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Zoom’s CEO says he has two priorities: work and family. When they collide, family wins.
On an episode of the “Grit” podcast published on Monday, Eric Yuan, who founded the company, said he doesn’t have bandwidth for much outside his job and his wife and three grown children.
“I do not have a lot of hobbies at all,” he said. “Family and Zoom, that’s pretty much it.”
Yuan said he wants to lead by example.
“I tell our team, ‘Guys, you know, there’s no way to balance. Work is life, life is work,'” Yuan said. “However, whenever there’s a conflict, guess what? Family first. That’s it.”
Yuan founded Zoom in 2011 as a 41-year-old, after serving as the vice president of engineering at WebEx, which was later bought by Cisco. Zoom went public in 2019, and usage of its videoconferencing software exploded during pandemic-era remote work.
Zoom is valued at $24.31 billion, with Yuan holding about 20% of its shares. Its stock is up 27.5% in the past year.
On the podcast, Yuan shared an example where his duties as a CEO and father clashed.
The company hosted a Christmas party in San Jose on the same night as his son’s San Francisco basketball game.
“I told our team I cannot make it on time, I need to finish watching my son’s basketball game first,” he said.
He added that he watched all his kids’ sports and dance practices and brings his laptop, but only worked when they were on the bench. He would return to watching when they got back in the game.
“That’s the reason why I have back problems today — because I was sitting there for way too long,” he said.
Yuan added that he wasn’t happy for a year during his time at Cisco and wanted to build his own product. But he delayed founding Zoom because he wanted his kids to grow up and start middle school.
He also avoided business travel until his kids left home, including for investor roadshows when the company was gearing up to go public in 2019.
“I can use Zoom, giving me a great excuse,” he said, adding that his chief financial officer did all the travel.
Yuan said he is an “empty nester” now, and the only thing he regrets is not spending more time with his kids before they turned 15.
Zoom did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Yuan is among a group of Silicon Valley leaders who are publicly speaking up about their roles as fathers.
Last year, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian launched a podcast called “Business Dad” to talk about how men can balance being a dad with a successful career.
“There’s an opportunity here to normalize a different kind of masculinity,” he said in an interview with People magazine last year.
Lyft’s CEO, David Risher, has also spoken about prioritizing finding a balance among work, family, and hobbies like reading.
He told Business Insider earlier this week that he likes cooking and cleaning up with his wife and that he limits time on his laptop after work.
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