Company culture is my number one priority. It's more important than the team, the product, the business model, or the investors. All of those things can be fixed and made better over time. But culture has to be established on Day 1.
Our philosophy at Zoom is to create a company that promotes self-motivation. I have told our managers not to spend too much time motivating employees. You have to create an environment where employees can motivate themselves. That is really important because self-motivation is more sustainable.
Coronavirus has completely changed how people think about where or how you should work.
We want to hire people who are self-learners.
Security and safety are very important for us.
You can work hard and be smart, but you need to think about when you're going to be part of a startup and build it. You only have so much energy, whether you want to admit it or not.
I told our employees several times, 'Let's focus on the end user, let's focus on committing to society, and focus on the crisis and doing the right thing, show our corporate social responsibility.' Don't focus on marketing and sales. That's horrible culture.
When it comes to working from home, when it comes to video conferencing, it's got to work. Anytime you want to meet someone, the quality has got to be good, very reliable. Otherwise, you've scheduled a very important meeting with a customer - oh my God, if the audio is choppy, the video doesn't work, you're not going to try it anymore.
Similar to many multinational technology companies, Zoom has operations and employees in China. And like many multinational technology companies, our offices in China are operated by subsidiaries of the U.S. parent company. Our engineers are employed through these subsidiaries. We don't hide this.
Being a solo founder allows you to move quickly - when you're going up against massive, entrenched competitors, you need to maximize speed and agility. Having just one person at the top allows for faster decision making.
Enterprise customers have been working together with us for a long time, they trust us, and we just keep everything open and transparent.
I feel like Zoom is not a part of Zoom anymore. Zoom belongs to the world now.
Empathy, humanity and support for each other is more important than revenue, than growth.
My philosophy is, if I can provide a solution that the end user truly enjoys, then I think I have a chance.
I really want to build something to make the world a better place.
I experienced the year 2000 dot com crash and the 2008 financial crisis, and it almost wiped out the company.
My journey with Zoom began with a desire for the independence to build something that would make users happy, a true video-first unified communications platform.
We really don't look at our competitors. The market is big. If you focus too much on competitors, you can lose focus on the customer. If we make our customers happier, we are going to win.
We don't spend a lot of money to sell the product.
I want to make sure I do the right thing for society.
