 has forced many of us to adapt to a new way of life. Hand washing is mandatory, social interactions forbidden and visiting your favourite cinema/pub/restaurant is now but a memory.

For many of us, of course, the impact of the global pandemic is incredibly visceral. Loved ones are dying, the UK economy is heading for its worst slump in 300 years and according to 

, 24% of UK adults have reported feelings of loneliness as a result of lockdown measures.

Among the many new facets of life, one of the more trivial trials many of us have had to adapt to is the experience of talking a parent or grandparent through the intricacies of using Zoom, the now ubiquitous video conferencing software that seemingly emerged from nowhere to beat Facetime, Houseparty et al to become 2020’s de rigueur digital catch-up tool.

But there’s more to Zoom than pub quizzes with your old school mates or endless marketing meetings. Since the start of the global coronavirus lockdowns Zoom’s stock has more than doubled, resulting in an estimated market value of $42 billion. Its founder, Eric Yuan, saw his personal fortune jump by 77% to $7.8 billion in just two months. According to the 

, Yuan now sits among the 200 top richest people in the world. Before 2020, he wasn’t even on the list.

In Zoom is a unique story of how global tragedy and innovation collided to skyrocket a company’s fortunes.

If you hadn’t heard of Zoom until a few months ago, don’t feel bad. Not many people had. In January and February 2020, the rise of coronavirus and subsequent social distancing and lockdown measures saw Zoom seemingly appear from nowhere to draw in 2.2 million new monthly users. As of March, its daily users was up almost 380% from March 2019.

While coronavirus has undeniably impacted the company’s fortunes for the better, such a sharp rise in the company’s use would, of course, have been unforeseeable. In fact, in the early days founder Eric Yuan struggled to find investors, the feedback being that the market place was already over cluttered with video conferencing software, least of all in the form of WebEx, where Yuan worked from 1997 to 2011.

Born and raised in Tai’an, Shandong Province, China in 1970 as the son of mining engineers, the desire to connect has always been a motivating factor for Yuan; as a student studying mathematics at Shandong University in 1987, he would often travel 10 hours by train to visit his girlfriend. Surely, he thought, there must be a simpler way.

Later, after earning his bachelors, plus a masters degree in mining engineering from China University of Mining and Technology, Yuan heard Bill Gates speak on the early possibilities of the internet.

“I was inspired by this speech,” Yuan said while 

. “Back then in China in 1994, 1995, if you talk about the internet, most people were ‘What are you talking about?’ You show them your email address, they don’t understand that either,” he recalls.

Inspired to move to Silicon Valley, Yuan’s US visa was eventually approved on his ninth try in 1997. He was 27 years old. He joined WebEx the same year and would work tirelessly writing computer code, playing football at night. A decade later he was the vice president of engineering on a six figure salary, but he was miserable.

“Every day, when I woke up, I was not very happy. I even did not want to go to the office to work,” he told CNBC.

Yuan took the leap in 2011, pitching a new video conferencing system to Cisco, the company that now owned WebEx. After failing to get the backing he required, Yuan left his job to strike out on his own, changing his desktop screensaver to ‘it can’t be done’ to spur him on.

“Cisco was more focused on social networking, trying to make an enterprise Facebook,” Yuan told 

 “Cisco made a mistake. Three years after I left, they realised what I said was right.”

In the early days of Zoom, Yuan was involved in every aspect, even taking care of customer service emails. Perhaps understandably, one customer responded that the email was automated, that it couldn’t possibly be the CEO emailing him, and that as a result, Zoom was a dishonest company.

“I wrote back again and offered to meet him on a Zoom call right that minute to prove it was me writing the emails,” 

. “That call never did take place, but he stopped accusing Zoom of being dishonest!”

 interview, Yuan’s motto is “Hard work and stay humble”, something which seems to permeate every level of his business and surely helped drive its current success. Yuan also currently holds a 99% approval rating from employees on Glassdoor, with the workplace aggregator also naming him its Big Company CEO of the Year in 2018.

Fuelled by Yuan’s drive and dedication, the company had its IPO in April 2019 with share prices rising by 72% on its first day of trading alone, making the company worth more than Lyft and Pinterest, and making Yuan a billionaire.

The following 12 months, of course, could politely be described as a ‘rollercoaster’. Despite Zoom usage having grown by 1900% since December 2019 and his fortune multiply exponentially, Yuan, now 50, claims to not be motivated by cash.

“If I was 25, maybe I would be very excited,” he said in an interview with 

. “But those things don’t have any impact on me. Money is not going to bring me happiness.”

As the current global crisis forces us to slow down and tech like Zoom helps us reconnect with family and friends, perhaps we all might come to value connection over the material. Here’s hoping.

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