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Eric Yuan created Zoom, a video conferencing empire that achieved a market valuation of $ 35 billion in nine years. In the past three months, the 49-year-old billionaire has more than doubled his wealth, according to the US website Business Insider. Yuan earned $ 4 billion and reached a current fortune of $ 7.57 billion. No wonder: The demand for virtual calls has increased a lot with the pandemic caused by the new coronavirus and the need for social isolation. Yuan today works 18 hours a day taking care of his startup. The information is PEGN Magazine.
The businessman was born in the Chinese province of Shandong. The son of mining engineers, his first adventure was to collect surplus construction materials and recycle them for money. Yuan graduated from applied mathematics and earned a master’s degree in engineering. After working for four years in Japan, he was inspired by a speech by Bill Gates to move to Silicon Valley.
At that time, the first obstacle to the Zoom founder’s career appeared: The United States denied him his visa eight times. Yuan would only come to California in 1997. At the same time that he was programming, he was studying to improve his English. Yuan worked for a video conferencing startup called WebEx, bought by telecommunications giant Cisco Systems.
Zoom’s idea grew out of a long-distance relationship during university in China. Yuan and his girlfriend were separated by a 10-hour train ride. “I was young, I was between 18 and 19 years old, and I thought it would be great if there was a device in the future where we would just press a button and we could see and talk to each other,” Yuan told the American magazine. Fortuna The bride and groom ended up getting married and have three children today.
The future entrepreneur became Cisco’s vice president of engineering. The entrepreneur came up with the idea of incorporating video into Cisco’s telephony-based conference systems. He also wanted the meetings to be easy to organize and have a fun background.
Yuan presented his idea of a video conferencing system for smartphones in 2011 to Cisco. When his bosses didn’t like the idea, Yuan left Cisco and founded Zoom. Since he couldn’t get investors, he borrowed money from friends and family. Yuan changed her screensaver to the phrase “It can’t be done” and kept working despite this constant demotivation. To this day his motto is “Work hard and stay humble”.
The businessman was involved in all parts of his business. He himself sent an email to all customers who canceled the Zoom service. One of the consumers did not believe that the founder himself was writing the message and accused the company of being dishonest and using a robot that impersonated the CEO.
We know how the story ended: Zoom had one of the most successful initial public offerings (IPOs) of 2019, according to the Financial Times. The company is worth more than the Lyft urban mobility app or Pinterest social network, with a valuation of $ 35 billion. Zoom serves more than 30,000 corporate clients, such as Samsung, Uber, and Walmart.
In the past three months alone, Zoom’s shares more than doubled in value and platform usage grew 1,900%. Yuan has a 19% stake in the company. The Chinese businessman made $ 4 billion in the period and reached a current fortune of $ 7.57 billion. He joined Bloomberg’s list of the 500 richest people in the world.
However, growth has not only generated good news. Zoom is being further investigated on its procedures to ensure the privacy and security of user data. Public meetings face invasions and send pornographic images. Therefore, Zoom implemented an approval function for each meeting participant by its creator. Against leaking emails and personal information, it also offered rewards to ethical hackers and brought experts outside the startup.
“During the Covid-19 pandemic, Zoom is constantly working so that hospitals, universities, schools and other companies around the world can stay connected and operational,” Zoom wrote in a statement.
Yuan himself lives lecturing, for example, while attending basketball training for one of his sons. The businessman limited himself to two business trips a year to spend more time with his children. In the virtual flames, the billionaire sets a beach as the background, and, for fun, at the end of the meeting, shows that he really was in a school gym accompanying his son in basketball.
About his new wealth, Yuan told The Telegraph that he would be excited if he were 25 years old. Her happiness lies in convincing more people to adopt remote jobs. “Money doesn’t make me happy.”
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