3 ms·

In the last startup I joined, back in ‘16, they had two things going for them: - It was very easy to get people to get on the same zoom call as everyone else

by hosh 6y ago

In the last startup I joined, back in ‘16, they had two things going for them: - It was very easy to get people to get on the same zoom call as everyone else - It had the best quality for video conferencing. At the time, Hangouts was unreliable. Slack had not had a video chat feature (and it was crappy when it first came out). Goto Meeting had poor quality video and was more difficult to get everyone together. We also thought that Zoom had encryption. (Turns out ...). There were very easy screen shares. The startup I joined is remote-first, though it did not start that way. After I joined from out of state, we just all started doing that. We used Zoom a lot. In short, I think Zoom got as big as they did because they addressed enough of the pain points in the end user experience.

MR4D 6y ago
I would also add that Skype blew it. This should have been their market. Today, I don’t even have skype installed anywhere.
- dhosek 6y ago
  My wife used to use Skype a lot back in the '00s, particularly for international calls (she actually had setup a paid plan with a dial-in number in Mexico that connected to her and a dial-in number in the US that connected to her mother to make cross-border calls extra easy). I remember using the app on my iPhone to call home from Morocco as if I was making a regular call. Then they had an issue where their iPhone app would run in the background needlessly and such down battery life. Add in T-Mobile offering free international calls and roaming and I can't remember the last time I used Skype. It is still installed on my phone and hasn't been off-migrated so I must have clicked on the icon accidentally sometime in the past year or two.
- qppo 6y ago
  That's more of a story of Microsoft acquiring and destroying a brand. They took the consumer software and rebranded their enterprise communications suite under it, then rebranded that and now no one "skypes" anyone anymore. Microsoft originally had a product suite called Lync which had chat and calling. It was pretty good. Then MS rebranded it as "Skype for Business." It was the same infrastructure and program with a facelift to use Skype's styling. That did not work out well, and was rebranded as Microsoft teams. I'd suspect the whole point of acquiring Skype was to move it to enterprise, which it only did cosmetically and turned out to be a failure. MS Teams is alive and well though.
Scoundreller 6y ago
> It was very easy to get people to get on the same zoom call as everyone else This. Zoom had the highest chance of success when you found yourself in the middle of a call and thought « Hey, it would be great if we got Tom on this call » and Tom barely knew how to use a computer. Getting someone on a WebEx would’ve taken several minutes on software installs alone.
smnscu 6y ago
In 2017, I worked for a company that used Zoom for the sole reason that it was the only similar app not blocked in Oman, Pakistan, etc.
dylan604 6y ago
Slack to this day still tells me that it will not work in FF. So it's still crappy

by hosh 6y ago

MR4D 6y ago

I would also add that Skype blew it. This should have been their market. Today, I don’t even have skype installed anywhere.

dhosek 6y ago
My wife used to use Skype a lot back in the '00s, particularly for international calls (she actually had setup a paid plan with a dial-in number in Mexico that connected to her and a dial-in number in the US that connected to her mother to make cross-border calls extra easy). I remember using the app on my iPhone to call home from Morocco as if I was making a regular call. Then they had an issue where their iPhone app would run in the background needlessly and such down battery life. Add in T-Mobile offering free international calls and roaming and I can't remember the last time I used Skype. It is still installed on my phone and hasn't been off-migrated so I must have clicked on the icon accidentally sometime in the past year or two.
qppo 6y ago
That's more of a story of Microsoft acquiring and destroying a brand. They took the consumer software and rebranded their enterprise communications suite under it, then rebranded that and now no one "skypes" anyone anymore. Microsoft originally had a product suite called Lync which had chat and calling. It was pretty good. Then MS rebranded it as "Skype for Business." It was the same infrastructure and program with a facelift to use Skype's styling. That did not work out well, and was rebranded as Microsoft teams. I'd suspect the whole point of acquiring Skype was to move it to enterprise, which it only did cosmetically and turned out to be a failure. MS Teams is alive and well though.

Scoundreller 6y ago

> It was very easy to get people to get on the same zoom call as everyone else This. Zoom had the highest chance of success when you found yourself in the middle of a call and thought « Hey, it would be great if we got Tom on this call » and Tom barely knew how to use a computer. Getting someone on a WebEx would’ve taken several minutes on software installs alone.

smnscu 6y ago

In 2017, I worked for a company that used Zoom for the sole reason that it was the only similar app not blocked in Oman, Pakistan, etc.

dylan604 6y ago

Slack to this day still tells me that it will not work in FF. So it's still crappy