS/Cisco who already have strong offerings. Amazon have an offering, but it's relatively recent (last year?).

andrei_says_ 8y ago

Zoom is a great example of how it is possible to enter a saturated space with big players and carve a growing slice of the user base by providing better UX and technical execution. Inspiring.

s_tech 8y ago

Zoom is a useful tool, competition is always healthy!