Spotlight: Zoom

With the advent of global lockdowns, Zoom has become the go-to video conferencing app used by businesses worldwide. The company grew from 10 million users in December 2019 to a staggering 300 million by April 2020 as governments instituted work-from-home mandates.

Shareholders enjoyed exceptional returns as Zoom's stock rose from $68 in December 2019 to $478 by November 2020. Zoom made a series of investments between 2020 and 2022 and three acquisitions with its newfound cash flow.

How Does Zoom Make Money?

Zoom has several video conferencing products, including its standard meeting plan (Zoom Meetings), which work on a subscription model. The company has seen fantastic revenue growth from $330 million in 2019 to $4.1 billion for its 2021/22 financial year.

Zoom also offers Zoom Hardware as a Service, a hardware leasing service allowing customers to upgrade equipment every three years. Zoom's hardware partners include DTEN, Neat, Poly, and Yealink.

What Products Does Zoom Offer?

As of April 2022, Zoom offers a total of seven video conferencing products, including:

1. Zoom Meetings: Zoom's flagship video conferencing and meeting service
2. Zoom Webinar: A webinar hosting service for delivering presentations to large audiences
3. Zoom Phone: A cloud-based phone service to replace traditional landline business phone networks
4. Zoom Contact Center: An omnichannel call center solution optimized for video and voice
5. Zoom Events: A virtual events platform with features that replicate a live experience
6. Zoom Chat: A Slack-like messaging platform that integrates with other Zoom products
7. Zoom Rooms: A hybrid technology bridging the gap between online and in-person events that integrates with conferencing hardware

Zoom's App Marketplace also includes more than 1,500 integrations to increase productivity and functionality, including Google Workspace, Asana, and DocuSign, to name a few.

Who Owns Zoom?

Zoom is a publicly-traded company listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. According to Wall Street Zen, Zoom's shareholder breakdown is 51% institutional investors, 45% retail, and 3%, insider.

Price T Rowe is the biggest institutional investor, holding 6.16% of Zoom, followed by Vanguard, Morgan Stanley, and Blackrock, to name a few. Bin Yuan (a relation to CEO and founder Eric) is Zoom's largest individual shareholder, with a 1.65% stake worth $526.51 million (as of April 2022).

Is Zoom a Chinese-owned company?

Zoom is an American company founded in California, with its headquarters in San Jose, California. Zoom's CEO and founder Eric Yuan is a Chinese American, which is why people often mistake the company for Chinese-owned.

In 2020, Chinese-based Zoom employee Xinjiang Jin allegedly "disrupted meetings held to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre" under instruction by the Chinese government. Zoom terminated Jin's employment for violating its policies. This scandal was another reason why people wrongly believed Zoom was Chinese-owned.

What Companies use Zoom?

A more appropriate question would be, "which companies aren't using Zoom?" Startups, small businesses, multinational corporations, banks, and governments use Zoom for video conferencing.

What Companies Have Zoom invested in?

According to Crunchbase, Zoom has made 24 investments.

• Observe.AI: A machine learning tool that tracks voice and text conversations for customer service centers. Zoom invested in Observe.AI's Series C with several investors, including Softbank, totaling $125 million.
• Theta Lake: A compliance and security risk management platform for video conferencing, team chat, and collaboration tools. Zoom invested in Theta Lake's Series B with several investors totaling $50 million.
• Cresta: Real-time intelligence reporting for contact centers. Zoom invested in Cresta's Series C with several investors, including Five9 and JP Morgan Chase, totaling $80 million.
• ALLO: A remote workspace tool for whiteboarding, documentation, project management, and video chat. Zoom invested in ALLO's Seed Round with several investors totaling $5 million.

1. Wellness Coach: A digital health platform offering physical, mental, social, and financial coaching services. Zoom invested an undisclosed amount in Wellness Coach from Zoom's $100 million Apps Fund.

• Mio: A cross-platform messaging tool allowing teams to send and receive messages from multiple channels, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, Webex by Cisco, and Zoom. Zoom invested in Mio's Series A with several investors, including Cisco, totaling $8.7 million.
• Clovers: An interview intelligence platform that accelerates the hiring process. Zoom invested in Clovers' Seed Round with several investors totaling $15 million.
• Cvent: An in-person and online meeting and events platform. Zoom invested in a post-IPO investment with a handful of investors totaling $475 million.
• Genesys: A customer experience and call center technology. Zoom invested in Genesys' Private Equity Round with several investors totaling $580 million.
• DTEN: Unified video-first communications hardware and subscription services. Zoom invested an undisclosed amount in DTEN in October 2021.
• Neat: Video conferencing hardware company. Zoom has made three rounds of investments in Neat totaling $41 million.

Check out Zoom's complete list of investments on Crunchbase.

What Companies has Zoom Acquired?

As of April 2022, Zoom has acquired three companies.

1. Keybase: a secure messaging and file-sharing service Zoom acquired in May 2020 to accelerate the company's plans to develop its end-to-end encryption.
2. Kites: A real-time machine translation technology Zoom acquired in June 2021 to "improve meeting productivity and efficiency by providing multi-language translation capabilities for Zoom users."
3. Liminal: An event production software Zoom acquired in December 2021 to provide higher-quality online events for its customers.

$100 Million Zoom Apps Fund

In 2021, Zoom launched its $100 Million Zoom Apps Fund to "stimulate the growth of Zoom's ecosystem of Zoom Apps, integrations, developer platform, and hardware."

Zoom Apps are third-party add-ons and integrations that provide users with additional functionality, including analytics, broadcasting, CRM, collaboration, and more.

Startups can expect an initial investment of $250k to $2.5 million, with Zoom preferring Seed and Series A rounds.

"I founded Zoom in 2011, nearly ten years ago. Without the support of early investors, Zoom would not be what it is today. What I've learned over the past year is that we need to keep meetings productive and fun. My hope is that the Zoom Apps Fund will help our customers meet happier and collaborate even more seamlessly, and at the same time help entrepreneurs build new businesses as our platform evolves." Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom

With Zoom's $100 Million App Fund, we're likely to see many more investments and acquisitions in 2022 and beyond.

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