Zoom Zoom! Epic growth for Video-conferencing company during COVID-19

I’m not big on joining earnings calls, but you’ve gotta say, this is one hell of a financial report for a company most of you hadn’t heard of before governments around the world starting forcing us to stay at home.

Zoom has become more than a company, more than a product, Zoom is a Verb. Like Kleenex is a Tissue, Zoom is a Video Conference, and our use of Zoom for corporate meetings and family catchups and bingo games has given rise to a financial boom for the parent company.

In the first quarter the company had revenue of $328.2 million. You’re thinking – but it’s free? Well yes – it is, but only for 40 minute calls, so millions of people like me were happy to stump up $30 or so to get the better version and longer calls.

Just how good was that $328.2 million amount? Up 169% year on year:)

They have had a 90% increase in companies spending more than $100,000 per year! 265,400 customers have more than 10 employees. Up 354% year on year.

Eric Yuan, Founder and CEO of Zoom says “We were humbled by the accelerated adoption of the Zoom platform around the globe in Q1. The COVID-19 crisis has driven higher demand for distributed, face-to-face interactions and collaboration using Zoom. Use cases have grown rapidly as people integrated Zoom into their work, learning, and personal lives,”

“I am proud of our Zoom employees who dedicated themselves to support customers and the global community during this crisis. With their tremendous efforts, we were able to provide high-quality video services to new and existing customers.

And then there’s the education aspect, a staggering amount of usage across the globe for remote learning. Yuan saying “We also supported an unprecedented number of free participants, including over 100,000 K-12 schools around the globe that chose Zoom to deliver the best online education experience. This quarter, we were also proud to launch Zoom Cares, our corporate philanthropic entity, with initial grants to San Jose Digital Inclusion Fund, Destination Home, the CDC Foundation, the World Health Organization and the CDE Foundation. While the key long-term focuses of this foundation are education, climate change, and social equity, our primary grants in Q1 were toward organizations making a difference during COVID-19.”

And there’s no risk of them struggling either, cash on hand – $1.1 billion dollars!

Just finally, for some dollar perspective. This quarter, they had $259 million in revenue. Compare that to the first quarter of the financial year, where revneue was $22.2 million.

Staggering stuff.

And all with the shadow of privacy, encryption and other concerns. Clearly, we just want it to work, and don’t care about all those things.