Speaker 1: 00:03 Welcome to the tech in 20 minutes podcast where you will meet new tech vendors and learn how they can help your business. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better. Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven’t heard of before. Hi. I’m Max Clark, and I’m talking with Kevin Thompson, who is leader of master agents and channel sales for Zoom Communications.
Speaker 1: 00:25 Kevin, thanks for joining.
Speaker 2: 00:27 Thanks for having me, Max. Really appreciate it. Long time.
Speaker 1: 00:30 Long time. So so for the, like, 3 people on the planet that don’t know what Zoom is, what do you guys do?
Speaker 2: 00:35 Yeah. Yeah. For those of you that don’t know who we are, I’m surprised. But it’s very simple what Zoom is and what we’ve started from. We are a video first unified communications company.
Speaker 2: 00:48 And we started the story of it is, Eric, our founder and CEO, he actually founded and was the chief executive at Webex and sold it to Cisco, woke up every day unhappy because he couldn’t find a happy customer. Went to Cisco with a proposal. Hey. Like, I wanna rewrite it from the ground up. They’re like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: 01:12 This is number 1 video solution in enterprise right now. No. We’re not gonna rewrite it. So he left and started and built Zoom, video first architecture with the end state in mind for a full UC, which is today’s state, which is the most intensive, load bearing, hardest sophisticated packet to master on a global scale. And we we were able to do that since inception.
Speaker 2: 01:40 Now, fast forward to what we are today, we are a full blown unified communications seat. Only true player that is we own our own stack. We didn’t have to go out for and build a bridge to a video or a CPaaS or a chat or meetings function or even a UC function. So we have seen incredible demand for our solution just given the fact that it works. And it works because we built a network on video first.
Speaker 2: 02:13 So everything else is easier to transmit in product parity because we own the stack. And with the architecture that we built, we just love the product, and 300,000,000 users do as well.
Speaker 1: 02:26 So, I mean, let’s talk about that. I mean, with with the COVID 19 pandemic, you guys are are turning into a verb. Yeah. And people people know Zoom from video conferencing. And when you say unified communications, I mean, there’s some more pieces to that that you launch and you support for for business users and for enterprise users.
Speaker 1: 02:43 I mean, so what is the rest of that UC suite? What does that mean for somebody as they’re evaluating a video collaboration tool or a a voice communication tool and platform?
Speaker 2: 02:54 What this event has really transpired for not only in the cloud space but communications is without a solid communications foundation, companies, as they’ve now seen, whether you’re on the right side of it or the wrong side of it, is it’s the most important asset that you can have at a company. If you can have a distributed workforce, say, in this time, you can build on top of that using APIs your next strategy, whether you’re in e learning or you’re a transportation company or hospitality or you’re in in give any case example. The communications that a company has is now going to be a board mandated solution coming out of this first phase of the co med. And we’re going to see subsequent down the line, at least what the analysts are saying, as we’re going to see a second wave of that. So companies are scrambling to find the right communications platform.
Speaker 2: 03:56 Going back to the question on what makes it a UC platform. You have video. Video first, we’re seeing 6 times more VoIP usage using what we’re seeing from Zoom just due to the fact that people don’t need to dial 10 digit phone number anymore. The minute you get on a video first, not only are you already using VoIP, and you have since the inception of the company, but video is now being a social norm. Next is meetings.
Speaker 2: 04:25 Can you share? Can you collaborate? Do you have the ability to raise your hand? Can you mute people? And again, those case studies that we’ve seen not only in consumer, but the business are incredible.
Speaker 2: 04:37 Ramadan, Easter, funerals, weddings. People are legally getting married on Zoom now in New York. Therapy. I’m sure you, Max, I know that you have children. Some of them have had classroom settings.
Speaker 2: 04:52 You’re talking to piano teachers, this or that. So what makes it Unified Communications is video, VoIP, screen sharing. And then what we’re really, really bullish on is our chat. Our chat internally is, I would say, the equivalent of Slack. We have a very good relationship with her.
Speaker 2: 05:12 So I’m going to I’m going to play nice in the gray area. But all baked into one simple app. And that app, thankfully for us, is the number one downloaded app in the world right now for the Apple Store. So what makes it unified is all those communication elements baked into one simple user face. With one click of the button, you can do all 4 at the same time or individual based on what communication mode that you want.
Speaker 2: 05:38 And it’s so easy to use that what we ran for it, Steven, prior to this call, your grandmother’s using, your basic teacher’s using. So again, we’re blessed to have the right solution here at this time.
Speaker 1: 05:51 So, Zoom has had a massive explosion in growth over the past 6 weeks. I mean, what are the public numbers as they stand right now? Where were you, you know, end of February and where are you now?
Speaker 2: 06:02 Yeah. So we’ve publicly, on Eric’s, asked the CEO, which is every Wednesday, part of our 90 day plan for full transparency of our security and just the way that we’re we’re handling this usage. But, in December of 2019, we had 10,000,000 daily active users. And that’s free and paid. We have over 300,000,000 now free and paid.
Speaker 2: 06:30 Rapid scale.
Speaker 1: 06:31 And and probably still growing.
Speaker 2: 06:32 I mean, the numbers I think we’re the top 5 in the United States most visited website in the country, and I think definitely top 30 in the world as of today, just number of pings to our even our website. We were number 1 in App Store. I know business app we’ve been since early March. And that’s on a global scale. It’s nuts.
Speaker 2: 06:56 And we were able to do it because Eric, even when we IPO’d, there was a CNBC article. He’s been planning for the 1,000,000,000 knowledge workers on our platform. We just didn’t know it was going to come in 60 days. That billion number is floating around. I mean, Box’s CEO tweeted that this might be the We might see the 1st company to go to a 1000000000 users.
Speaker 1: 07:18 That’s that’s incredible. I mean, you you touched on on Eric’s blog, and we should we should touch on security. I mean, so Zoom went from a popular app to an essential app overnight. And with that came a lot of attention, a lot of eyeballs, a lot of, you know, nefarious activity pranksters, whatever you wanna say. I mean and and and some of this, you know, stem from decisions that were, you know, on the move fast and break things line, and some of this was oversights, and some of I mean, what are you guys doing about that now?
Speaker 1: 07:49 Where do you sit, you know, when we read stories about education departments saying no Zoom? I mean, what’s actually happening with Zoom now?
Speaker 2: 07:58 There is no more sensitive topic in our company now than making it rather than the most flexible video first unified communication platform, Secure Flexible Video First Communications Platform. We took it upon ourselves. Eric Garcia was the first one. It was an oversight. This app was built for IT departments, enterprise companies that had IT departments.
Speaker 2: 08:27 Because it just works and it’s easy to use, it took off, in the consumer side. Well, we didn’t have security features in line to inhibit a free user posting their login information on Facebook where then an intruder could come in. So, we came up with a 90 day plan where we have the brightest minds in the world, especially in Silicon Valley and a lot of our customers, Uber, Walmart, Netflix, the CISOs, this council, and then of course, all third party council fixing and making sure that not only we’re built for the most sophisticated business user, but consumer. And that’s white box penetration tests, weekly webinar with Eric, where if you want to learn something about security, I highly recommend going on in one of those webinars. It’s just so transparent.
Speaker 2: 09:22 But what’s really come from this is, a lot of the PR FUD that was thrown, we didn’t react to it. We’re just going to build a really, really good platform and let that do the talking. And I think you’re going to see some really good news around the Department of Education to cite your question where they’re procuring licenses. And there wasn’t complaints from our paid customers. It was the consumer that didn’t have the IT team that was exposed.
Speaker 2: 09:53 But we have waiting rooms. We have a new security icon on our Zoom 5.0 release. You have the ability to report malicious play, foul play to police departments based on, you know, your geolocation. So there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve done to make sure that, of course, it’s a secure platform.
Speaker 1: 10:13 And most of what we’re talking about really, what you’re talking about, like waiting rooms, I mean, this is a an issue of defaults. The default wasn’t to enable a waiting room. You had the functionality for a wait wedding room. It just wasn’t being used. And Yes.
Speaker 1: 10:24 You know, and forcing people to have a meeting password and forcing people well, not forcing. You can still turn it off, but by default, having a meeting password and by default, having a waiting room. And that makes a big difference, especially when you’re talking about nontechnical and non IT driven. You know, like my, you know, my children, we we talk about, you know, education. My kids are participating in preschool Zooms now.
Speaker 1: 10:45 You know? So we’re very sensitive too, and the school is very sensitive around who gets access to this. I mean, these are 3 year olds on a Zoom call with their teachers trying to, you know, check-in and and see their friends and and have fun. And and it’s it’s, obviously very important to me and very close.
Speaker 2: 11:02 Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: 11:03 would I would normally ask, you know, who are your customers? But I mean, at this point, I think it’s pretty established that you seem to be everything from home users to big enterprises to governments. I mean, is that a fair fair statement to make at this point? Jason Brett (zero zero six:fifty seven):
Speaker 2: 11:17 Yeah. Some of the biggest I mean, the Fortune 1 and Walmart where we’re we’re wall to wall, and that’s that’s public facing to like a CrowdStrike. Biggest, baddest cyber company out there. I mean, they bought during the pandemic, during the security thought, which just shows the platform and the engineering chops that we have here at Zoom are some of the best and brightest minds in Silicon Valley. And we have a lot of the folks surrounding us from a cart from partner perspective.
Speaker 2: 11:48 People wanna see us win because it’s we’re helping the world. I mean, we had over 50% of the global economy on our network at one point. I mean, that’s just nuts. And, like, I think we all need to just take a step back and imagine if this pandemic happened 10 years ago. It would’ve flatlined the economy.
Speaker 2: 12:06 You know, at our core values, it’s just about caring, caring for your customers, caring for your community. And as long as we can provide a really, really good product and that’s all that we’re focused on, I think the rest is gonna solve itself.
Speaker 1: 12:17 You know, we say, like, what makes Zoom special or better or easier than your competitors? And that’s and the question is really a lot of the answers for you at Zoom. Right? You know, you were easier to use. You were giving away free access.
Speaker 1: 12:31 You you know, this I mean, so how would you kind of respond to that now? I mean, as everybody has pushed into video communications and your competitors have looked at Zoom’s playbook and saying, okay. How do we now execute what Zoom was doing months ago? Where do you fit now on that?
Speaker 2: 12:48 Thankfully, we had we had a great head start. I mean, we started as an ecommerce company. We grew by the freemium model. I think when a product can sell itself, people are gonna pay for it. And where we’re really, really excited is Zoom Phone.
Speaker 2: 13:07 And that’s the next evolution to where I think from a total addressable market where folks are gonna see the moment. You have this incredible video platform. You have an unbelievable meetings offering. Your chat is incredible. But I still have a PBX.
Speaker 2: 13:26 Zoom’s always been a VoIP company. It’s just rather than calling into the meeting ID, now you’re calling a DID. But I have native dialing in 50 countries, including China and soon India. And I’m the only player in the space that can do that. And as a result, I have Johnson and Johnson.
Speaker 2: 13:46 I have VMware. I have Walmart. I have some of the biggest brands that we use every day that are entrusting us for their full suite of communications because not only the reach, but again, the platform was built on the heaviest, hardest packet. And we did it with a 73 net promoter score. I mean, that’s higher than Apple.
Speaker 2: 14:07 And now, adding features to enable you to displace that PBX for pennies on the dollar was the next real play that we need to make. And of course, that’s where I’m leveraging the channel and that partner to evangelize that message and put their customers in a better position with a true single platform that’s going to be easy to manage now as departments are tightening up. They need a platform that’s just going to work. It’s easy to use. It scales with multiple contact centers.
Speaker 2: 14:37 And it’s that platform that is just stable and consistent now that a lot of the boards are mandating proper communications across the board, especially at the enterprise level. So those folks that were They were going to take their time gracefully rapidly have to get rid of that because the distributed workforce is here to stay.
Speaker 1: 15:00 Right now, publicly, you have Zoom, the video collaboration, and you have Zoom Phone. And Zoom, the video has a a a free version. You can sign up for an account. You can use the video. And, yeah, you have some limits.
Speaker 1: 15:12 I think you’re limited in in time.
Speaker 2: 15:14 Yeah. 40 minutes.
Speaker 1: 15:15 Tell me what the the price points are on this. I mean, what what could somebody expect to to pay in terms of, like, you know, general ranges for video, and then how much would voice cost? And what’s the kind of base guidance for that?
Speaker 2: 15:26 Yeah. Great question. So we have a very intuitive website that has all the pricing plans right on there. So if I were to read right from here, you have your free. You have your business pro, which is 15, your business for 20, and then, of course, your enterprise for 20 and change.
Speaker 2: 15:45 Zoom phone is where this is gonna be the biggest disruptor, Max. We don’t charge e911 and those regulatory fees. We assume them. We don’t pass that to the customer. So said competitor sells on their paper for $15 a license.
Speaker 2: 16:05 On the back end, it’s typically around 19 to $20 a license because you’re passing on the fees. So, when you’re talking about 100,000 licenses, that could get a little out of control. As a software company and the fact that we we pay the e911 so that we’re not passed to our customers, a, that pricing model from Zoom phone perspective is a game changer. We can also different tiers. So, we have a unified communication seat, $25 a user on Compass Center which is industry average.
Speaker 2: 16:41 We have bring your own carrier. So, in the large enterprise that say you want the functionality of Zoom but you haven’t finished paying out your contracts in say LATAM or ERI, even in the states here, we have PRI contracts, you have the ability to bring your own carrier to Zoom. So it allows you for your users to take advantage of the functionality while you whittle down your already existing network. And that’s where we’ve seen great I mean, a lot of the enterprise, like big enterprise gravitating towards that. And it’s good for the folks that are listening to this podcast.
Speaker 2: 17:18 If you are a partner having that type of, Here’s what you can do now, and here’s what the end state looks like. And actually being able to install it where it takes minutes, hours and days, not weeks, months and quarters to install thousands of users on the telephony side is just a game changer. And we have the ability to price out based on what the customer wants, not here’s what Zoom is. We need you to fit inside this. It’s the other way around.
Speaker 2: 17:52 And, again, having that poker hand is where we’re seeing a lot of wins and we’re we’re becoming the de facto standard on If you’re a 5,000 user company or more, you’re evaluating Zoom Phone right now.
Speaker 1: 18:08 Mean, you can provision and manage phones as well. This isn’t just a softphone or an app on the cell phone. I mean, a Polycom desk phone that that somebody’s gonna interact with will work with Zoom Phone.
Speaker 2: 18:19 Thirty different devices.
Speaker 1: 18:20 Awesome.
Speaker 2: 18:21 So from Yealink, Cisco, Polycom, AudioCodes, you you name it. We have a laundry list of phone providers that we work with. Right now, customers have to bring their own equipment or they purchase their own equipment. We’ll soon change that where I think we’re gonna be baking in our own phone. But they pick whatever physical device and who needs one.
Speaker 2: 18:43 The rest is, again, the application itself, which is where all the the nuts and bolts of Zoom sits. Man, that’s what people want. And the demand for it is incredible. And again, with a video first solution, we’re seeing folks finally adapt to. When you’re making a call, you just click the person’s name inside of your chat and you’re on video, you’re still using VoIP.
Speaker 2: 19:08 But you didn’t have to pick up the desk phone and have that, I would say, less than intimate conversation. The new social norm is just click the name, and you’re gonna have a video call. Whether it be on your mobile app, which is the same as your desktop app, which is Zoom, which is also the number one app in the world.
Speaker 1: 19:28 Kevin, you made a comment earlier about, you know, what happens if this was 10 years earlier. And, you know, I think you can expand that. Right? You know, it’s it’s if we didn’t have tools like Zoom in today’s world that were easy to use, that that my family could use, it would be a very different experience as well. And and we would feel I think it’s from the social and and familial connections as well as the business at the moment.
Speaker 1: 19:52 It makes a big difference. And so, you know, I’ll I’ll leave it with that and say, you know, thank you very much for your time and we’re really happy to see Zoom and what you guys are doing for everybody.
Speaker 2: 20:01 Yeah. We really appreciate it. Max, you’re a dear friend and glad that you and your family have stayed
Speaker 1: 20:07 safe through
Speaker 2: 20:07 this pandemic, and we’ll, be able to go play some golf one day, buddy.
Speaker 1: 20:13 Awesome. Thanks, Kevin. Yep. Thanks for joining the Tech in 20 minutes podcast. At Clark Sys, we believe tech should make your life better.
Speaker 1: 20:20 Searching Google is a waste of time, and the right vendor is often one you haven’t heard of before. We can help you buy the right tech for your business. Visit us at clarksys.com to schedule an intro call.
