5 Things we learned from Zoomtopia

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5 Things we learned from Zoomtopia

Peter Claridge

October 10, 2023

min read

We had an amazing time at Zoomtopia last week and are thrilled that our t-shirts were such a hit with the Zoom community!

Zoom CEO, Eric Yuan, stopped by to talk to StreamAlive and loved our t-shirts!

1. Zoom wants to build one app to rule them all

Zoom has plans and aspirations.

Not content with being the video conferencing tool, Zoom is on a mission to build a platform and eco-system for everything related to meetings and work collaboration.

Products Zoom is working on right now include:

Calendars and booking forms (watch out Calendly and ChiliPiper!)
Collaboration docs like spreadsheets and word processing (watch out Dropbox, Google Docs, Office 365!)
Making hybrid meeting events better and more inclusive using AI and hardware

2. There is still a lot of humility in the senior Zoom leadership

The last few years have been good for Zoom as the world transitions to flexible working and hybrid working.

That success could breed hubris, but we found everyone at Zoom to be humble about their success and immensely approachable.

If anything, we found that they still behave like a startup.

That humility starts from the top with CEO Eric Yuan who made time to visit the Zoom partner booths where StreamAlive and others were exhibiting to learn more about our products.

3. Zoom is actually an engineering-led company rather than sales- or marketing-led

This was quite surprising for us, but Eric Yuan is so committed to building a stable, fast, responsive product that can work on all connection types that it’s very much an engineering-led company.

We learned that any new feature they add to their suite of products needs to have use and value for at least 80% of their user base. Anything less than that then they encourage their partner eco-system to provide solutions for their users.

4. Zoom is committed to building an app marketplace

Related to 2 & 3 above, Zoom recognizes that it can’t build every feature that its users want or offer every service that they might need.

Instead, it’s being very proactive in encouraging a thriving ecosystem of partners (like StreamAlive!) to provide products and services that add value to its users.

We were surprised to hear about the joint venture between Zoom and AMC Theaters which provides Zoom Rooms in cinemas that companies can hire for hybrid events.

5. Zoom is going all-in on hybrid

Every other word that came out of a Zoom employee’s mouth was "Wow! StreamAlive is amazing!” hybrid.

(To be fair, every Zoom employee and Zoomtopia attendee that we showed StreamAlive to was excited by the opportunities that StreamAlive offers).

Zoom is looking to be the pioneer of the hybrid workplace. This means setting the standards for people collaborating in a hybrid environment from projects to meetings.

Everything that Zoom is developing from hardware to software to its AI capabilities is designed to facilitate hybrid working and make sure remote is as frictionless as in-person.

We were so happy to be a part of Zoomtopia and share their vision of delivering limitless human connections.

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5 Things we learned from Zoomtopia

5 Things we learned from Zoomtopia

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