Is there any indication of the IPO date available? I will follow the numbers on this one and will seek to buy a starter position if I can get in at a reasonable markup on Day 1
Zoom is killing it. People love it. This is how products become industry standard.
We just abandonded WebEx for Zoom. Two of the last 3 meetings I’ve used it for, it locked up on me and held up the meeting I was hosting both times. One of them was with my VP sitting across the table from me… good times. As annoying as WebEx was in some ways, it at least worked consistently, for both large (hundreds of people) and small teleconferences.
I’ll give Zoom the benefit of the doubt, but all it’s “cute” doesn’t mean a thing if it doesn’t do basic stuff like not die right as a meeting is kicking off.
(Microsoft Teams can go die in a fire. I’m a long-time MSFT investor, but that’s a giant (apparently I can use this word so I’ll spell it incorrectly) t-e-r-d searching for a toilet. I miss the simple days of apps like Trillian where my “chat” stuff can stay out of the way in a small corner of my display and not eat up precious real screen estate.)
Does anyone know the market size and Zoom’s market share? I am thinking webex, gotomeeting, and Skype are much bigger.
Tex, WebEx is owned by Cisco, and they do not break down the WebEx numbers. But the Applications division of Cisco (what WebEx is in), is about a $5 billion a year business. I only know AppDynamics is also in Applications.
When WebEx was acquired in 2007, they were roughly a $350 million a year company.
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Based on some personal experiences, I have to wonder whether the X works wonderfully vs X is as big a problem as all the rest isn’t due more to underlying infrastructure than it is to the cleverness of the product. If there are hesitations in loading a web page this may be mildly annoying, if one is even paying that close attention, but those same hesitations in the audio or video stream of a presentation would be very annoying.
Based on an unscientific survey Zoom seems to be ranked #3 at roughly a third of webex, and gotowebinar. Pretty impressive have to say.
I am not a fan of this space. There are literally dozens of competitors, very many free choices, and extreme fragmentation.
I’ve used half a dozen, including Zoom, Skype, Webex.
My personal favorite right now is https://appear.in which can be used even with very low bandwidth, always just works, and is dead easy to use and pass to colleagues. You even have your own room, constantly available. A real pleasure to use, and absolutely free.
So, they may be growing fast, but how will they dominate? I pass
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I am not a fan of this space. There are literally dozens of competitors, very many free choices, and extreme fragmentation.
I’ve used half a dozen, including Zoom, Skype, Webex.
You may be right. There are certainly a lot of small (and large) players. But I still feel strongly that the market is not looking for 5 solutions. I think 2 or 3 will capture 80% of the total market, and I think Zoom is well positioned to be one of those 2 or 3.
There is just too much friction in running conference calls now. I’m on a call as I type this (not presenting, obviously). It was (again) a mess to set things up. 4 different companies, with 5 participants, across 3 countries. The presenter waited until 15 minutes before the call to send details, even though this was planned for 5 days. He chose google Meet. It wouldn’t work with my Safari browser. So last minute download of Meet on iOS. The key participant (target customer) could not get his microphone to work. Had to drop off and rejoin. Finally got it to work (we are 10 minutes late now starting the call). 10 minutes after call start, the presenter’s microphone stopped working. Took 3 minutes to fix. The screen he was sharing stopped working after 20 minutes, although he quickly fixed it. Who knows what will happen next? And I now have about 5 apps on my phone for calls (GoToMeeting, Skype, Meet, Zoom…).
Skype is a disaster, but it has tremendous coverage. I hate using Skype, but I’m forced to use it often. They really had the chance to dominate this market, but I believe they lost their window of opportunity.
I really think the market wants 2-3 solutions max that everyone knows and everyone can quickly use. Ideally companies that are not linked to major players like google or Microsoft for security reasons. Yes, I agree the technical moat is not wide. But you can say the same about Coke: anyone with sugar, water, and a bit of coloring can create their own soft drink…
I’m not completely sold on Zoom, and I do share your concerns. I just think the market is still looking for that one big winner in this space. And I think Zoom is well positioned to be that huge winner. Or at least share in a bit part of the space.
To be clear, I’m talking about corporate clients. If you want to communicate with your girlfriend in Canada, then by all means use whatever. But if you want to do a conference call across multiple continents with various companies, it’s a different story.
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Full disclosure of a trip within my head included below:
Knowing and observing what I have regarding this board and the market-moving impact it can have, I have refrained from posting much about Zoom so far and had considered making a concerted effort not to talk about it until after establishing a position, as it is an IPO that I am considerably interested in after having briefly seen the numbers and heard a few users pseudo gush about it. I had even almost sent Austin a message to share these thoughts that I have had.
Seeing the length of this thread and having heard the gushing by Aaron Bush and Ron Gross on Motley Fool Money, my “self-imposed quiet period” strategy/plan seems to be at the point of being worthless and ineffectual.
All that said, it is to-be-determined whether I will initiate a starter position or maybe a more-than-starter-sized position on Day 1 of this IPO or not. Perhaps I should put in a request with my broker for some shares to at least test out that process?
volfan84
would likely buy some shares at the IPO list price right now if I had that ability
What a naive person 16 days ago.
volfan84
16 days closer to 35 years old than on April 2nd
Not buying ZM at >$60 today, but will surely keep watching it
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volfan84
16 days closer to 35 years old than on April 2nd
There seems to be a certain subset of men that go thru the cycle of peaking in their 20s, then maybe getting married and having kids in their 30s and imagining they are middle-aged already and they start letting that “dad bod” fill in a bit, maybe they wear sweatpants an excessive amount of the time, and ultimately they find themselves parked just outside the Sonic drive-thru, finishing those breakfast burritos and getting ready for the “dessert” of mozz cheese sticks. Then they suddenly realize life isn’t quite over and hit a groove as they turn/near 40 and get back in shape. Think: Patrick Swayze in Point Break.
So don’t sweat the mid-30s. Hope this helps.
To keep this post from being OT, I would like to add that ZM initial price was supposed to be approx $9b mkt cap, and this 70% pop puts it at around $15b mkt cap.
For perspective, the market basically needs to believe:
- ZM is actually worth twice as much as Zscaler or MongoDB.
- Or basically equal to Twilio…you know, but without any of the hard work, actual revenue, or acquisitions.
For an investment in ZM stock at current prices, you need to believe:
- Zoom will, like, totally be a $30b stock in 2 years, which given their approx $300m TTM revenue would have to double in 2019 and double again in 2020 to keep you just under a 30 P/S.
- That the market hasn’t jumped the shark on this one.
Dreamer <— gonna sit ZM out. And older than 45.
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