Zoom Kaboom!

ERIC YUAN IS HELPING MILLIONS OF PEOPLE SURVIVE SOCIAL DISTANCING BY GIVING AWAY HIS VIDEOCONFERENCING TOOL, ZOOM, FOR FREE. THE MOVE IS EARNING HIM MUCH RESPECT, AND WHEN THE PANDEMIC HAS PASSED, THE BILLIONAIRE’S BUSINESS WILL LIKELY BE STRONGER THAN EVER. BUT IN THE MIDST OF A GLOBAL CRISIS, CAN HIS APP WITHSTAND A 610% SPIKE IN TRAFFIC VIRTUALLY OVERNIGHT AND THE SCRUTINY OF PRIMETIME?

- ALEX KONRAD

ZOOM CEO ERIC YUAN’S kids finally care about what he does for a living. Sure, they were there that morning in April 2019 when Yuan, the founder of the world’s most popular videoconferencing company, rang the opening bell at Nasdaq, with Zoom’s stock-market debut making him a billionaire. But it wasn’t until a Monday in mid-March that Yuan’s eighth-grade daughter, forced by the coronavirus to go to school remotely, finally had a question about her father’s work. “My daughter had never asked what I’m doing,” Yuan says, beaming. “For the first time, she stopped by to say, ‘Dad, how do your raise your hand in Zoom?’”

Yuan’s son, a college freshman, has become an emergency Zoom user, too. “I told my son, ‘I finally realized why I was working so hard,’” Yuan says. “I realized, ‘Maybe I built these tools just for you to use in your online class now.’” This newfound respect still wasn’t enough to stop either kid from battling for the family’s WiFi with Dad, jokes Yuan, 50.

Welcome to the new work-from-home family life: conducted, increasingly, over Zoom. As the coronavirus ravages the planet, leading to quarantined cities, states sheltering in place and schools and universities closing down worldwide, Zoom has emerged as one of the leading tools to keep businesses up and running, students learning and people connected through virtual birthday parties, happy hours and yoga classes.