Zoom IPO: CEO Eric Yuan and CFO Kelly Steckelberg explain what is next

When the video conference company Zoom was published on Thursday, the shares rose to 81%. But for Zoom, this is just day one of this milestone, and tomorrow employees are back at work.

"We have to go back to work," Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan told Business Insider. "I'm going to fly back to California. We must double down on our performance and do what we did before. We must continue to do so to make sure our customers are happy."

Before becoming public, Zoom increased $ 517.5 million from investors, priced its $ 36 shares to reach $ 9.2 billion. Zoom goes into the public markets with profitability on its side, which makes Zoom stand out in a landscape where technology companies often have redline-filled balances when they go public.

"It's been something we've been working for too long," Kelly Steckelberg, Zoom's Chief Financial Officer, told Business Insider. "It's a great milestone … Given the market conditions and our readiness, we felt it was the right time to do so."

3 by IPO Goal

Now that Zoom has reached its first milestone, it has three main goals: selling to multiple businesses, expanding international sales, and pushing the new product Zoom Phone, a cloud-based phone system. In January, Zoom hired into an international sales manager, and it has also been hiring new company representatives.

As it aggressively hires more engineers and sales representatives, Yuan said that a company cannot succeed or grow without a healthy culture. This is reflected in employee rankings Glassdoor, where Zoom has 4.8 stars out of 5 and is ranked 2nd place to work in 201[ads1]9.

Upon hiring, Yuan said the company cares more about whether candidates can build on corporate culture and if they are willing to learn than the universities or companies they come from. After all, if a corporate culture breaks, it can quickly cause a company to rot.

Read more : Video conferencing company Zoom rates IPO of $ 36 per share, giving it a value of $ 9.2 billion – 9 times the last private valuation

At the same time, Zoom has its face share competitors: Google Hangouts, Microsoft's Skype, and even Yuan's former Cisco WebEx firm. But Yuan said Zoom does not focus on competitors.

"We really spend the time talking to our customers," Yuan said. "We are trying to be the first supplier to tackle customer problems and try to be the supplier to find a better solution. If we focus on competitors, it's not sustainable."

Zoom is secret to profitability

Through IPO roadshow, Yuan joined all their meetings via Zoom. Steckelberg traveled to the meetings, while Yuan called in from his office in San Jose, California. As a joke, Yuan would change the video's background to different scenes, such as a beach in Hawaii. He said the shareholders were impressed.

"The first two minutes they were surprised," said Yuan. "They said," Wow, I didn't know you could. "It's a wonderful experience."

This also showed shareholders how Zoom grew so fast. Steckelberg said that is because it is virus in nature. If a host calls someone else through Zoom, the person on the other hand has the opportunity to become a Zoom customer. Zoom invests in sales and marketing, but it does so with "discipline".

"It has the opportunity to be shared by millions of people without having a sales team to do so," Steckelberg said.

Moreover, Zoom has this philosophy: Employees should take a moment to think about how they spend their own money and take two minutes to think about how they spend their money. This sparse philosophy, Yuan and Steckelberg said, also helped make Zoom profitable.

"We strive to help people think about how people can be as effective as possible," Steckelberg said. "We want them to be thoughtful about how they give value to our customers."

That's because Yuan doesn't see venture capital money as money. And whenever managers or department heads want to spend money, they ask themselves if there is a solution, why they spend the money, and what they get as a result.

"I remind myself that the money from investors is not money from our perspective," said Yuan. "It's trust. Every dollar is trust. Those investors trust us … It's a reason that contributed to profitability."

This, Yuan said, is an important aspect of Zoom's top corporate value: care.

"We care about the community, the customer, the company, the teammates and ourselves," Yuan said. "Today we added an extra: shareholders."