I was just chatting with a friend of mine who was concerned about Zoom. I thought it may be of interest to other Zoom investors. Not sure if any of these points have already been touched on here, so forgive me if it’s redundant or insignificant and feel free to delete this post.
Steve: Do you think Zoom is going to go away? Competition from Microsoft and others… I don’t see a real vaccine for at least another six months. And then you have to actually get people vaccinated. Nobody wants to be the first to be vaccinated so there goes another six months or a year.
Me: Zoom isn’t going away. They have more competition now, but think about it. Video conferencing is far from new. If the big companies had nailed it before Zoom came around Zoom wouldn’t have had a chance. They’re obviously doing something right, and they’re the first to do it right. First mover is a huge advantage. And their name has already permeated the collective consciousness and is being used as a verb. They’re already established in the space. With so many companies and individuals already using it they will compel others to use it already since it works well and there’s little incentive to switch to another service.
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I agree that it isn’t going away, if anything, I think it’s going to become more pervasive. I just watched a virtual round table with Tom Lee, Pete Najarian and others discussing the recent market moves. It was hosted on Zoom, and with all of the participants in different geographic locations. And watching it was a easy as clicking a link. The ability for parties to congregate remotely is a boon to anyone who has an audience they want to connect with. And with seemingly everyone having zoom installed on their smartphone, tablet and computer, there’s little resistance to them being able to connect on a global scale. It’s also become part of the vernacular: “let’s hop on a zoom call.” And the thing is, they’re not a first mover. Video conferencing has been around for at least a decade, if not longer. They just do it better than anyone else. As long as they continue to innovate, I see their position as market leader solidifying as their install base increases and they become the de facto go to for that function. It’s much like Adobe Photoshop, there have been other image editors, but Photoshop was better, and at a certain point everyone just used it because everyone else used it. Now they have virtually no competition. Just my two cents. Long ZM.
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