How Zoom's CEO Eric Yuan Changed the Way We Invest

Zoom went public today, and we couldn't be prouder of Eric Yuan and his merry band of Zoomers. They've built a truly unique company, with an unprecedented combination of growth and profitability. We were lucky to partner with Eric back in 2014 and, along the journey, he has raised the bar for what is possible. He's also caused us to rethink how we invest.

Specifically, Eric has inspired a new set questions we ask founders we are getting to know. I thought I'd share some here to celebrate today's milestone:

1. What's your North Star metric? The only advantage a startup has is focus. Focus is driven by the CEO. Eric has been relentlessly focused on customer happiness from Day 1. In fact, in his CEO letter in the Zoom S-1, he refers to happiness at least 16 times. What's yours? How do you live it? What would you write about in your S-1 letter?
2. How have you demonstrated perseverance in your life? Building a startup is taxing in ways it's tough to imagine when setting out on the journey. Eric was denied a US visa 8 times before getting approved. Where have you broken through walls to get something done?
3. Who is going to follow you on this journey? I believe the ability to build followership (of customers, investors, & employees) is the single most important CEO characteristic. Eric was the former VP Eng of WebEx. When he left to build Zoom, 50 incredible developers followed. Who will follow you blindly?
4. What's your unfair advantage? Particularly if building in a crowded replacement market, why are you going to win? Coming from WebEx, Eric knew exactly what to build and how to build it. And the best product won. Why will you win?
5. What impact are you having on your customers' lives? How much are you changing their day to day? Zoom has absolutely transformed how we work Emergence. When I joined the firm, 2/3 of our companies were based in the Bay Area. That ratio is now flipped. Zoom was the key enabler for us to reach this broader group of entrepreneurs and still stay a small, focused fund. How important is your product to how your customers' do their job? If your product went away, how much pain would that cause?

Huge congrats to Eric, to all Zoomers, and to my partner Santi who had the conviction to advocate for a non-obvious investment that stretched us in many ways. ??