Meanwhile, Zoom founder Yuan has been enjoying the fruits of his labour, seeing his net worth soar by almost 400 percent in 2020, with his personal shares in Zoom now valued at around $17bn.

The company’s user numbers have skyrocketed since the onset of the pandemic, with over 300 million video call participants flocking to its platform every day during the month of April. Everything from daily work meetings to high-intensity workout classes and Friday night drinks suddenly moved from the real world to the virtual one, and Zoom was there to facilitate it all. When the world as we know it started to shut down back in early March, the word “Zoom” quickly joined the likes of “social distancing”, “bubbles” and “WFH” as part of our pandemic-related vocabulary. Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of video conferencing phenomenon Zoom, is undoubtedly one of this year’s biggest winners. 2020 success stories are certainly few and far between, but amid such chaos, certain individuals have thrived. But then along came COVID-19, plunging the world into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. After the long recovery from the Great Recession, many economic experts and business moguls allowed themselves to believe that the worst days were behind them, and that they would never again see such a crisis in their lifetime. Economically speaking, it has been the kind of year that any entrepreneur dreads.

Zoom stock january 2020