Zoom founder Eric Yuan’s visa application was denied 8 times before he came to the U.S. Today, he is worth $12 billion

The last time we wrote about Zoom’s valuation was back in May when the video conferencing app was hovering around $50 billion in valuation. At the time, Zoom was worth more than the world’s 7 biggest airlines combined. Today, Zoom is now valued at over $66 billion. But the journey for Zoom and its founder has not always been easy.

Zoom is video conferencing app that offers a communications platform that connects people through video, voice, chat, and content sharing. Zoom helps businesses and organizations bring their teams together in a frictionless environment to get more done.

Zoom was founded in 2011 by Eric Yuan. Just like all immigrants looking for better life, Yuan immigrated to the United States from China in the mid ’90’s because of the Internet. His visa application was denied 8 times before he came to the U.S. In an interview about his journey to the United States, 22 years ago, Eric said:

“The first time I applied for a U.S. visa, I was rejected. I continued to apply again and again over the course of two years and finally received my visa on the ninth try.”

Yuan barely spoke English at the time. He later beat the odds and got a job in Silicon Valley in 1997 to work with WebEx, which at the time was a real-time meeting collaboration company with about a dozen employees. The company grew very quickly and went public within several years of my arrival. WebEx was later bought by Cisco for a whooping $3.2 billion.

Yuan later left WebEx to start a video-conferencing software startup Zoom in 2011. Zoom offers reliable cloud platform for video, voice, content sharing, and chat runs across mobile devices, desktops, telephones, and room systems. Before founding Zoom, Yuan was the vice president of engineering at Cisco for collaboration software development.

Zoom’s user base grew to 10 million in June 2014. As of February 2015, the number of participants utilizing Zoom Video Communication’s flagship product , Zoom Meetings, reached 40 million individuals, with 65,000 organizations subscribed. In addition to this, the company surpassed 1 billion total meeting minutes across its entire service lifespan.

As we reported back in 2019, Zoom announced its plan to make a Wall Street debut at $8.25 billion valuation. On April 18, 2019, the company went public, with shares up more than 72% with an Initial public offering of $36 a share. The company was valued at just under $16 billion by the end of its IPO.

Below is  video of Eric sharing his journey from China to the U.S. and he built $66.7 billion tech company.

Zoom founder Eric Yuan’s visa application was denied 8 times before he came to the U.S.

Today, he is worth $12 billion.pic.twitter.com/3jspyK2R0q

— Jon Erlichman (@JonErlichman) August 12, 2020