The CEO of Zoom explains his strategy for making it a 'better and stronger' company as it scrambles to fix its privacy issues and tries to help its millions of new users stay connected from their homes: 'Focus on the crisis and doing the right thing'

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan.

• Over the last few months, Zoom has had to adjust to a huge surge in new users and address a plethora of security and privacy issues on its platform.
• Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told Business Insider that his focus remains the same as when this crisis started: Doing the right thing and helping those affected by the crisis.
• Yuan said he sees this as opportunity to make his company "better and stronger."
• Zoom has had to increase its cloud server capacity, which it did with help from Amazon Web Services and Oracle, which both proactively gave Zoom a discount.
• He's also focused on improving Zoom's privacy and security to make sure that non-business users understand the product and feel secure using it.
• To keep employees aligned with his mission, he's told them that now is not the time to think about sales and marketing.
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Video conferencing company Zoom has had a busy few months.

As the coronavirus crisis has trapped people indoors, it's seen an incredible surge in popularity, swelling from 10 million daily active users in December to 200 million in March. Meanwhile, it's faced numerous privacy and security issues, including accusations that it exposed user data.

Through it all, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has been front-and-center.

Over the past few weeks, Yuan has apologized for the issues in blog posts and interviews. He admitted that the platform was built for business users with company IT departments, not virtual classrooms or social gatherings, while also outlining a 90-day plan for the company to address concerns and fix its problems.

He admits that the process has been rough, but tells Business Insider that through the worst days, he's kept himself motivated by focusing on the future.

"Every morning I told myself: all the short term pain will be over," he said. He's trying to fix Zoom's failures, without getting caught up in them, and feels confident that the company will emerge from this maelstrom "better and stronger" than ever before.

And throughout it all, he tries to stay laser-focused on making Zoom as helpful as possible to those affected by the crisis.

"I want to make sure I do the right thing for society," he said.

So far, that's meant lifting the 40 minute limit on its free product for users in China, giving away the enterprise version to K-12 schools in over 20 countries, and acting as fast as possible to patch privacy issues when they arise.

Here's how Zoom managed to support it's surge in new users and how it sees its future evolving, according to Yuan:

Other tech companies lending a hand

In order to support its huge boom in users, Zoom had to add more cloud computing power - and fast. In a filing in March, Zoom said it expected the cost of running its business to increase as the company needed to add more cloud infrastructure.

Yuan says that its existing partners, Amazon Web Services and Oracle, helped it get extra space without breaking the bank. Both companies gave Zoom a discount on the extra servers it needed, without Zoom even asking.

"It is very costly, so both of them proactively gave us a very good discount," Yuan said. "This shows their corporate social responsibility."

He said that Andy Jassy, CEO of AWS, and Safra Catz and Larry Ellison of Oracle told him that they would support Zoom "because you are supporting the economy."

Yuan declined to share how much Zoom spent to expand its cloud capacity and said he wasn't yet sure how much more the company would need to add.

Right now he's not worrying about eventually monetizing its giant rush of free users or thinking about how new use cases like happy hours, yoga classes, and virtual classrooms could change Zoom's business. There are enough things to think about just to keep the service up and running, to help those working from home maintain the economy.

Making sure non-business users understand the product

While he said he's honestly not sure whether Zoom will remain in the consumer software business after this crisis is over, Yuan said the company does want to make sure that regular users have the right security and privacy settings to feel comfortable using his product right now.

To address that, Yuan committed last week to stop any new feature development on Zoom until it could improve the security of its platform. Over the next 90 days, the company would focus on educating users, including through weekly webinars about privacy and security updates. He hosted the first one this week.

To keep employees aligned with his mission, he's told them that now is not the time to think about sales and marketing.

"I told our employees several times, 'Let's focus on the end user, let's focus on committing to society, and focus on the crisis and doing the right thing, showing our corporate social responsibility,'" he said. "Don't focus on marketing and sales."

Those companies that do during a crisis like this have a "horrible culture," he added.

Though he didn't name competitors, his comments came in response to a question about whether Zoom's rivals were using the current moment to boost their own businesses. Microsoft, Cisco, and Google have recently tried to capitalize on Zoom's security failings.

Despite those issues, Yuan says that it's large corporate customers have remained loyal to the Zoom brand.

"Enterprise customers have been working together with us for a long time, they trust us, and we just keep everything open and transparent," he said. "They know we are doing the right thing, our intention is good."

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