Zoom was a profitable software company when it went public, which almost nobody else in its class could say. It earned $7.6 million on $330.5 million in sales in the year before its IPO. Its founder, Eric Yuan, had built video calls at WebEx and Cisco and thought they were still too painful. When Zoom listed in April 2019, it was a business tool. A year later it was how the world went to school and work.

The Pitch Cisco Passed On

Yuan was refused a U.S. visa eight times before he got one on the ninth try. He joined WebEx as an engineer, and Cisco bought WebEx for $3.2 billion. Yuan rose to vice president of engineering. He proposed a new video system built for phones and the cloud, and Cisco said no. He left and founded Zoom in 2011. The bet was that a call should simply connect, every time, on any device.

Seventy-Two Percent, Then the World

Zoom priced its offering at $36 a share on April 17, 2019. The stock jumped more than 72 percent on its first day on Nasdaq and closed at $62. Eleven months later, the pandemic sent offices and classrooms home, and Zoom became a verb. Growth slowed once offices reopened. The company added phone, chat, and AI tools, and in 2024 it renamed itself Zoom Communications. It still trades on Nasdaq as ZM.

Cover: A Foreign Camera (Gaikoku shashinkyo no zu), Utagawa Yoshikazu. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for an old camera and its lens (zoom).