Would you like to enter a crowded market, packed with competitors like Cisco, Microsoft, Adobe, Citrix, Polycom, etc.?

This is exactly what a guy from China, Eric S. Yuan, decided to do back in 2011 when he founded his company Zoom.

In just 6 years he grew his company to $1B.

How did he do it?

1. Eric S. Yuan is originally from China. In the mid-’90’s, he decided to
apply for a U.S. visa but was rejected. He continued to apply again and again over the course of 2 years and finally received his visa on the 9th try.

2. He arrived in Silicon Valley in 1997 and joined WebEx, a real-time collaboration company with 10 employees.

3. It took him 10 years to steadily become a VP of Engineering, managing 800 engineers worldwide.

4. In 2007, Webex was acquired by Cisco for $3.2 billion, and Eric went on to become Cisco’s VP of Engineering.

5. In 2011, Eric left the company because the new management didn’t
support innovation, the product became outdated, and customers unhappy.

So Eric decided to create his own customer-oriented video communication tool that actually works “and doesn’t make you want to pull your hair out”.

Around 40 engineers from Cisco joined him. And together they started building Zoom.

6. From 2011 to 2013, they focused on building a product with the best experience in the crowded market.

During the first limited access launch in 2012, Eric personally emailed every customer who canceled their service, discovering the reasons.

7. In 2013, they launched the product publicly and focused their marketing on these things:

7.1. The product itself is viral (you need to invite somebody to have a video conference), so the
#1 goal is to make you happy with the quality.

7.2. Freemium (free unlimited 1-on-1 calls, free conference calls up to 40 minutes).

7.3. They removed all the friction: made the ability to
join the call without signing up, without installing software, in 3
seconds, just by clicking a link. That boosted virality even more.

7.4. Offered the service to educational institutions globally. 1,400 joined.

7.5. This is huge! They established partnerships with software providers:

7.5.1. Added a video component to Redbooth.

7.5.2. Created a program named “Works with Zoom”, which established
partnerships Logitech, Vaddio, InFocus and other hardware and software
vendors.

7.5.3. Zoom managed to have its software integrated into
InterviewStream, a company that provides remote video interviewing
capacity to employers.

7.6. Media started to test the new service and write awesome reviews, spreading the word out even more.

Results:

+ In 2013, 3 million people participated in a Zoom meeting.

+ Now they have over 400 million people using their service.

+ Company now employs ~1300 people.

+ They raized some venture funding and achieved $1B valuation.