That ‘s been helpful for the founder and CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, who previously worked on the Webex video calling software that Cisco bought in 2007. Yuan was already a billionaire before Covid-19, having taken Zoom public in April 2019 and impressed investors with the combination of fast growth and profitableness. nowadays he ‘s one of the global ‘s 100 rich people. His soar shares are worth about $ 17 billion, according to FactSet. “ I ‘m very glad for him. truly, I truly am, ” said Rob Bernshteyn, CEO of Coupa, whose cloud software helps companies keep track of purchases. Bernshteyn has known Yuan for four or five years, and Coupa has long been a Zoom customer. The lone thing that changed with Zoom use at Coupa is the company started letting employees use their bodied zoom accounts for personal meetings. “ I use the word happy, ” Bernshteyn said. “ It ‘s one of the things he ‘s said from sidereal day one, wanting to make certain this platform creates happiness. He sure as heck created a great platform and foundation garment to move in that focus for a draw of people who otherwise would n’t have been able to be connected. ” Coupa ‘s stock has increased 144 % this year, an rise that hardly matches Zoom ‘s but however highlights a 2020 swerve. “ If digital transformation is accelerating, we credibly want to be behind some of the companies that are driving that into the populace, ” Bernshteyn said, attempting to articulate what investors have been thinking. The WisdomTree Cloud Computing Fund, an exchange-traded store that tracks an index of obscure companies maintained by venture-capital firm Bessemer, has grown 119 % this year. Zoom ‘s expansion has n’t always come easily. In the spring, after Zoom found itself on the receiving end of unprecedented demand, the company was besides bombarded with concerns about the software ‘s privacy and security. then came the questions about Zoom and Yuan ‘s connections to China. Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, called Zoom a chinese entity on alive television. yuan responded by issuing a post on a corporate web log.
“ I became an american citizen in July 2007, ” he wrote. “ I have lived happily in America since 1997. Zoom is an american company, founded and headquartered in California, incorporated in Delaware and publicly traded on Nasdaq. ” In June, after Zoom said it had shut down accounts that had hosted meetings commemorating the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, after the chinese government had brought the meetings to Zoom ‘s attention. Sen. Josh Hawley, a republican representing Missouri, sent Yuan a letter saying his company appears to have opted to support censoring rather than unblock actor’s line. “ Are you trying to curry favor with the Chinese Communist Party ? ” Hawley wrote. Yuan told analysts on the party ‘s fiscal first-quarter earnings address in June that, between the usage tide and what he called negative PR, he had been confronting serious pressure. He said that other CEOs conveyed their patronize and offered advice. Weeks former Subrah Iyar, the head of Webex at the fourth dimension of the acquisition and an early Zoom investor, came to Yuan ‘s defense. “ I ‘ve known Eric since the day he came to the United States, ” Iyar said in a video posted on his LinkedIn page. “ He ‘s one of the most earnest individuals I ‘ve ever met. He embodied the culture we tried to inculcate with Webex : a win-win with our customers, with our partners with our employees. ” All the pressure might good have been worth it. nowadays, according to Bloomberg estimates, Yuan is worth two times more than Marc Benioff, co-founder and CEO of Salesforce, which has sold companies cloud software for to keep track of clients since 1999. At Salesforce ‘s investor day earlier this calendar month Benioff, praised Zoom for the function it can play for salesperson who ca n’t meet with customers in person. “ I do n’t think there ‘s been a more important moment in history for sales organizations, B2B sales organizations, ” Benioff said. “ Those sales organizations who did not automate, who did not know how to use Zoom, who did not know how to use Salesforce, they were at a very significant disadvantage this year. ”
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Benioff has a criminal record of making donations, and his company has long provided grants to nonprofit organizations. Yuan is n’t there yet, although this class Zoom did introduce a charitable giving arm it calls Zoom Cares. “ While the key long-run focuses of this foundation are education, climate change, and social equity, our primary coil grants in Q1 were toward organizations making a difference during Covid-19, ” yuan was quoted as saying in a statement in June. WATCH: hera ‘s what may be future for Zoom after the Covid pandemic