Meet Eric Yuan, the boss of coronavirus-proof app Zoom who is revelling in self-isolation

“If I was 25, maybe I would be very excited,” Yuan says of his newfound wealth. “But those things don’t have any impact on me. Money is not going to bring me happiness.”

Acutely aware that proving that Zoom will be just as profitable after coronavirus has blown over will be difficult, he continues to roll up his sleeves.

The cost of increased demand as the virus takes grip, which includes hiring staff and bills for Amazon Web Services if Zoom’s own data centre becomes overloaded, will not come cheap. Zoom offers 40-minute meetings for free, so the influx of users may not provide revenue to cover overheads. And what happens when the panic is eventually over?

Epoch change

Yuan thinks we are heading for a permanent transformation thanks to improvements in technology. “Coronavirus has completely changed how people think about where or how you should work,” he says.

“Although we cannot shake hands, we still feel like we’re in the same office and that means we can be completely productive.”

The Chinese-American has long been an advocate for staying put. He travels only twice a year, partially to avoid jet lag and spend time with his wife and three teenagers, and partially because of climate change – something he believes will push more young people into remote working even after coronavirus stabilises.

“Millennials grew up realising that they can get the job done without having to go to the office,” Yuan says. “Give it maybe 10 years and the millennials become the leaders and then it will become very common. Coronavirus is just a catalyst. Sooner or later this is going to be normal because the world does not belong to us anymore, it belongs to the younger generation.”

The general mindset toward travelling among younger generations has taken a turn with generation Z, rallied by Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion.

Young people are less likely to boast about travelling, and celebrities posting “selfies” on private jets are often shamed for their carbon dioxide contributions.

Salesforce was ridiculed after 171,000 people from around the world travelled to San Francisco to attend its “most sustainable conference yet”. Those flown in from Europe alone (including a group of Buddhist monks from the Dordogne to lead mindfulness sessions) produced five metric tons of emissions, roughly the amount a human produces in a year.

It was while working as one of Cisco’s most senior engineers on its streaming product and Zoom rival, WebEx, that Yuan came up with an idea for a “better” alternative, but struggled to get funding.

“Everybody asked me if I was crazy,” he says. In the past year he has received several messages apologising for ever doubting him, Yuan notes. “Even with a small amount of money, like $50,000, you would have had a huge return.”

It is not the first challenge he has overcome. It was in 1997, aged 27, that Yuan moved to Silicon Valley from Tai’an, China after applying nine times for a visa. The dotcom boom was taking off and the newly married computer science whizz had dreams of becoming the next Bill Gates. They say never meet your heroes, but Yuan says Gates is “amazing” after enjoying his company over dinner.

Tech wars

Twenty years since his move and tensions between the East and West have begun to cast a shadow over a previously neutral, immigrant-friendly technology industry, one that has come to depend on China for manufacturing. This came to a head in 2019, with a trade war against the East and the banning of Huawei.

The geopolitical tensions appear to have inspired numerous outrageous conspiracy theories spreading across social networks that inexplicably link Wuhan, the first city to use 5G and the place where coronavirus was first identified, to infection.

In the early days of the spread, people of Asian descent said they felt they were being treated differently because of its origins. Yuan, however, says he has never experienced xenophobia in the Valley. “I’ve lived here 23 years and everybody has always tried to help each other. There are so many immigrants that is why we are an innovation centre, because we come from different backgrounds and have different ideas but have respect for each other.”

On Huawei, he points to his favourite book The Speed of Trust by Stephen Covey. “If there’s not trust, you can never really understand the problem because you are not working together to make a solution. If there’s no trust I can no longer sit down with you to talk, then that’s a problem. Building trust is very important.”

Other titles on his book shelf include Michelle Obama’s Becoming and Melinda Gate’s How Empowering Women Changes The World.

Having turned 50 in February, which he marked with a low-key meal at home with his mother and family, Yuan enjoys life in the slow lane. When not working, he jokes, he ends up acting like an Uber driver ferrying his children around.

That is not to say he is not one for celebr ations. He is still reeling from Zoom’s stock market debut last year. Here he is celebrating his company's float at the Nasdaq Exchange:

“If there’s one thing I wish I knew, it is how exciting it is to bring in my family there to celebrate,” Yuan says. “I will carry that excitement for forever.”