Welcome to Episode 92! Eric Yuan is the Founder & CEO of Zoom, the video and web conferencing service that just last week raised $100m in venture funding from Sequoia Capital. Prior to founding Zoom, Eric was Corporate Vice President of Engineering at Cisco, where he was responsible for Cisco’s collaboration software development. As one of the founding engineers and Vice President of Engineering at WebEx, Eric was the heart and soul of the WebEx product from 1997 to 2011. Eric proudly grew the WebEx team from 10 engineers to more than 800 worldwide, and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $800M. Eric is a named inventor on 11 issued and 20 pending patents in real time collaboration. Huge thanks to Jason Lemkin for the introduction today.
In today’s episode you will learn:
How did Eric make his way into the world of SaaS? What was a-ha moment and founding story of WebEx?
How does Eric think about building products, customer first? What does that mindset and approach look like? What are the main questions to ask? What are the challenges in doing so?
How should one approach growth with startups? Is growth ever in need of control? If so, what can be done to control growth? How can this be done without angering investors?
Eric has said before that founders must ‘spend more and burn less.’ What does he mean by this? What does that look like in reality? What should be the main focus?
Does Eric agree with the notion that founders always undersell? How does Eric approach the situation of leaving money on the table? What are the challenges of doing so?
60 Second SaaStr:
What does Eric know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
Eric’s Fave SaaS Reading Material?
Biggest advice to SaaS founders?
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