[GolfyMcG]

Zoom charged us a fraction of what we paid other more traditional video conferencing companies (GoToMeeting, WebEx) and provided I think a better product in many regards. Not only that, they paid out our previous contract too (worth tens of thousands of dollars). At the time I thought either (a) they're losing tons of money to close deals and grow or (b) traditional video conferencing companies are built on infrastructure that was required 10 years ago but with modern advances in web technology they either didn't lower their operating costs by upgrading or did and just take more money off the top. Either way, they're overcharging. Based on Zoom's financials, I think it's the latter.

If I recall correctly, the founder of Zoom came from Cisco. This all strikes me as someone technical seeing all the waste at their existing job and trying to make change happen. Cisco couldn't see the forest for the trees and never took them up on their ideas. The employee believed there was a large enough technology gap so they left and totally undercut them by delivering the same (or better) product for a fraction of the cost.

[ram_rar]

you hit the nail in the head. Companies like Cisco only thrive on acquisitions, there has not been a single decent product launched from within.

[GolfyMcG]

Thanks! I also always felt like I was being ripped off by other companies too. The cost severely outweighed the value I received. With Zoom, I pay a lot for Zoom rooms but they are magical. Normal user accounts are affordable and they work. All in, I feel like I pay for the value I’m receiving and it feels like an equitable deal.

Ps. I swear this isn’t a Zoom ad. It’s like the cops - if I say it this has to be true?! That’s how this works, right?

[wbl]

Or the FTC comes like a bag of bricks.

[Cyph0n]

I think Cisco has done some pretty cool stuff on the networking and hardware side of things.

I write software for IOS-XR, an in-house, service provider-oriented OS. More specifically, my team works on the ASR9K series of routers.

[foobiekr]

The founder from Cisco is Eric Yuan. He's been working this thing for a long time and it'a awesome to see them get to this.

[alain94040]

You can get more details from his interview at last year's startup conference.

The video is on youtube (watch at 1.25X speed if you are like me)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FiXQ0htcvE

[gdne]

1.25x? Aim to get accustomed to 2x+. So much time savings. I have a friend who’s blind and super proficient on his laptop using screen readers. He runs all the speech at 3x+. It sounds like gibberish to me, but he’s crazy productive. He inspired me to learn how to understand and follow significantly sped up audio. Saves so much time.

[thisisit]

> Not only that, they paid out our previous contract too (worth tens of thousands of dollars).

I am curious, does that mean Zoom paid you guys for the losses incurred due to your original VC contract? If yes, that seems like an aggressive and maybe really loss making way to grow.