Zoom Head of Product: How We Build Product

1. AGAakash Gupta0:00

   Today we're gonna talk about how Zoom took over the world, became a $4.5 billion company with over 200 PMs.

2. JBJohn Beckmann0:06

   Zoom, during the pandemic, grew from one to four billion in revenue. We grew to 7,000 employees. We grew our product team from, uh, just over 20 to north of 200. I joined Zoom in January of 2020, so right before COVID started. And by March, obviously things were going really, really, really quickly.

3. AGAakash Gupta0:23

   Take us behind the scenes there. How did it work when you guys had to institute that three-month feature freeze?

4. JBJohn Beckmann0:29

   Yeah, I mean, that was Eric's leadership, was daily tiger team meetings with the E-staff to review issues, marshal all the resources we needed to, to move as quickly as we could.

5. AGAakash Gupta0:37

   So you mentioned $4.5 billion. That's a crazy number, right? What's the biggest mistake you guys made during that pandemic growth period?

6. JBJohn Beckmann0:44

   Sometimes it takes the same amount of time to just think slightly differently about something that might last a little further or scale a little bit better. Especially with the AI front, we're growing our AI usage by almost 60% on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Our operating cash flow is still really, really strong and growing at 22% as well.

7. AGAakash Gupta1:00

   You basically have like a, uh, live transcription going, and then you probably hook up into like a OpenAI API to like answer questions or something like that, or how did you guys build that?

8. JBJohn Beckmann1:08

   Yep, yep, it's something along those lines, right? So you have to turn on the AI so that we do get the transcript, and then the transcript can be leveraged to provide those types of tools. And then when the AI is enabled as well, that's also the tool that we use to generate the meeting summary, which is something that shows up after the meeting is over.

9. AGAakash Gupta1:21

   Was there a time when you made a mistake that you would look back and say, "That could've been done better"?

10. JBJohn Beckmann1:26

    Probably a lot of the mistakes just came from trying to deal instantly and as quickly as we could with many, many issues. If I were in that situation again, do my best to try and insert some of that type of thinking, but-

11. AGAakash Gupta1:36

    If you had to redesign Zoom from scratch for 2025, what would it look like? Really quickly, I think a crazy stat is that more than 50% of you listening are not subscribed. If you can subscribe on YouTube, follow on Apple or Spotify podcasts, my commitment to you is that we'll continue to make this content better and better. And now on to today's episode. We have John Beckmann. He heads up webinars and live events product for Zoom. John, welcome to the podcast.

12. JBJohn Beckmann2:10

    Thank you. It's good to be here.

13. AGAakash Gupta2:12

    How big is Zoom today?

14. JBJohn Beckmann2:14

    Uh, Zoom at the moment is a little bit north of $4.5 billion in revenue, which a lot of people don't know, uh, which is a, a pretty big number. Um, we're over 7,000 employees, uh, which is quite a bit of growth since, um, pre-COVID days and our IPO. Uh, and you know, we've got a lot of exciting things going es- especially with the AI front. We're, uh, growing our AI usage, um, by almost 60% on a quarter-over-quarter basis. Um, our operating cash flow is still really, really strong and growing at 22% as well, so there's a lot of metrics we're really excited about.

15. AGAakash Gupta2:52

    So the metric that you didn't mention is that revenue growth rate. That's in that single-digit growth rate. And sometimes I hear people saying, "Hey, is Zoom getting over-bloated with too many features?"

16. JBJohn Beckmann3:07

    Uh, well, that is, uh, I suppose in the eye of the beholder. I mean, that's a, a risk that all products run when they, uh, get more mature. But, um, you know, our, our founder and CEO, Eric, is always preaching the gospel of, uh, simplicity and, uh, usability, and so we're constantly reviewing all aspects of the meeting experience and all of our products' experience to make sure that we're maintaining that, that usability and trying to strike the balance between functionality and, and usability.

17. AGAakash Gupta3:37

    So for over three and a half years, you led the meetings team. Can you give us a story of when you guys simplified the UX, or how were you guys doing that really specifically?

18. JBJohn Beckmann3:48

    Uh, sure. Um, I think one example that is, is pretty interesting is actually around the raised hand feature, which some people might not really think all that much about. Um, but video conferencing is a very, very psychological product where people are looking at themselves and looking at each other, and this raised hand feature really became, um, a source of a lot of, of feedback. And, um, we did things like, uh, understanding the order in which those raised hands, uh, came, worrying a lot about how to dismiss the raised hand once the question was answered, and allowing the host to manage those raised hands, and that's all really reflective of going pretty deep on what's a simple feature, but it matters a, a, a great deal in, in meetings where you're trying to manage people, uh, asking questions.

19. AGAakash Gupta4:35

    That's one I use a lot. That's super interesting.

20. JBJohn Beckmann4:37

    Mm-hmm.

21. AGAakash Gupta4:38

    So you mentioned $4.5 billion. That's a crazy number, right?

22. JBJohn Beckmann4:41

    Mm-hmm.

23. AGAakash Gupta4:41

    And a lot of that growth came during the pandemic. I think you guys went from something like one billion to like three or four billion in that period.

24. JBJohn Beckmann4:51

    Yeah.

25. AGAakash Gupta4:51

    What's the biggest mistake you guys made during that pandemic growth period?

26. JBJohn Beckmann4:57

    Uh, oh gosh. Well, um, you know, my perspective is we were this company, I joined Zoom in January of 2025-- uh, of 2020, so right before COVID started. And by March, obviously things were going really, really, really quickly, and that's where we, I think, in very short order attained that four billion, uh, run rate that you, that you referenced. And of course, on that growth path at the time, uh, in the first half of 2020, you know, the whole world transitioned to using Zoom. And it was really, really exciting, but also really, really stressful. Uh, and you know, we don't think of it so much more as mistakes as sort of trying to keep up what-- with what was a really, really unique situation. And I think what we did is, is listen very closely and react very, very quickly. Um, you know, I was on a part of leading a effort to focus on, um, some of the challenges we had during COVID for a, a three-month period where it was, you know, feature freeze on anything other than, uh, what was going on in the market. And so-

27. AGAakash Gupta6:00

    Wow

28. JBJohn Beckmann6:00

    ... we were trying to, you know, address the needs of education customers that were all trying to go online. We were, um, building security features to, uh, help people control, uh, access to their meetings and, uh, all sorts of things like that. So I'm reallyYou know, proud of that phase. Uh, on the product side, it's, it's pretty interesting as a longtime enterprise software person, it's not often you have that sense of mission, uh, and the sense of really sort of helping the world. But certainly at that time period, and probably for another year or two, that was the case at, at Zoom. So, uh, it was pretty terrific.

29. AGAakash Gupta6:35

    [lip smack] Can you take us behind the scenes there? How did it work when you guys had to institute that three-month feature freeze? Was it Eric, you, engineering lead, all in a war room looking at the situation with new features? How did it come about? Because that's an awfully long time.

30. JBJohn Beckmann6:50

    [lip smack] Uh, yeah. I mean, that was Eric's leadership, um, sort of made it very straightforward. You know, everybody's eyes were all on the same, same list of things. Um, and my boss, the CPO at the time, had asked me to help basically project manage that across our product portfolio. And, you know, tactically, what it looked like was, was daily tiger team meetings with the E-staff to review issues and, uh, marshal all the resources we needed to, to move as quickly as we could. It was really like, uh, a great forcing function and focusing, uh, function that, um, aligned sort of everybody in the s- in the same direction.

Episode duration: 1:01:28