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Intro: The next generation of digital assistant will be digital twin. You know, sometimes, you know, might be a very important meeting and I joined by myself for some other meetings. I might assign my digital twin to join a meeting. My digital twin not only listening to the meeting over there, but also can help me make the decision as well.
That's the word of where we're going to be. Welcome to the Logan Bartlett Show. On this episode, what you're going to hear is a conversation I have with co founder and CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan. Now, Eric and I talk about a number of different things related to Zoom, including the 45 different product releases that Zoom just announced this week, as well as what Eric sees as the future for Zoom and the AI world that we're moving into over the course of the next few years.
We also talk about the features that Eric Thinks any person that uses zoom should be using. We also talk about how Eric prioritizes launching different features. And finally, I get a question answered that I've long since wondered about the insight that Eric had in the early days of zoom that helped lead it into the business that it is today.
[00:01:00] Really fun conversation that I've long wanted to have with Eric that you'll hear now.
Eric: Thank you, Logan.
Logan: Awesome. Thank you, Eric. Great. Great to connect. So So I guess I want to start off.
Logan: I saw the keynote today for Enterprise Connect was entirely about AI for people that maybe missed it. Can you give just a brief overview of some of the stuff you announced?
Eric: Awesome. Yeah. So our chief of product officer Smita, uh, she was, uh, at Enterprise Connect. We announced a bunch of new innovations, including around 45 features, primarily in our own AI company. You know, a year ago, we launched the AI company 1. 0. Which is more like, uh, you know, based on a general AI capabilities, you know, we just announced the Zoom, you know, AI companion 2.
0 with agentic skills, with agentic framework and functionalities, you know, a lot of innovations around our Zoom AI companion 2. 0.[00:02:00]
Logan: And what is I guess the shift?
Logan: Um, the AI can can't companion shifting from or evolving from a personal assistant to being truly agentic. Can you give an example of like what that means?
Eric: Yeah, so a good example, you know, take a meeting for this meeting, for example, right? So normally, you know, after the, you know, prior to meeting, I need to prepare for agenda. Right, you know, right down the nose of the meeting. I look at a summary, manually create a task. That's the way it worked before. You know, with a Zoom AI companion, identical capabilities essentially take this meaning.
For example, after this meeting is over, you know, AI companion will automatically create some tasks. You know, uh, send it to you, uh, send it to me and we'll check, you know, uh, even after the meeting is over, right? That's a, you know, uh, agent is doing something, you know, on behalf of us. Otherwise we need to manually to create a task based on the summary, based on the discussions.[00:03:00]
Logan: I guess there's been a host of different, um, uh, AI tools that have popped up around meeting transcription and, uh, meeting summarization. And how do you think about the role that you play as an ecosystem hub for players like that versus building your own, uh, solutions in, in different areas that maybe relate to, to Zoom?
Eric: Yeah. Good question.
Eric: First of all, you know, we are offering an open platform, you know, third party vendors, they can build a transcription tools by themselves, right? You know, given we have API and at the same time, you know, some of our customers. They would like a Zoom to offer a seamless experience in everything from Zoom.
That's the reason why we also offer the similar capabilities. Again, this is an open platform, you know, up to customers to make a decision. If they want to use a Zoom built in, you know, all those, uh, you know, AI capabilities, you know, like a real time summary or meeting summary, creating a task after the meeting is over.
You know, we [00:04:00] offer those, you know, the, the features. All customers, they can go to any third party, that's okay too. Yeah.
Logan: My understanding is you all have been pretty purposeful about not charging for a number of the AI features that you guys have rolled out, which I think stands in contrast to a competitor of yours, Microsoft, who I think does charge for a lot of different stuff. How do you, how do you balance, um, the democratization of AI and, and the thought process around embedding some of this stuff into your core platform with, um, maybe the potential to charge for these things?
Cause they are so valuable.
Eric: Yeah, great question.
Eric: So before we launched AI Companion, we already spent a lot of time on talking with the customers, how to leverage AI to add more value for the customers. And, you know, AI Companion offers, you know, a lot of AI capabilities. Those features or capabilities are core. You know, to our meeting business, you know, and we look at everything from a custom [00:05:00] perspective, you know, what's the total cost of ownership, right?
So that's the reason why. We, we, you know, we truly optimize our backend, you know, and, you know, AI infrastructure and try to do all we can to make sure, right, that cost wise is very manageable. With that, we can offer a greater service at no additional cost to our customers. That's the reason why AI company usage, you know, is growing very well, like a quarter over quarter, 68 percent growth.
And because of, I didn't know that, I didn't know additional cost because of the, the greater functionalities. At the same time, you know, some of the integrated customers, they would like to customize AI companion, right? And to leverage our AI studio, we can monetize on that front, but a core AI companion functionalities, no matter how we innovate, we still want to, you know, give customers, you know, at a new additional cost.
Logan: As you think about these AI enhancements across, uh, [00:06:00] across zoom, um, launching 45 of them, were they all 45 were announced today?
Eric: Yeah. Not every 45 features are just AI companion, you know, primarily AI companion related, right? Well, for sure, we launched some other vertical services like Zoom Workplace for clinicians, for frontline workers, and so on and so forth. So,
Logan: Is there one to two things as you started exploring AI in some of the use cases that that were maybe Counterintuitive to you, uh, like when you set out sort of thinking about these things and the potential for zoom to play in the world of AI, um, a conclusion that you reached that was maybe not totally obvious, uh, from the onset,
Eric: yeah, one feature, you know, we are a real time collaboration communication company, right? Zoom call, for example, you know, we, everything is one real time, you know, collaboration. And one feature, like, hey, what if, let's say, log in, you know, I, we are sitting [00:07:00] together in a local Starbucks coffee, not on the Zoom call.
When we meet in person, how to leverage the AI. So we launched a feature called a voice recorder. Essentially, you know, I just put my phone on the table. And the one click launcher was recorded, right? And we automatically recorded our conversation, generate a transcription, and a meeting summary, and assign a task, and so on and so forth.
That's a pretty useful feature, right? And even in the BeyondZoom call, that's one. Another one I really, you know, it's my personal favorite feature, which is calendar management. You know, like you and I want to schedule a meeting next week, you know, the way it works today. I need to call my EA, right, and talk with your assistant, right, to schedule a call.
You know, a lot of steps. What if we leverage AI combining? Hey, AI combining, I want to schedule a meeting with Logan next week. You know, it will automatically give us [00:08:00] options and make a decision for us. That's a very cool feature.
Logan: I assume a lot of these things are coming from the customers in, in some way, uh, but how many of them do you, do you think that, that more of these ideas sort of were surfaced in a bottoms up manner from individuals that sort of saw this? In the field, and maybe there and I see who had some observation that this is a way that it could work, or were a lot of these like top down from you or the leadership team and sort of setting the vision about where you ultimately want to go in collaboration with some of your big customers.
Eric: So good question. And we are 7, 500 full time employee company. Top down push does not work. I do not have enough benefits to do that. Almost all the innovations are coming from bottom up. So meaning, you know, our innovation model at Zoom is always sit down with the customers, listen to their, you know, you know, feedback or pinpoint very carefully and come [00:09:00] up with a solution.
And then talking to customers. Now this solution work for you or not almost all the innovations coming from that kind of a bottom up approach
Logan: I know you guys are very deliberate about, like, uh, listening to your customers and trying to hear, um, what they're saying, or maybe finding novel ways of addressing the, uh, the pain points that they have. Are there any, um, lessons you've learned about conducting these, uh, customer interviews in trying to hear?
Maybe, um, not necessarily what the pain point it is that they, they have, but what the problem that you can uniquely solve for them is, are there any techniques or styles that you've come up with and sort of conducting these case studies or these interviews?
Eric: Yeah, wonderful question. So yeah for sure we have a formula here. Otherwise, this is great question otherwise You know given the the our customers coming from you know Online customers smb customers [00:10:00] all the way to the fortune 100 companies, right? So every day We, we, we, we received so many feedback or feature requests, right?
If you do not have formula, sometimes really hard, almost impossible to prioritize those features. So our formula here is more like, Hey, when we talk to customers, we've started from the problem statement. You know, human nature and customers would say, Hey, you should do this. You should add that feature, right?
You should have built these functionalities, you know, more like give you a solution, but we always, we told our engineers, product managers, solution engineers. When we talk with the customers, always ask, what's the problem? And make sure we're on the same page about a problem statement or pain point. And then we work together with customers to try to understand what had happened.
What's the root cause? And then, when we understand the problem, the root cause, We working together to come up with a solution and as in validated with the customers and as in we are trying to build the product. Otherwise, if you do don't [00:11:00] understand the problem and root cause quite often customers say, you do this way.
Yes, we are going to ask you this way. Another customer tell told us, Hey, you should do that way. It's really hard to manage. That's why here we follow the problem, root cause, and a solution in a framework.
Logan: How do you think about the areas that you have a right to solve those, those problems versus, um, things that maybe are outside of your adjacency? Like the calendaring example you gave, uh, it's a problem we all deal with in a meaningful way. And Zoom is the start of a lot of my, or at least one of the first things I do in the calendaring process.
And so I can say it totally makes sense for you guys to go down that path. I could also say, There's a lot of things that are already integrated into the calendar or the email stack or whatever it is. And, and maybe that's an adjacency that, that doesn't make as much sense for zoom to solve. And so how do you think about like where your scope.
Exists and what, what is inside the boundary versus outside the boundary when you hear pain [00:12:00] points from customers.
Eric: Yeah. Again, we, you know, we, we, we take a Canada for example, we look at everything from customer perspective, perspective. The customer told us, Hey, they are using Google Canada. Yeah. We integrated Google Canada very well, right? We built a Canada client. Right. And we can talk with, uh, the Google backend or we build a calendar client and talk with, uh, uh, Autolook, Autolook as well.
And at the same time, and, uh, we also, some customers say, Hey, what if you offer the calendars native service, not only client, but also server as well. We also offer a native client service. And some customers say, I want to stay with the Google calendar or Autolook calendar. We also have, uh, you know, plugin.
And to integrate it, you know, with, uh, other third party, you know, uh, systems as well. Again, we know every customer is different. We try to make sure and understand the customer pain point to come up with a solution. Your customer say, I don't want to change anything. I want to stay with the Google Canada.
It's okay. We have a plugin, you know, with that, [00:13:00] right? And that's the reason why our solution is very open. And try to address, you know, different customers, you know, uh, requirements, you, you, you, you know, it's really, you know, hard for us just to be the one solution I do this way can satisfy every customer's requirements.
That's not work. That's why, you know, quite often, you know, sometimes we need to show, Oh, this is our call. This one, we can't leverage a third party. You know, again, we want to make sure either we build up ourselves. Are we part of a third party? We always try to offer a solution for our customers.
Logan: As you guys made the shift to being, um, not just a video conferencing platform or, or kind of a, a core application, uh, of which video conferencing was one of the elements to more of a, um, AI first business. Um, are there, is there anything you did specifically in the early days of that shift? That, um, if someone else is going through something similarly or trying to think about how to internalize the opportunity of [00:14:00] AI, is there anything that you, you feel like you guys did uniquely well, or maybe mistakes you made that you would impart to a founder thinking about this?
Eric: You know, we are way beyond a video conferencing company, right? So, you know, a few years ago, you know, we already, you know, talk about how to transform our business from being a video conferencing app, you know, to be our AI first, you know, work, uh, platform. So essentially, we look at the How customers in everyday they work, right?
You know, open up the email, the calendar, send a chat message, whiteboard, make a phone call, schedule a meeting, and, uh, collaborate on document, you know, a a, a lot of, uh, the tools, right? And customer need to back and forth, go to the different tools, right, to get it work done. You know, we think about how to leverage AI to give, give a customer, you know, zoom workplace, the entire collaboration, uh, uh, suite.
Nowhere like this morning I open up Zoom Workplace, I can live, [00:15:00] live within a Zoom Workplace, can get all of my work done. There. I check my email, I send you chat message, right? I scheduled a call, right? I do not leave Zoom Workplace. And also at same time, leverage ai. You know, like, uh, used to be I need to manually create a document.
Now I can tell AI combining, uh, please create a, created a, a summary based on my last conversation with, uh, the, the partner to prepare me well for the next meeting, my AI combining model on my, uh, assistant, right? We try to level the AI to look at each service. We are building how to improve that experience, you know, essentially, you know, down the road, more like AI, you know, will practically help me get most of the work done.
I just assist AI company to do that.
Logan: I know we have a lot of people that live in Zoom, uh, on a daily basis. And so I'm, I'm curious if there's, if there's something that you've been using from an internal dog fooding standpoint, and maybe, maybe that was a good [00:16:00] example, but anything that you would say, Hey, if you're not using this within Zoom's platform, you're just really getting a suboptimal experience.
You would encourage anyone listening to adopt this tomorrow.
Eric: I think a lot of things, right? And then you take a meeting, for example, right? And then you take on an AI company, like if I'm late to the meeting. You know, I just, you know, take out a companion, catch me up, right? It's a lot of features are already available there, right? You know, like, uh, you know, live translation as well.
A lot of, you know, very cool feature already built in. I actually want to custom explore all those cool features. At the same time, a lot of new services. Again, you know, take a Zoom Docs for example. I think it's very powerful tools. You know, it's not like a Google Docs, not like, you know, the mix of the world, right?
I can create a knowledge based wiki, and, you know, and create a table within a Zoom Docs, and track what's going on after a meeting is over. We automatically create a Zoom Doc, right? To track the, like, [00:17:00] meeting summaries, and also the tasks, and so on and so forth. You know, another feature I really like, which is called Zoom Clips.
Very soon we're gonna have feature that's also we announced at Enterprise Connect, where, you know, I created so many videos, right? I personally created videos. You know, it's, it's really, you know, I would say is costly. You know, how to leverage the ai. I just created my avatar and two minutes I give, give to my, our marketing team and down the road they just use a script to automatically generated video for our next, you know, earning call.
I'm going to do that. Right? With that, I do not need to pre record anything. I just let the marketing team, you know, uh, uh, send the, uh, the, the earning call script. You know, we automatically create a video. So a lot of feature like that is very cool. And well, we'd be honored, you know, with the conference platform.
And unfortunately, you know, it takes some time. Many of the customers, they did not realize. Another [00:18:00] example, we have a built in chat functionality. We call it Zoom Team Chat. You know, something like a Slack or Teams. We had that for many, many years. You know, a lot of, uh, you know, bigger customers will deploy that.
It's, it's, it's great to be really in service. And, uh, you know, we create a, you know, here I live on the zoom team chat, right? I send it to all the chat message with my team, with, uh, all hands, you know, our offer all has a meeting and we also have every meeting after the meeting is over, we create a chat, a persistent chat group.
I can continue, you know, engaging with our employees. And there's another powerful tools in a lot of our customers. They are not aware of that.
Logan: Customer education is obviously a, uh, as you, as your surface area increases, it obviously becomes more and more of a, um, challenge for the salespeople for the product team, for product marketing, marketing, whoever it is. Uh, have you found, um, that doing one big release [00:19:00] or, um, narrowing the number of times in which you're releasing and announcing features?
Has has led to better customer education, or do you guys still ship when the products ready and work on catching up and communicating later on to the customers as needed
Eric: Yes. Great question. So given the size of a company, given the, the, the, so many customers and the, the, the speed of innovation is still extremely important, you know, which is this reason why every time I have so many, you know, the new features, because again, we are more, we are a workplace, you know, a platform, and also we have been in the services like a Congress center, you know, a lot of new services and new features.
The key is really not about all those of the innovation. The key is how to. You know, easily, you know, the, the, the hyper customer discover those features and make sure, you know, at the right context, right? Like take the, the, the, the zoom [00:20:00] docs, for example, you know, customer, they are not aware of this feature.
What if we think about a use case where after the meeting is over, we automatically created a zoom doc where you have a meeting summary with that, we can expose. You know, those, uh, new service and new features. So we gotta do, we gotta do, think about it from a customer's perspective, how to, you know, the, the, the embrace those new features, rather than we, we leverage the marketing, you know, that may not work, given the so complicated, you know, the, the, the, the, the services we, we build on, because we have so many new things, right?
So that's kind of for the effort we're working on. And to, you know, take a meeting, for example, right after the meeting is over, and we should tell you where to, where to find, you know, those, uh, the, the, the, uh, the meeting summary template rather than before the meeting we should tell you, oh, you should use a meeting summary template.
How to customize so and so forth. Right? So that's kind of, you know, our strategy.
Logan: as you zoom out and sort of look [00:21:00] forward? Uh, what do you think the future of meetings looks like? Maybe in I don't know, three years, five years, 10 years, whatever time horizon furthest out you feel comfortable projecting. Um, Are there any things that you've internalized that maybe wouldn't be obvious to just, you know, the average person going about their day using zoom
Eric: I think the future, just look at the meeting experience. I'm very excited about the potential and the, you know, innovations, you know, like, uh. You know, a few years later, right? So, you know, how to make sure every meeting experience very immersive, you know, more like, uh, you and I, you know, sitting together, right.
And, you know, local Starbucks coffee, right. And a very immersive 3D, you know, experience. And also, you know, and if I shake your hands, if you can feel my hand shaking, that's even better, right. That's a truly immersive. That's one thing. Another thing is given to the AI evolution, right. We are building a, you know, the, the, the, uh, digital [00:22:00] assistant.
But the next generation of digital assistant will be digital twin. You know, sometimes, you know, it might be a very important meeting and I join, you know, uh, uh, by myself. For some other meetings, I might assign my digital twin to join the meeting. My digital twin not only listening to the meeting over there, but also can help me make the decision as well.
That's the world where we're gonna lead, right? You know, you have ai, you have ar, and together we will make the, the meeting experience very immersive, very intelligent.
Logan: into at a literal level so that people understand it. I think I'm packing the concept of a digital twin would be helpful. Uh, and so can you just go through, um At a very tactical, like what you mean by that? Is it going to be avatar based? Is it, um, uh, the decisioning side, what is it trained on? Can you just give like a little bit more granular insight into it?
Eric: Sure. I think, uh, you know, more like a two step approach. [00:23:00] The step one is more like a digital assistant, right? Based on my digital avatar and also the, the, all the, you know, the information I can access. You know, my digital assistant can access as well. Essentially, I have a personalized LRM, and also my email, chat message, whiteboard, meeting, you know, transcription, any information I can access.
The data also will be fed into my personalized, you know, uh, uh, LRM. You know, it will be part of my digital assistant. That's more like step one. The step two, a lot, a lot of knowledge here. You know, how to make sure, let's say, I download all my knowledge from my brain. Right, somehow to figure out a way to trim my digital assistant, then my digital assistant would be evolved into a digital twin.
Right. I think that's step two. I do not think it's ready yet. We might need some neuroscience, you know, breakthrough. I think that's kind of two step approach.
Logan: And how do you think about resourcing against, um, something like that, that, that [00:24:00] might feel, um, uh, far off to the average person and the digital twin? Like, how do you think about the allocation of resources or R& D development to something like that versus the standard products that you're selling today?
Eric: Again, you know, most of the resources, you know, are working so hard on addressing, you know, customers, you know, today's, you know, the needs, right? And maybe next, you know, a few months, a few quarters, for sure, we have some engineers, you know, work on, work on for the future tasks, right? Maybe, you know, may not be ready for one year, two years, you can call that a lab, right?
So, you know, more like a cutting edge technology, right? And we targeted for the future. So more like a, you know, and most of our engineers for sure, and they're building a foundational technology, you know, uh, more features, you know, AI combining and so on and so forth. We also need to think about the future as well.
I think probably 90%, you know, are working on today's, [00:25:00] uh, the features and services, you know, 10 percent reserved for the future research work.
Logan: You guys obviously have access to a bunch of, um, sensitive information, uh, and trust is such an important point of what it is that you guys do from a security standpoint, data, all of that. Um, there, there does seem to be this, uh, this tension that Um, exists with a lot of the A. I. Products today of a desire for the copious amounts of data that people can access with the need to ensure user trust and confidence, um, with with with either existing or potential customers.
I guess. Can you just speak to this and how you guys? Think about where the bright lines are that exists between, um, the data that you want to train on and enable versus the data that you, you keep totally separate [00:26:00] and, um, is totally sovereign to the individual customer.
Eric: Yes, great questions. First of all, Zoom is a very, very secure, you know, the platform. I take security very, very seriously. That's the reason why today look at it. Almost all, most of the security companies worldwide, you know, they all use Zoom because it's very secure. But, you know, take AI or data privacy, for example, we are the first vendor who made the commitment.
We do not want to use any of our customers content to train our AI model, period. Right? So we made that commitment. So, you know, you know, we just, uh, we have, we build our own large language model, but I use, you know, and we, we use the popular data or maybe, you know, part of your third party, we never want to use our customer data, you know, that's kind of very, very clear.
And if a customer, they want to like a thing on this, uh, AI combining, they wanted to get at a meeting transcription. We also very, very, you know, flexible, you know, the, the, the policy, like a [00:27:00] customer say, I do not want to have any data after meetings or I just needed a meeting summary. We have a zero, you know, the, the data retention policy, right?
Automatically, you know, deleted all the transcriptions, so on and so forth. And some customers say, I don't, I want to make sure this is meeting extremely secure. I do not have any, uh, combining. It's okay. We supported any, any encryption, which is the first vendor, you know, who claimed. The post quantum end to end encryption.
We also support that as well. Again, the data privacy is extremely important. And we look at everything from a customer perspective. We, we do not want to make a decision for a customer. Like, Hey, for this meeting transcription, we should have kept it for three months, six months. No, we give a customer choice.
Let a customer make a decision by themselves.
Logan: Um, we touched on a little bit earlier about your your obsession with the customer. I'm curious. Um, was there an example, uh, in zooms history? Uh, maybe of a product [00:28:00] that became important. Um, where Customer feedback, maybe directly altered a direction, uh, that you were headed from a product roadmap standpoint in a, in an unexpected way
Eric: Yeah, it's happening every day, you know, I give one example, like last night at a dinner with a customer and again, you know, our AI, you know, a companion is based on a federated AI approach, meaning we have our own large length model with Lama or OpenAI and Sorbic, you know, and this is a federated AI approach.
And the customer, some customer, especially for financial institutions, they say they want to just use a Zoom AI combined, you know, our own model. We give them a choice. And, or you can use all the model together as a hybrid. There's some customization. Uh, I just want to use Zoom, uh, compiling maybe with, uh, Anthropic.
I just use those two. Do you support that? Today we do not support that. It's a Zoom owned large language model or federated approach. [00:29:00] When we get those feedback, customers say, You know, they want to pick up a Zoom, uh, own large length model is one of the, the, the, the, the, you know, cloud based large length model, at this moment do not support that.
But based on feedback, we are going to support it very, very soon. You know, those kinds of feedback we receive every day, that's, that's the reason why, you know, our innovation speed, you know, truly help us stand out compared to any other competitors based on customer feedback. We can quickly innovate and very soon we're going to give a customer flexibility.
They can pick up whatever, whatever the, the, the, the larger model they want to use.
Logan: in terms of your stylistic approach to running the business. Um, there's, there's been this, um, refrain around, uh, I think founder mode was the term of Paul Graham. And I think he attributed a lot of the distillation coming from, from Brian Chesky, uh, and. For lack of a for a good [00:30:00] synthesis of at least how I think about it.
It's empowering the founders to sort of make centralized and maybe gut based or forward looking decisions that ripple through an organization, which I think stands in contrast to a lot of executive empowerment and probably elements of delegation as well. Um, I'm curious. Do you need to Do you gravitate to, uh, being more hands on and in the weeds of the individual functional areas, or do you tend to stylistically approach it more from a delegation standpoint?
Eric: Yeah, I like that a conversation between Paul and LeBron is a really, you know, love that. I think most of founders, I think probably, yeah, in my view is extremely hands on. And, uh, I know from the day when I started, you know, 2011 until today, you know, I still very, very hands on, you know, and sometimes you need a delegate.
Quite often, you know, it's hard to delegate, but you really, as a founder, right, you know, you, You [00:31:00] know, let's say, you know, when custom asked us a problem, you know, I really look at it from a custom perspective. I could have delegated to, you know, uh, uh, uh, uh, my direct report and then delegate it to another, you know, manager and then talk to the engineers.
I cannot wait. I've emitted a zoom call with one of the engineers as he's trying to say, what's the problem? When can we come up with a solution? Can we deploy this weekend? This is happening every week, right? Like a founder, I, you know, is, you know, truly care about everything. And also the speed is very important.
That's the reason why sometimes you have to be extremely hands on to talk with the individual contributors and get a thing done as quickly as possible. Because, you know, every day customers might be suffering in the form of those issues. You know, that's the reason why, you know, you have to be extremely hands on, sometimes a little bit of micro management.
But again, the goal is to make sure deliver happiness to our customers. [00:32:00] As long as I have that a goal, I really do not care about a delegation or not a delegation. I just want to get a work done. That's it.
Logan: You all, uh, have gone through, uh, different, um, Uh, journeys over the course of the last couple of years, I guess every business has, but you guys uniquely, uh, certainly had, uh, we're enabling infrastructure for a lot of us just to survive with, with friends and family. And then also, uh, do our jobs over the course of the, the pandemic, I, I, I shudder to think of what the economy maybe looked like absent zoom for, for all the stuff that you guys were able to.
Enable. And then there was sort of a zero interest rate phenomenon that we all went through. And then we've we've sort of had the hangover of all of all of that stuff that's happened since then. I'm curious, as the as the dynamics in the market have changed. Uh, how? How has your culture evolved? How have you thought about?
[00:33:00] Shifting the, uh, internal values or whatever are the case, or maybe not. Maybe you've kept them consistent all the way through. I'm curious, like in going through these different cycles, how you thought about what to iterate on versus what to keep consistent from a cultural standpoint.
Eric: Yeah. Logan, that's a wonderful question. You know, speak of a culture, that's one of the things that keep him up, you know, in the night.
Eric: The reason why, you know, prior to the pandemic crisis, you know, we were a relatively small company, 2, 500, 2, 500 employees come, and I know almost all of them, right? So, and we had a great culture and every day while working hard to truly deliver happiness to our customers, look at everything from a customer perspective, you know, whenever we, we, we, we got any escalation, everyone want to say, Hey, can we deliver today?
Can we deliver this week? We have that mentality. But during COVID, you know, crisis, right, given the, the, the service demand, we had to recruit so many new employees. [00:34:00] Essentially, within 18 months window, we hired around 6, 000 employees. On the, on the one hand, we had no choice, but to hire many employees. On the other hand, we, we made a mistake, I made a mistake.
We hired new employees too quickly. I can tell you the company, the culture was broken a few years ago, you know, we are almost You know, uh, fix the common culture problem, right? The reason why is, you know, sometimes we do not look at everything from custom perspective. Always from look at it from internal perspective.
Oh, we should add this process. Oh, we should do this, do that. We forgot everything we do here. We got to make sure customer feel happy. And we lost that. And all this, uh, you know, we are trying to fix that problem.
Eric: You know, users, you know, recently we just published our culture playbook. The goal is to make sure everyone really understand why we're working so hard here.
What's the goal? You know, our company values just one word, which is care. [00:35:00] You know, care about the community, customer, company, teammates, as well as ourselves. If we do not care about the customers, no matter what we do, we still have innovation. Customers, they do not care. What they care is what we can deliver our services and more value to our customers.
When customers use our service, they feel very happy. Wow, it just works, right? That's the reason why, you know, we are working so hard. And again, you know, we are almost there and to fix the culture, bring our, you know, previous greater culture back. We are not there yet. Hopefully by the end of this year, I told our team, it might take three years for us.
to bring the greater culture back. This is the third year.
Logan: I know one of the, um, values or things that you guys think about is, uh, the, the continuous improvement, uh, element, uh, and I think that's one of the things that you try to instill into the culture. Um, [00:36:00] are there ways that you actualize that, uh, at a personal level, um, things that you do that you think enable you to continuously optimize and be a better CEO, leader, manager, whatever the case may be.
Eric: Yeah, yeah. So here, you know, again, as I mentioned earlier, we have a culture, a playbook, which is the nine principles, you know, one of them is in how to develop ourself to become a better version of ourself, myself included. You know, when, you know, one of those, uh, the culture principle is, uh, daily self reflection.
You know, I want to become a better CEO every day. I want all of my, you know, the managers, engineers, they also become better engineers, better managers as well. You know, what's the formula right here, no matter how busy we are, you know, and, uh, we always, uh, carve out like a 15 or 20 minutes of time every day.
You know, we're likely at the end of the day, you know, think about, Hey, if I start over today. What I should do differently, [00:37:00] do I miss anything? You know, do I receive a, a, a, a customer, you know, do I respond to this customer or not? Right. So it's more like a daily self reflection. And this is the one for our core principles.
The goal would make sure all Zoomies would become better. Then the company will become better. Right. If our employees, myself included, we do not become better. You know, worrying about myself, there's no way for Zoom to move to the next level.
Logan: You guys have moved back to more in person in office, uh, culture and day to day of work. I'm curious. Um, it seems like most of our companies have landed almost back to where they started, uh, the pandemic that if they were remote, they're still remote. If they were, uh, in person, they've kind of moved back to in person plus or minus, I guess.
One of the challenges that I see, um, is there's There's still elements, um, of this hybrid work that we haven't totally figured [00:38:00] out. At least, uh, a lot of my companies haven't exactly figured out the best way of operating. In a hybrid environment where some people are in person and other people are remote and making everyone feel like they're, um, on the same team, albeit maybe the meeting is a little different because there's some people in one room and some people on the zoom screen.
I'm curious, uh, are there tactics you guys have taken or anything that you've done to enable, um, hybrid work to, to work better or make everyone feel like they're on the same page in a meeting?
Eric: Yeah, yeah. So first of all, I would say every company, every business is different. And the way for them embrace hybrid, hybrid work also differently. It could be five days in office, five days remote, right? It's, you know, either way works, you know, in the case of Zoom. And, uh, you know, we are more like a, uh, uh, twice, uh, uh, a week, you know, in office three is, uh, you know, uh, remote work.
The reason why we [00:39:00] embrace hybrid, you know, like that is because a lot of our customers, they embrace hybrid work. We build features and services for the customers. If we do not eat our own dog food, how can we build a better service? For our customers who left our service to embrace hybrid work, I gave a few examples, you know, like in the case of hybrid work, you know, quite often some customers, you know, they, they, they told us, Hey, they need their employees, employees to reserve a desk, you know, before you go to office.
And that's the reason why we built a service, you know, zoom rooms, you know, uh, uh, uh, desk reservation feature. Right. To help a customer reserve a desk, right? That's the kind of feature like that. Also, a lot of customers, Hey, when they back to the office and the conference room experience is different, you know, they, they do not like the experience where, you know, if you're not in a conference room, you're not a, you're not a part of a conversation based on that.
I come, you know, the feedback, you know, we, we, we added a lot of features. And to, to [00:40:00] improve our conference room experience, you know, like an intelligent director in multiple camera support and make sure every participant is sitting in the conference room, you know, from a remote perspective, uh, side, they see a, a, a zoom square and more like, uh, you know, the, the, the, when they all join a meeting remotely, right.
A lot of our features, you know, because, you know, the, we support a hybrid because of the customer support hybrid because of the listening customers. That's the reason why we can, you know, uh, launch a lot of innovations, you know, to support and hybrid work.
Logan: There's a very famous, uh, story of your, your founding and, um, and working at Cisco and Webex and all of that, uh, that I think, um, yeah, has served as something of a, uh, uh, template or an example of, of founders striking out from within a bigger enterprise when they have a, when they have a unique insight or opportunity, um, I'm curious, like, if we go all the way back, [00:41:00] uh, and look at the product insight that you had at that, that time, if you were to distill down, like what the one to two things that you saw that were unobvious to, uh, to the rest of the market, um, what, what were those things and I guess how blaringly obvious were they to you?
Was it a thesis or were you, who you were Pretty convinced that those were, it was inevitable that we were going to move in this direction. And so you were pulling your hair out, trying to convince people that this is where, where we were headed.
Eric: Yes. Wonderful question. So I started in 2011, right? The year before I started Zoom, which was 2010, at that time, I spent a lot of time on talking with the customers, already realized. The future of the, the, the conference will be the video centric. It's not a, you know, screen sharing centric, you know, that's very clear.
And unfortunately, you know, the web as architecture is not about a video, really about data collaboration. You know, I realized there's no way [00:42:00] you have a best way to conference experience, unless you build a formula going up with a new architecture. Very, very clear. That's the one thing. The second thing really about the mobile experience and also meaning You know, like, uh, you know, let's say you and I that joined, like, back then, like, Cisco Telepresence, you know, from the conf group.
But some participants, they should have joined via their phone. At that time, there was no support. So meaning the second problem, meaning it's kind of, Monica, no matter which device you're using. In the laptop, desktop, mobile phone, the conference room, you have to have a consistent, great video experience.
That's the second thing I realized. You have to build it also from the ground up. Those two things I realized, and there's no way to tweak Webex. You know, you have to build a new solution. That's why I started Zoom. So,
Logan: Did people disagree, um, with either of those, uh, two insights or did they just, uh, or I guess was it the first insight that people [00:43:00] disagreed with that it needed to be fundamentally re architected, uh, and that was sort of the resistance within the organization?
Eric: well, I think, uh, good news. All the engineers agreed with me.
Logan: Yeah,
Eric: Everybody else disagreed.
Logan: What is the lesson? I don't want to disparage Cisco, but I'm curious. What is the lesson in that for other, um, companies that that maybe would be faced with a similar situation that, um, that, that, uh, maybe isn't identical, but has some rhyming elements to it. Are there things that you've internalized about that that you want to make sure?
Um, you, you don't let ever occur within zoom because, uh, you know, they just, it led to this outcome for Cisco.
Eric: Uh, yeah, again, don't get me wrong, Cisco is a great
Logan: No, I know. I know. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to use it more as an abstract example
Eric: yeah, yeah, yeah,
Logan: of Cisco.
Eric: So my point of the day is, this [00:44:00] is a lesson I learned and it may not work for others. I would say sometimes if you really listen to a customer carefully, you do not ignore them. You, you, you, you are not going to miss a big opportunity.
That's why. Or. Don't ignore an engineer's feedback, you know, meaning you also, as a special founder or senior executive, no matter how big a company is, always, always keep a very close relationship with those individual contributors, like engineers, also very important. Then everything going on, you know, if you do not stay close, you know, so many layers.
It may not work.
Logan: I'd long attributed, uh, something to zoom's early days and I don't, I was, I was at battery ventures and we were investors in blue jeans, which, uh, for people that don't know, was an early, uh, competitor of, of yours. And actually, I think initially it was out in front, uh, particularly in the enterprise [00:45:00] market.
But one of the, rearchitecture point, right? One of the things that I always thought you guys got uniquely right, and maybe this is just me making it up in hindsight, so I'm curious your perspective on this, was that video conferencing was as much about, uh, audio or maybe even more about audio than it actually was video in the early days, because there's an element of tolerance that people can have if your video cuts out a little bit.
Yeah. But if audio cuts out, it ruins the meeting altogether. I'm curious. I've long attributed that to an insight that you guys had in the early days, but I don't actually know if it's true or not. Is that, is that actually a true observation that you guys had, or have I just reverse engineered it?
Eric: Yeah. So, yeah. BlueJeans founder and CEO Chris is a great friend. I think the insight from BlueJeans is right on. I completely agree. If voice does not work, nothing matters. You have to nail voice first. Again, that's very complicated. You know, voice [00:46:00] OIP, essentially in my view, you know, it's sort of conflicts.
With the TCPIP, you know, it does not work. You have to, you know, figure out a way to make a voice OIP work. No matter what kind of bandwidth, no matter very long distance, long distance, you know, there's a very, you know, unstable internet. How to make the voice OIP work? Again, that's not that straightforward.
That's, that's the reason why even today, you know, some of our competitors, you know, the voice quality is still not very good. So that's another reason why, you know, customers really like our service. It just works. So voice and video and, uh, extremely important when it comes to quality.
Logan: I feel like companies, um, Often have a window of time that they could start and have the success that they did. Do you think if Zoom were started three years earlier, would it have been too early to the market? Or do you think it could have, it could have worked, uh, some period [00:47:00] of time earlier?
Eric: Yeah. Wonderful question. I also thought about that question as well. I, in my view, I think, uh, two or three years earlier, probably even better. But five years earlier, for sure, I'm already, already died. I think so.
Logan: And what was that? Just like the, the architecture primitives of building in the cloud, uh, decisions you would have made around that time had it been, um, five years earlier versus two or three?
Eric: Because five years earlier, you know, at that time, let's say 2016, right? And we started, even have normally two years, you have a solution ready. Let's say 2017 or 18, you have a solution ready. At that time, you know, mobile phone with a camera, not that, you know, popular, right? A lot of laptops don't have a video camera yet, right?
When you already have a solution, you did not see a demand. You might have to, you know, uh, you know, sort of, you know, ask a question. Do I build the right solution? Why do you not see the demand? Actually, sometimes you're ahead of a market. [00:48:00] It's very, very, you know, risky if you're ahead of a market. The reason why human nature, we do not have patience, right?
Oh, we build a solution. If you do not see the market, the demand, we might have pivoted to do something else. Then you might have missed the market window. That's why timing is very tricky. For a few years, I think, Might be okay. So
Logan: Yeah, I was, um, there's, there's, uh, Emmett Shearer, who is the CEO of, uh, Twitch, uh, founder of Twitch said one time to me that the job, if you start too early, your job is to survive, and if you start too late, you might not have the opportunities, and so better to be early than late. Uh, and you just need to make sure that you survive long enough to catch the wave.
I've always thought that's an interesting, uh, way of thinking about it.
Eric: yeah, right on. That's yeah, I totally agree. So
Logan: Um, I'm curious, like in the early days when you, when you, um, you were rejected a number of times if I, if I have this right from, [00:49:00] uh, a visa in trying to come over, um, did, I guess, one, do I have that right? And two, uh, if so, was there anything that, um, you learned from that experience that you think has.
Enabled you to be the founder that you are today, or is that just an unfortunate circumstance that, you know, you don't want people to have to go through?
Eric: I think looking back is seriously That's a great practice. So meaning I think that God already already originated everything I when I was young already practiced never give up if I give up, you know That's kind of I never had a chance to be to the company like a zoom I tried to multiple times at that time.
I told him myself You know, I will try, you know, as hard as I can, you know, maybe a few years as long as they, they, they told me I can, I just keep trying, keep trying, you know, once you learn and perseverance extremely important when you start a business, right? You know, it, it, it, if you're the one [00:50:00] product that don't work, try again.
If you're the one business that don't work, try again, keep trying, keep trying, someday. You know, you might achieve your, you know, uh, some, what you want, right? You know, and dream might come true. Again, don't give up too early. That's what I learned.
Logan: How did you, um, maintain that confidence to keep plowing ahead either with Zoom or with your visa process? Because I would say there's a thin line between, uh, crazy, stubborn people who, uh, you know, never get to where they're going versus the. The people that build the iconic companies and, um, maybe it's just the success.
That's the determinant of which side you fall on on that. But I'm curious, just from a psychological standpoint, the fortitude to keep going. Was there any, anything that, um, you feel like uniquely enabled you to do that?
Eric: That's a great question. So, in my view, sometimes you are stopping on the right thing, you're lucky.
Logan: Yes.[00:51:00]
Eric: stopping on the wrong thing, oh my god, that's bad luck. So, but how to make sure, you know, you're working on the right things. I think, you know, in my view, in multiple things, you know, always look at everything from a customer perspective, put yourself into customer shoes.
The second thing is you have to have, uh, you know, a mentor, or maybe, you know, someone smarter, you know, you can count on always, uh, you know, get their insights. That's the second thing. The third thing, you also need to You know, talk to yourself every day, like, like a Zoom wide daily self reflection. I always ask the question, am I working on the right thing?
Am I, you know, becoming a little bit more stubborn? You know, slide pivot or not, but it's kind of what every day you got to do, talk with yourself, you know, talk with the customers, talk with those people who are smarter than you. Then you can try to make sure you're working on the right things. Try to make sure sometimes don't be too stubborn.
Okay. So it's kind of, uh, it's, it's a little tricky. So
Logan: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious, um, the early days, [00:52:00] uh, were there. Were there things that were not scalable that you guys did in the early days that enabled the success that you ultimately had kind of brute forcing some things initially?
Eric: yeah, there's so many, yeah, you know, uh, examples. One example is early on the capital market pressure. We build a voice, OIP, you know, and for the PhD in service, which is a phone call, right? We did not build it by ourself. We were saying, ah, customer might be switching to the voice. OIP. They did not use a phone, right, to join a call anymore.
We, we were wrong because we partner with a third party and we did not build a by ourselves. And when we offer to launch a service, the quality is so bad and our customers in the complain, we realize. You know, don't look at it from our internal perspective, look at it from a customer perspective. I think we quickly, you know, fix that problem, build our own service and fix that problem.
[00:53:00] The lesson learned, right? So quite often, you know, when you think, and you do not need a PhD in service. You know, you do not look at it from a customer perspective. We did not validate it with many customers and we made a mistake.
Logan: In terms of hiring, uh, you, you've, you've built out a leadership team. I know there's been different evolutions over the years as you, as you've grown. Are there things that you specifically look for, uh, in any person that joins the company or specific things that you uniquely try to validate in an interview process that someone has, that, that will allow them to succeed, uh, within Zoom's culture
Eric: Yeah. So yeah, a little bit, uh, we, we were, you know, sort of took a little bit of different approach early on. You know, the way for us to build each functional team, you know, you know, quite often you might hire a leader first, like, you know, let's take a marketing team, for example, you hire a CMO first and a delegate, a CMO, build a marketing [00:54:00] team and so on and so forth, right.
You know, we took a different approach. You know, we want to build a team first with quite a few individual contributors, you know, and afterwards we hire a leader, right, to make that department more scalable. We took a bottom up approach. The reason why is what if you hire the wrong leader, right, the wrong leader hired the wrong team.
If it doesn't work, the entire team, you know, might be gone, right? So that's why we take a bottom up approach. That's one thing. The second thing, when we try to hire the wrong leader. You know, the employees, we always look at it as self learning and a self motivation. Because startup, you know, tons of work.
Even if you do not sleep, you still cannot get work done, right? How to make sure every employee, they motivate themselves. They can learn everything by themselves. That's extremely important. When it comes to hiring senior leaders, and we like those leaders who has a greater potential. They can grow themselves along with the company growth.
That's the reason why we did not [00:55:00] hire any, like, VP level leaders from any other company. Just a medium level, you know, managers, the record level, right? They joined Zoom, you know, very energetic, right? They learned a lot of things along with the Zoom growth. That works so well, but now we have to change. You know, given the size of the company, you know, those are the seasoned leaders, you know, for sure will help us more.
That formula will not work anymore. So meaning a different, you know, time when a company grows, you have to look at, you know, that formula is still working now, right? That's the reason why, you know, look at, we just hired a CFO from Microsoft, you know, the CTU also from Microsoft. They're all great leaders, you know, already in the corporate VP level, you know, from other companies.
Logan: is the insight on the VP side and those, those scaling days and hiring people that, um, maybe haven't done it. Before or, uh, trying to bring in people that were higher on potential than then experience, um, [00:56:00] what was the insight or the desire to gravitate towards that? Was it so that they weren't calcified in their ways and that they could absorb zooms culture without being too stuck in how they historically did?
Or was it something else?
Eric: The culture of faith, for sure, always the number one, assuming that, you know, all the leaders who hired as a culture of faith, right? The second is really about experience. Sometimes you have a great experience, it may not help you. If you do not want to learn, because every company is different, right? The modern level of experience they gain from, from working with others, others, they come to Zoom, you know, just tell us, I do this, we do that.
Even without understanding our problem. We do not like that. We would like those leaders who come to Zoom, it's very hands on. really trying to understand the problem and then, you know, based on their experience and come up with a solution. And that's the learning, a self learning mentality, extremely important.
I think even more important than their experience. If they learn quickly, They can gain tons of experience, right, at a [00:57:00] startup. So that's why, you know, we prioritize, you know, self learning and self motivation.
Logan: I'm curious if you could go back in time and tell your 2011 self something that you now know 14 years into the journey. Is there, is there one thing that stands out that you you wish you could press that time machine and go back and impart upon yourself way back when?
Eric: Ah, it's a great question. That's too many things. I, I made tons of mistakes and, uh, I would like to tell the younger version of myself. And yeah, it's so many things. Maybe one thing I tell you, actually. You know, we got a great support from VCs. We raised in total 145. 5 million. And when we go to public, the day we make this, we become a public company, the money we had in the bank, you know, more than what we raised from VCs.
You know, I think looking back, that's a huge mistake, a huge mistake. You know, we should be more aggressive [00:58:00] and build a lot of new services, right? The reason why you get money from VC, you have to be smart, how to use that, you know, and build a new services, new features, you know, and new stuff. And I was too conservative and always try to achieve, uh, you know, cash flow positive.
Uh, looking back, that's a, that's a big mistake.
Logan: That's a great commercial for my business. I, I appreciate that. We need, we need founders to continue to take our money. Uh, and some of these businesses are growing so fast these days. I, yeah, it's a good, it's a good lesson. Um, I guess in, in picking those, those areas, um, do you, do you think that like in using that capital and, and being more aggressive in going Different areas where there were there certain things, um, that you ended up just doing later that you would have pulled forward.
Or do you think it would have been a different set of problems that you would have gone after had you done it in [00:59:00] 2015 16 17 versus 2020?
Eric: Yeah. Because early on, I, again, I spent a lot of time talking to customers, already know what they need. They want to have a full, you know, UC solution, right? And then the meeting is the first one and the chat and the phone and a lot of things, they already told us, I, I, I knew that at the time I gave him, maybe I, when I started a company already, you know, I was, you know, age 41.
Now age might play a role. I was too conservative. I want to build a step by step. Yeah. Looking back, it's absolutely wrong. The reason why, when customers say, I badly need a phone service. We do not have that, you know, took us another one, uh, almost two years, you know, three years ago, we launched a contact center, right?
That should be, should have been launched, uh, maybe five years ago, right? Meaning if you understand the customers, you know, they know the requirements, why not build it now? Why you take a step by step approach? You know, that's the reason why, you know, today we look at a lot of new services are working so hard in the pipeline.
You know, we should have started a few years ago, right? [01:00:00] Can we have, we have a capital. But just that I just made a mistake. You just made a wrong decision. So,
Logan: Are there things that you, uh, spend time, more time on now, uh, from, uh, uh, as, as a founder CEO that you wished you had focused in on, um, earlier in the journey? Uh, I often find sometimes people don't lean into enterprise sales or they, you know, maybe delegate in some ways and end up stepping into other functional areas.
Are there, Things in your day to day that you spend more time on now that you wish you had done a few months or years earlier,
Eric: yeah, I think one thing is really about thinking about it used to be, we only look at it like, you know, we only build it like a one year plan and the most one and a half years, we do not think of what, you know, what's the Zoom look like in five years, 10 years, you know, uh, you know, prior to becoming a public company, if you have that more like a long term planning or five years planning, [01:01:00] today is a much better company.
That's the reason why I learn hard a bit, right? That's why I always think about, hey, in three years, five years, what do we want to achieve? And then, you know, based on what we have today, we got to just start working on those kind of stuff. More like a long term planning is becoming more important, more and more important, you know, uh, given the size, given the public company.
And we did not do well before, right? So always, you know, short term focus. And that's something, you know, I think I learned.
Logan: you've been fortunate enough to pick investors, uh, in the private markets, as well as the public markets. Um, anything that you've learned about, uh, picking who to, who to work with that you would impart upon a, uh, CEO or someone that's thinking about, um, how to pick who, who are going to be the partners on the cap table.
Eric: Yeah, so, yeah, early on, I had a philosophy, and today it's still very, very, you know, I think about it, you know, to me, it's two things. First of all, I [01:02:00] want to pick someone I can work together with, you know, forever. I, you know, Monica, uh, you know, startups, you know, is the long journey, right? Could be 10 years or maybe 20 years.
You pick up a, uh, a partners, you know, you, you can become your greater friend. You can work together, you know, even not for business, but must have something else, you know, for everyone, right? It's kind of a, you know, lifetime friend, right? This is, that's really important. That's the number one thing. Number two thing.
I, I really like it. It's in particular for investors. They not only bet on our business, they also want to bet on me, you know, trust me. Because, you know, as a founder, right, sometimes you have to pivot quickly. If they really invest in your business, what if your business don't do well, you want to pivot, they may not want to support you anymore.
But this is why, you know, I like those, you know, investors or partners. Who, you know, truly trusted me and bet on me, you know, in addition to bet on our business. That's just, you know, second thing, you know, I think as long as I find anyone, you know, I can be a lifetime, you know, uh, friend [01:03:00] and it was a bet on me.
I think, yeah, I think why not, you know, become a partner. So
Logan: As we wrap here, um, are there any things that you think about in our industry, uh, that, that you project forward in the coming decade or, uh, just a belief that you have in a unique way, um, about, uh, anything in the industry that you think is going to radically change over the course of the next decade, particularly as people think about how AI is going to permeate our, our day to days.
Eric: in my view, AI is already the next important as we all know, right. And nobody knows what's the future look like in 10 years. I think this is the AI. It's just crazy. innovation pace on AI front. You know, today there's so many engineers work on the product. I guess for sure we all know that. You know, so much, so many AI engineers, you know, will deliver much more than human engineers [01:04:00] delivered over the past you know, 200 years.
I do not know which industry and will be extremely different, right, and truly stand out compared to other peer industries. But I would say healthcare could be something extremely interesting. Right? The new drug discovery process, the way to take care of our body, right? And the way and, uh, to, to, to lever the AI, make the lives better.
And I think this could be revolutionary and that's kind of, uh, you know, uh, my two cents.
Logan: Well, Eric, thanks for, thanks for doing this. It was fun to, uh, it was fun to have you, uh, have you on and, uh, talking through all this stuff and look forward to hopefully doing it again at some point in the [01:05:00] future.