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When the Zoom videoconferencing company became public on Thursday, its shares climbed 81 percent. But for Zoom, it's only the first day of this step and tomorrow, the employees are back to work.
"We have to go back to work," said Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, at Business Insider. "I'm going back to California, we need to double our execution and do what we did before, and we need to continue to do that to make sure we keep our customers happy."
Before going public, Zoom had raised $ 517.5 million from investors, valuing its shares at $ 36, for a valuation of $ 9.2 billion. Zooming on public markets with profitability on its side – which allows it to stand out in a landscape where high-tech companies often have busy balance sheets when they become public.
"It's a goal we've been looking for for a long time," Business Insider Kelly Steckelberg, Zoom's chief financial officer, told Business Insider. "It's an incredible step … Given the market conditions and our preparation, we felt that the time had come to do it."
3 objectives post-IPO
Now that Zoom has reached a milestone in the initial public offering (IPO), it has three main objectives: to sell to more companies, develop international sales and develop its new Zoom Phone product, a system phone based on the cloud. In January, Zoom hired an international sales executive and new sales representatives.
By aggressively engaging more engineers and sales reps, Yuan said that a company can not succeed or grow without a healthy culture. This is reflected on the Glassdoor employee ratings site, where Zoom has 4.8 out of 5 stars and is ranked # 2 in the work places in 2019.
When hiring, Yuan said that the company was more concerned about whether the candidates could rely on the company culture and if they were willing to learn universities or companies from which they originate. After all, if a business culture is broken, it can quickly rot a business.
Read more: Zoom videoconferencing company assesses IPO at $ 36 per share, valued at $ 9.2 billion – 9 times last private valuation
Meanwhile, Zoom faces its share of competitors: Google Hangouts, Microsoft Skype and even the old Yuan company, Cisco WebEx. But Yuan said Zoom was not focusing on competitors.
"We really spend the time talking with our customers," said Yuan. "We try to be the first supplier to solve the problems of our customers and to propose a better solution.If we focus on the competitors, it is not sustainable."
The secret of Zoom for profitability
Throughout the IPO tour, Yuan participated in all of his meetings via Zoom. Steckelberg traveled for meetings, while Yuan called from his office in San Jose, California. Jokingly, Yuan would change the background of his video into different scenes, like a beach in Hawaii. He said the shareholders were impressed.
"For the first two minutes, they were surprised," Yuan said. "They said," Wow, I did not know you could do that. "It's an amazing experience."
It also showed shareholders that Zoom had grown so fast. Steckelberg said it was because it is viral in nature. If a host calls someone else via Zoom, the person on the other side can potentially become a Zoom client. Zoom invests in sales and marketing, but with "discipline".
"It has the opportunity to be shared by millions of people without having a sales team to do it," Steckelberg said.
In addition, Zoom has this philosophy: employees should take a minute to think about how they spend their own money and two minutes to think about how they spend the money from the company. According to Yuan and Steckelberg, this frugal philosophy has also helped to make Zoom profitable.
"We're trying to help people think about how they can be as effective as possible," said Steckelberg. "We want them to think about how they bring value to our customers."
This is because the yuan does not consider venture capital money as money. And whenever managers or department heads want to spend money, they wonder if there is a workaround, why they spend that money and what they will get accordingly.
"I remember that investor money is not from our point of view," Yuan said. "It's about trust.Every dollar is trust.These investors trust us … it's one of the reasons that have contributed to profitability."
According to Mr. Yuan, this is an important aspect of Zoom's greatest added value: care.
"We care about our community, our customers, our company, our teammates and ourselves," Yuan said. "Today, we added one: shareholders."
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