Morals of the Zoom Video Communications entrepreneurial fable:
1/ no market is “done” — even when the alternatives are many, free, have hardware sunk cost, and/or deeply embedded into an enterprise suite ELA
2/ “much, much better” is a sufficient displacement product strategy (VS novel features)
3/ software products can make people more productive — this is inspiring. I can do work more efficiently and happily, because of Zoom
4/ Customer centric culture has to come from somewhere. Here it clearly comes from Eric S. Yuan. Literally every time I see him/hear a story of him, the conversation inevitably ends with “customer happiness” as the guiding principle
5/ Free to users doesn’t preclude a company selling software at enterprise deal sizes
6/ Zoom’s “unit of user value” is 2 —> Infinity (internal & external, huge addressable user base), making it uniquely well suited to bottoms up, viral, WOM adoption
7/ People want good people to win. There are a lot of cynics in Silicon Valley today, but you will be hard pressed to find people who have met Eric and don’t support team Zoom
8/ Congrats to entire Zoom team on this milestone and what I expect will be just the first leg of an extraordinary, enduring company journey — and to my better half Pat Grady for being part of it