Skip to content

Founder-story archive · · 51 seconds

Eric Yuan and Zoom

Watch the original Short, follow its timestamped caption record and see the source-review scope below.

Open the original on YouTube ↗

Timestamped caption record

Automatically generated captions, reproduced as a record of the video—not as independently verified reporting. Timestamp links open the relevant point on YouTube.

Read the caption record (23 lines)
  1. 0:00Cisco said no to the man who built Zoom.
  2. 0:02This is Eric [music] Yuan. America
  3. 0:03rejected his visa eight times in two
  4. 0:05years. On the ninth try in 1997, he got
  5. 0:08in. He joined a video startup called
  6. 0:10[music] WebEx. Cisco bought it for 3
  7. 0:12billion. He became a vice president, 800
  8. 0:14engineers under him. Then, he pitched an
  9. 0:16idea, [music] video that just works on a
  10. 0:18phone. Cisco said no. So, in 2011, he
  11. 0:21quit. [music] 40 engineers followed him.
  12. 0:23He called it Zoom. Nobody thought the
  13. 0:25world needed another video app. He built
  14. 0:27it anyway. 2019, Zoom went public. The
  15. 0:29stock grew [music] 72% in a day. Then,
  16. 0:322020 happened. 10 million a day became
  17. 0:34300 million. Every school, every [music]
  18. 0:37office, every funeral. Zoom became a
  19. 0:39verb. Today, it's worth 28 billion.
  20. 0:41Nobody says, "Let's WebEx." The man
  21. 0:44Cisco said [music] no to had already
  22. 0:45heard it eight times. He kept going.
  23. 0:48Follow Vibe Economies for more.
Original publication and evidence scope

Original YouTube title: “Cisco said no to Eric Yuan. He built Zoom instead.”. The original title may contain claims not confirmed by this companion.

Upload date, duration and captions were retrieved from the public YouTube record on 2026-10-16. Dates are day-level, not an asserted exact upload time. Market values, audience totals and references to “today” belong to the original publication context.

Keep exploring founder stories

Browse all new Short companions ↗ · Watch the documentaries ↗

Follow the next story.

Founder stories, documentary releases and funding research.

Sign up for the newsletter ↗