On the last Saturday of March 2020, nearly 3 million people globally downloaded the Zoom app on their mobile devices for the first time—a record for the company, bringing the number of downloads since its April 2019 IPO to more than 59 million, according to mobile intelligence firm Apptopia. Zoom recently ranked No. 1 among all free apps on Apple’s App Store, ahead of Google, WhatsApp and even Gen Z favorite TikTok. None of that accounts for the millions who tune in via laptop or desktop computer. On April 1, Zoom said it had reached 200 million daily users in March, up 20x from its 2019-best of 10 million at year’s end.
All of this pushed Zoom, based in San Jose, California, into a new financial stratosphere. As recently as Monday, its shares were up 143% since the IPO and 44% in the last month—a time when the S&P 500 fell 11%—giving the company a market cap of $42 billion and Yuan a net worth of $5.5 billion, making him one of the richest self-made newcomers on this year’s Forbes Billionaires list, being released next week. Even before the spread of COVID-19, Zoom was on a tear, with at least 81,000 paying customers, including Samsung and Walmart. It posted revenues of $623 million and net profits of $25 million through its fiscal year ending January 2020, up 88% and 234%, respectively.
Inside the company, Yuan and his employees had two concerns: keep Zoom running, and make sure it was in the hands of those who needed it most. When parts of China went into lockdown, Yuan opened up Zoom’s base-level free accounts, usually capped at 40 minutes per meeting, to run for 24 hours. In mid-March he expanded the offer to all K-12 schools shut down, first in the United States, Italy and Japan, and later to 19 more. By early April, more than 90,000 schools were using Zoom. Add them to the millions more taking advantage of Zoom’s “freemium” model to use it for work or personal reasons.
What Yuan didn’t account for: with new heights of popularity, Zoom has experienced a wave of growing pains and concerns that have shifted the conversation around its video tools drastically in just a few days. Some schools were already hesitant to offer Zoom to their students. But instances like “Zoombombing,” in which hackers and online trolls crash other users’ Zoom meetings, grew so prevalent that the FBI had to release guidelines on Thursday on preventing them. The New York Attorney General’s office sent a letter asking Zoom to respond to security concerns. And Zoom has been rocked by other reports of sending data to Facebook, sharing LinkedIn information even for users appearing under pseudonyms, and other vulnerabilities. It was enough to make SpaceX join NASA in shunning internal use of Zoom.
Read the full cover story for the Billionaires issue on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/04/03/all-eyes-on-zoom-how-the-at-home-eras-breakout-tool-is-coping-with-surging-demand-and-scrutiny/#109f9b0057f3
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