Hello, yet another edition of Goldman Sachs Communications and Technology Conference 2024. Third year in a row. Thank you so much, Eric, for gracing the occasion and sharing your time with us. Really appreciate it. Why don't we jump right in? You're a visionary, you changed our lives. I have to acknowledge that again and again.
Thank you.
What do you see changing in the next five years? What do you want Zoom to be? You know, nobody could have predicted five years ago what Zoom would be like. Hard to make a prediction, but what are your goals? What do you want this company to achieve and accomplish five years from now?
Yeah, Kash, thank you for having me. So, it's time flies. I remember I was here last year as well. You look younger and younger every year, so-
You do, too.
I’m so jealous, so. So in terms of vision next five to 10 years, and I remember when we started, we were, you know, trying to build a better video conference solution. It’s very simple vision. I think the next five to 10 years, I think, we really want to build an AI-first work platform. It’s much bigger vision. So no matter for the frontline workers or non-workers or maybe engineers or, or, or support agent, we want to build something for them. But essentially, just not a. We’re more than just video conferencing. No, we’re more than just a UC and a CC solution. We’re more than just a collaboration. It’s AI first, you know, work platform. Essentially, we want to, you know, employees, no matter what they do, they can live within a Zoom work platform to get the work done.
I'll give one example, right? What I mean AI first. Let's say I want to create our Q3 board deck for our board meeting. You know, now, the way it works, you know, our finance team, our sales team, marketing team, they work together, right, to create a slide. With the AI first work platform, I can do that. I can call the Zoom AI Companion agent, "Hey, I want to create a Q3 board slide deck." And then the AI agent will look at all the sources, you know, from CRM, from our, as you know, financial, the back-end system or the marketing system, any data sources, will automatically, you know, create that slide deck. You know, I can look at that, edit that. I can get work done, right? Just within a few minutes, I get the slide deck done, right?
This is a part of our work platform. You know, I think it will take some time to get it there, but I think that's the vision, and we are very, very excited. In terms of goals, I would say it's similar to what we did, you know, in our $1 journey, right? And do all we can to create value for our investors, for our customers, and also for our employees. For those early investors who bet on Zoom, we give them very good return, right? You know, same is true for our early, you know, adopters, you know, for those customers who deployed Zoom many years ago, right? And also the employee really like that. We want to achieve the same goal in our $2 journey in the next five to 10 years.
That's fascinating that you want to be involved in the world of work as a professional, not just doing a conferencing.
It's a work of-
Yeah.
It's a work platform.
Yeah. And if you look at the core competence of Zoom, how should we think about how the core competence of the company lends itself to where you want the company? Do you have to do certain things differently, add more new product, make acquisitions, whatnot? Because that is the landing spot that would-
Yeah.
be potentially very value-creative.
I think the number one thing you look at Zoom doing is, you know, faster innovation cycle.
Mm-hmm.
We always and innovate together with our customers. Quite often, you know, you try the Zoom product versus any other competitor product, and you very often we receive feedback, "Oh, why Zoom is better?" Because we spend more time than any of our competitors, right, to truly work together with customer and understand their pain point. And we come back, and it's drive innovation and quickly deliver something to customers. I think that's our company DNA. That's the number one thing. Number two thing is really, you know, set up a long-term vision. Not like, "Hey, this year, in two years, what do we want to achieve?" We really set up a five- to 10-years vision. More like similar to what I started in 2011. I told our team, "Hey, in 10 years, can we become public company?
Mm-hmm.
Can we have reached a billion-dollar revenue?
Mm-hmm.
We always set up a long-term vision, right? So, you know, for the time being, you look at, why, you know, you are doing this? If you really think about it in the long run-
Mm-hmm.
A lot of things we are doing makes sense. You know, when it comes to work platform, look at it recently, we launched Zoom Docs. And quite often, you know, and the customers say, "Why do you-
Yeah, why would you do Docs?
Why we do Docs, right? Again, the Zoom Docs is not just another Word, another Google Docs. It's not like that.
Mm.
It's more than that.
Mm.
It's also can manage your knowledge base, can manage your, you know, the task, and so on and so forth, right? And after the meeting is over, and also can be a metaphor for you to put all the summaries, transcriptions, action items there as well, right? It's part of our work platform vision. So that's the reason why I think, you know, here at Zoom, anytime when we make a decision, we always look at a customer perspective-
Mm-hmm.
Also look at the long term as well.
Mm-hmm. And coming back to the current environment that we're in today, we met, I think, early part of this year, and you were right to call stability the demand environment. We're now in September, looking into next year, potentially. What is the demand environment looking like at this point in time?
I think compared to last year, I would say for sure much better. And as we shared in Q2 earnings call, you look at our online business, I think, you know, very stabilized, right? You look at the current number we shared at the Q2 earnings call, it is great. And I think overall, and since the second half last year until this year, a lot of companies invested a lot of money, you know, to AI. I think as from now on, I would say, you know, a lot of businesses has realized, you know, the sort of Phase I AI investment is over. We've got to look at how to monetize, how to leverage the AI infrastructure to build some applications, AI applications, where we can monetize.
You know, and also how to deploy, you know, those services who already invested in, into the AI. You know, take a Zoom AI Companion, for example.
Mm-hmm.
We do see a better adoption every month, every quarter.
Mm-hmm.
Those customers, you know, who tried our AI Companion experience really like it.
Mm-hmm.
So that means for business customers, I would say it's kind of AI will help us-
Mm-hmm
... to drive adoption.
Mm-hmm.
At the same time, online business also stabilize. I think we're in a much better position now.
Got it. Tell us more, Eric, about the Companion product. What was the unmet market opportunity you saw? What are you trying to solve there? Why is this going to be a good, successful product for the company?
Yeah, because first of all, you know, as we shared at our Q2 earnings call, you know, over 1.2 million accounts already enabled AI Companion. Like, just recently, you know, a friend of mine, he, who worked for Stanford, told me that, "Hey, Eric, you know, our university, you know, just, you know, enabled AI Companion. I tried it. It works so well." He's a doctor over there. And so AI Companion is, is kind of, is the foundation for our AI-first work platform. We invest heavily into the AI Companion. You know, for now, like, hey, after the meeting is over, you have a great transcription, great summary, I can use the AI Companion, you know, to compose my chat message. And also, we also leverage our AI Companion to build an AI agent as well.
Essentially, look at all of our services, how to leverage AI Companion.
Mm.
It is a federated AI approach.
Mm-hmm.
That's the reason why I look at our Workplace platform, and guess what? It works so well, and at no additional cost.
Mm.
Right? I think how to build an AI-first work platform, you have to have a very solid AI layer.
Mm-hmm.
A differentiated AI layer.
Mm-hmm.
That's why we are so excited. We hired, you know, our CTO from Microsoft last year. We hired a lot of AI talents. I think I'm very excited about-
Tell us more about that. I had not planned to ask you this, but you've hired a lot of new talent, it looks like, to build out that technology layer. What is it, at the risk of getting a little bit too technical, but I know you are an engineer? You were on the core team at-
I am still an engineer.
You're still an engineer.
Yeah.
You still write code?
Yeah, yeah. I sort of go back and write code-
Oh, my God!
When you ask all the questions, so.
So what does that AI look like? So what are you trying to build that will put the company... So describe to us, if you don't mind, the platform and the applications-
Yeah.
and the new generative AI world for Zoom.
Yeah. I'll give you an example. Today, you look at most of the applications built today, already built many years ago, right? There's no AI at that time.
Yeah.
And today, you look at AI, you know, very likely just, you know, sort of a little bit of fine-tuning your product experience, right? It's still like your product, you know, let's say we're still using the product built many years ago-
Mm.
To leverage Zoom AI to assist, right? That is, you know, today's user experience. When I talk about AI-first platform, work platform, it's more like we build a new solution with AI first, meaning you have the AI, you are the assistant-
Mm-hmm.
-to AI.
Mm-hmm.
AI will drive to get the work thing done first.
Mm-hmm.
Eventually, back to the slide creation for the board slide deck, AI will do all the work first.
Mm-hmm.
I just, you know, help to edit. Rather than today, look at today's PowerPoint, like, you need to create a PowerPoint first.
Mm.
And leverage AI. It does not work, right? How to make sure change all the product philosophy, change the usability philosophy, build AI-first solution, that's a new opportunity.
Yeah.
It's very hard to take your existing system to rewrite. Very similar to what we built at Zoom, right?
Yeah.
You know, I built Webex before. You really cannot take Webex-
Yeah
... to build a similar experience as Zoom does today. You have to rewrite every layer.
Yeah.
So I think AI does bring the similar opportunity.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And so if this AI vision of yours comes to fruition, what else could Companion do? What else could Zoom do besides creating PowerPoint presentations, which is definitely a big source of productivity savings? So if you were to reimagine the other capabilities and the killer applications that would be possible because of what you're building, what would-
Oh, there are too many opportunities. I'll give you maybe I name it two, right? Today, for instance, you look at the contact center, right? You look at the virtual agent.
Mm.
Right? You know, quite often, the way the contact center works, you have a human agent behind the scene, right? To solve the phone calls or, you know, website chat, and so on and so forth. Today, we have Zoom Virtual Agent. You know, quite often you do not need a human agent anymore, right? Occasionally, you need a human agent to assist. Virtual Agent can search for the knowledge base, search for the tickets, and give you a great answer about the problem, why you try to call us, as one example. Another example, you know, today, like, when I open up a Zoom client, and normally I go to the chat tab, you know, send a chat message, and occasionally I also miss some important emails.
Mm.
Over the day, every day, I do a self-reflection, try to say, "Hey, are there any important things I missed?
Mm-hmm.
I have to do here, meaning every time you remember. Imagine, you know, we have AI Companion sitting within a Zoom client. We call that AI Companion agent.
Mm-hmm.
Right? Every morning, when I open up the Zoom client, I do not need to do anything. Agent will tell me, "Eric, you missed the two important emails yesterday. One is from Kash. You better send an email response for us.
Thank you.
Right?
Thank you, AI.
Right.
You made it important.
And at the same time, tell me, after that, that's a very important call-
Yeah.
... you need to join.
Yeah.
Right? And at the end of the day, it will tell me, give me a summary, and also, "Hey, you know, you should not have sent a chat message to a big group or something." Essentially, more like many, you know, agents sitting next to me-
Mm-hmm.
to help me manage, monitor all those tasks.
And you're using this personally every day?
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, that's the vision.
And, so what-
Today, you know, see, I have executive admin.
Mm-hmm.
Not every Zoom employee, they have that, right?
Yeah.
Down the road, you can have multiple digital assistants-
Mm-hmm.
to help you get the work done.
Mm-hmm.
I think that's a part of AI-first work platform.
The synergy with Zoom is that since you're the conduit for many meetings that are done, it has the content, it has the context of what is being discussed, so it can allow you to be a more effective user of AI, 'cause it's rich data coming through.
You are so right on. Today, look at a Zoom meeting. It's more like just a real-time interaction tools, right?
Mm-hmm.
After the meeting is over, our previous philosophy, after meeting is over, do not have any data.
Mm-hmm.
Data left there. But now, it's a meeting, just the part of your system of actions.
Mm-hmm.
By pre-meeting, the meeting, and a post-meeting.
Mm-hmm.
Let's say you and I have a very important meeting.
Mm-hmm.
But now, after the meeting is over, unless someone took notes, right?
Mm-hmm.
You know, otherwise, no one will remember what's going on-
Exactly, yeah.
after three months. Now, the way it works with the AI-first approach, after the meeting is over, we generate a system of actions.
Mm-hmm.
Right? Essentially, anything we talk about that, you know, during the meeting time, will be converted into action item.
Mm-hmm.
The Zoom AI agent will follow that, will automatically create a task for you, monitor the task, track the task. Essentially, meeting just a part of the entire your business workflow with the AI.
Yeah.
Without AI, we really cannot do that because you cannot assume every meeting you have to have an assistant, right? To write down the meeting minutes, write down the action item. It's not scalable.
Yeah.
With the AI, it's scalable.
Mm-hmm.
That's the reason why we want to make sure that unified communications or collaboration as a part of your entire business workflow.
Mm-hmm.
That's a system of actions.
Got it. Excellent. You would like to, I'm sure we would all like to see the company grow faster. Are there any initiatives that you are undertaking to re-accelerate the top-line growth rate for the company?
I think we. First of all, you know, we have to innovate, right? I think the number one thing is really about innovation. You know, we have to introduce multiple new services, like, take Zoom Docs, the contact center. We made a great progress, you know, about a contact center. And, you know, we are gonna introduce a lot of new services, you know, down the road as well. I think that's really important, innovation, number one thing. Number two things, really, you know, think about, you know, how to build, you know, something, you know, in AI era, back to AI first, right? Because again, you know, you could, you know, you could argue, "Hey, there are so many, you know, contact center solution providers out there. Why you think you can win?
Mm-hmm.
Remember, those solutions were all built many years ago.
'80s, '90s.
Exactly.
Mm.
Today, how to leverage the AI-first approach to build a new solution, that is really important. Always remember, usability need to be changed. You know, all the new features, you know, how to leverage the AI, you know, to power all those new use cases is very important. You have to be new, new solution, right? To leverage AI to sort of disrupt all the existing solutions, that's second thing. The third thing, to re-accelerate our growth, we have to fix the internal problem.
Mm.
Yeah, you knew that, right? So we hired more than six thousand employees over the past, you know, few years. I think, you know, we'll take some time for us to get back to our great culture. You know, this is the second year for us to fix that broken culture. I think we are almost there. Because the reason why, if you do not fix the broken culture, like this morning, one of our smaller customers, they want to renew a webinar license. Guess what? We cannot find the right sales account executive, right, to get this thing done on the same day. So if we do not fix that culture, you know, I think everything will be slower.
That's something that Wall Street doesn't spend much time, but that's an important thing that you're onto. And in that discovery process, Eric, what are the things that you've decided you need to work on, so to fix that culture? What are the action items, and what are the mandates you've issued to your management team?
We had lots of initiative, you know, over the past 12 months. You know, like our chief of staff, I keep her very busy. You know, a lot of things, you know, like, used to be done very, very well, but now this is broken over the past few years, like a span of control, right? There are too many layers.
Mm-hmm.
We have to proactively reduce the layers, right? That's the number one thing, right? Number two thing is quite often, because we had so many employees work on the project together, we hire also some project managers or program managers.
Mm.
We never have those roles, right?
Mm-hmm.
Those roles were created during COVID.
Okay.
We also needed to get rid of all those, you know, project managers as well-
Mm-hmm.
and reduce the number of layers-
Mm-hmm.
and get rid of all those project managers.
Yes.
At the same time, make sure how to think about-
Mm-hmm.
you know, the productivity, right?
Mm.
It's kind of today, we support hybrid work.
Mm-hmm.
Employees only come to the office, you know, twice, you know, a week.
Mm.
How to measure their productivity?
Mm-hmm.
Used to be very hard to measure productivity. Now, we need to make sure all the managers-
Mm.
very hands-on, back to day one mentality.
Mm-hmm.
I'm not talking about, you know, micromanagers-
Mm-hmm.
but the whole, they all need to be very hands-on.
Mm-hmm.
Really understand every hour, every day, what are our employees doing.
Mm-hmm.
I think essentially back to the early days of a startup .
Mm-hmm.
I think by doing that, I think it's not something new.
Mm-hmm.
We did that before, but we just go back to the day one startup mentality.
Got it. You talked about contact center. You have about 1,100 customers or so, and you also talked about how you want to reimagine the contact center for a GenAI world, where it's architected from the ground up with GenAI. What is that, what does the new age contact center look like? What, in your vision, would-
Yeah.
an ideal customer that uses GenAI Contact Center from Zoom, what are they could do that they cannot do?
Yes, that's a great question. You see, we never talking to customers, right? No matter which on-prem contact center solution they deployed or the cloud contact center deployed today, you know, every customer, no matter how many years they already deployed contact center, there's a new demand.
Mm-hmm.
New requirements, right? It's something new, right? Because AI, because a lot of other, the things. And they always wanted to work together with the vendor, where they know they can trust, they can innovate together. And also, the standard of feedback vendor, they know the vendor can quickly address with a solution, right? Because you look at it today, even very fragmented, but quite often it's very slow, right? And that's the reason why the you know, the customer, when they look at Zoom, they know our track record is fast innovation, is trusted brand. They know we can innovate together. This is reason why the customer, they want to work together with us. Not to mention, we have much better integration, not just build the core engine of a contact center.
We also have workforce management, quality, you know, management as well, and as a virtual agent, and a very good integration with other collaboration and services as well, right? That's the reason why, you know, we're winning in this space. Fundamentally, if you talk with customers, you realize point solutions for contact center are very hard to survive.
Mm-hmm.
You have to build a platform.
Mm.
In the UC and the CC, AI, and also the entire, you know, contact center offering, you have to have everything, so.
Are you there in bringing everything together, or do you still have more work to bring that UC video messaging, AI?
I think the foundation already there.
Yeah.
Very, very solid. You know, probably missing some corner features in some vertical industry.
Yeah.
In, let's say, you know, healthcare industry, they need some special features.
Yeah.
And you need, you know, add as well.
Mm-hmm.
But by and large, I think it's we are already there.
Yeah.
That's the reason why we are making a very good progress. Yeah.
Got it. The other one was, Zoom Phone. Let's talk about Zoom Phone. We used to hear a lot. Give us an update on how Zoom Phone is doing, and what are your aspirations for the product?
It's still doing well.
Yeah.
We're still and have a high expectation because, believe it or not, today, a lot of companies, they still are using on-prem phone system.
We do.
Yes. That's the opportunity, right? So I think in particular for international market, SMB, in large enterprise, I think a lot of on-prem phone deployments. I think that's a huge opportunity for us.
Mm-hmm.
We do not talk about a lot, because, you know, the new product, contact center, a lot of other things we talk. But behind the scenes, the Zoom Phone is still doing well.
Mm-hmm.
I still think a lot of opportunity for us. As I mentioned, you know, the point solution will not survive well, including phone system as well, so.
Got it. Talk to us, Eric. This is more of an operational question, churn and some of the initiatives the company is undertaking internally. I know you talked about the culture and some of the processes that you're working on, so maybe that is part of this initiative, but how important is reducing churn as an initiative within the company, and what are the things that you're putting in place there?
It's extremely important, and because you look at all of our, you know, staff meeting agenda, you know, on the one hand, we focus on top-line growth, on the other hand, how to reduce the churn, but to reduce the churn, you have to be patient because, you know, during the COVID, year-over-year growth with 350%, it's. You know, take one of our big, you know, bank customers. They bought a Zoom license for all of their employees, including front desk staff.
Okay.
You know, after the COVID crisis is over, I really do not think that's sustainable, right?
Yeah.
Plus, it used to be, during the COVID, almost every family, they have a Zoom license. I mean, a paid license-
Yeah
right? For a family reunion. For now, they can use some basic free services. You know, we have Zoom Basic.
Yeah.
But, you still, you know, you look at the paid subscriber online business, I think it's, you know, still growing.
Mm.
You know, even some, you know, customers, they canceled, but we still do see some new customers.
Come out, yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah, yeah.
So that's the reason why we, as we add more and more value, and customers, especially paid subscribers, realize, "Oh, Zoom does care about us." Because when we introduced the Zoom AI Companion-
Mm-hmm
we did not charge those paid online subscribers. We gave them for free.
Mm-hmm.
When we introduced Zoom Docs, we also gave them for free. Essentially, we add more and more value-
Mm-hmm
... to build a trust.
Mm.
Not like enterprise customers. Over the past many years, we already established trust-
Mm-hmm
... with enterprise customers.
Mm-hmm.
For all those online buyers, they were not using Zoom prior to COVID.
Yeah.
But how to build a trust with Zoom?
Mm-hmm.
The only way to build a trust, not like an in-person meeting, lots of webinars, invite them to our EBC, it's not like that.
Mm-hmm.
Add more value.
Mm-hmm.
Care about them, deliver better service. Along the way, I think they will try the Zoom more and more, similar to what we did, what we achieved-
Mm-hmm
... to build a trusted relationship with the enterprise customers.
Got it. I want to switch a little bit to financials. Your stock is very attractive. You've got a big cash balance, something-
I do not think that's big. Only $7 billion.
$7.5 billion.
Oh.
Come on, Eric, you could do a lot with that.
$17 million. $1 billion probably is better, so.
You do a lot of magic with $7.5 billion. But I'm curious to get your thoughts. This is something that you've heard from your investors, and I hear this, that we talked about the innovation, the growth opportunities ahead. But, in the very near term... Bless you. Why would you not think about a more aggressive stock buyback program with the valuation multiple?
Yeah.
Some would argue that you're the most attractively priced software franchise on the planet. Maybe, maybe if not the first, second, third. So that would seem like the best. I remember Mark Benioff said that, "We decided to buy the most interesting company, the most valuable asset, which is our own stock," which was two years ago. The way he said it was just so catchy, right? So why would you not buy your own stock?
So by the way, we did it, right? We did it during, you know, $1.5 billion, you know, to buy back. Maybe, let me take a step back, share with you our philosophy.
Yeah.
Actually, you know, when I started in 2011, right, we raised the capital from friends or investors. You know, on day one, our mantra was... those are not money in the bank. Those are the trust. Every dollar is a trust of investors, you know, they give to us, right? So meaning we take those cash very, very, very seriously, right?
Yeah.
Because it's not a-- it's even more important than my own money. Because on the one hand, you can't buy back. On the other hand, you can't maybe, you know, think about our long-term AI-first, you know, work platform vision, right? You know, down the road, you know, there's a lot of opportunity all there. If you already buy back, you know, let's say we have a very large strategic deals. We have a lot of great AI startup companies. We have a lot of new initiatives, I mean, for to embrace the AI-first, right? We want to be more aggressive to drive growth. A buyback, I think, is very important, you know, to really take care of our shareholders' value. But I would say it's more like a reactive, not a proactive. I'm not saying we should not do that.
We should do that, but a balanced buy back, and also with enough cash, give us the flexibility and to fuel the future growth. I think that's more important. Again, I just want to share with all the investors, we take all those investors' money, I mean, the cash, right, very, very seriously, and it's even more important, you know, than we treat our own money, so that's the reason why, you know, we wanted to take a flexible long-term approach.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. The cash will not be there forever. You know, for sure, you'll be some, you know, in some, you know, actions, so.
So what have you, what's your M&A philosophy? What are you looking for that could be accretive to Zoom's top line or bottom line, or accretive, technologically speaking, enhances your vision or accelerates your vision? What are the things that you-
I think essentially two things. In a high level, I just shared our vision, right? AI first, work platform.
Mm-hmm.
So when it comes to M&A, either related to AI first or related to work platform. You look at a work platform, you know, which part are missing? Look at AI first. Anything-
It's giving us clues.
Yeah.
We need to go figure out what are the three-letter ticker symbols and four-letter tickers.
Exactly. So yeah, AI first or the work platform. You know, I think you will see in some new deals, you know, and down the road, because we cannot build everything organically, right?
Yeah, yeah.
That's one thing.
Yeah.
Another thing, also want to make sure the culture fit.
Mm-hmm.
Right? If you hire a company, even higher growth, but culture does not fit-
Yeah
... it's still, you know, even causing more problems down the road.
That's true.
Yeah.
Anybody wants to jump in with questions? I know Matthew Martino. I volunteer Matthew Martino on my team to ask, and he's shaking his head vigorously, like, I'm gonna ignore that. No, no, no, no, no. Anybody question? Yes, please. If you can bring the mic over. Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you.
So you have such an amazing product, and it's used so ubiquitously. What do you think the public market doesn't understand about your story?
So what is the view? Zoom is ubiquitous, if I can paraphrase your question. Well known. What does the public market not get about Zoom? Public investors.
I think, a few things. One thing is really understand our long-term vision, and not just the short term. Quite often you say, "Ah, Zoom is just focused on the unified communication or content." That's not what only, it's not only what we are doing today. I want to public investors to really understand our long-term vision. That's number one thing. Number two thing is really understand is kind of, you know, our competitive position as well. You know, quite often some investors, "Oh, your competitors have sort of something for free. They are going to eat your lunch." It's not like that. The reason why not only do our customers like our product, our competitor customers also like our product.
Because quite often, you know, I send a Zoom link to our, you know, competitors, you know, the customers, because they were forced to use our competitor product. But they all mentioned the Zoom product much better, and that's a lot of public investors sort of do not understand that. I think, you know, down the road, right, the economy getting a little bit better, when companies, they focus on employee experience rather than just focus on sort of cost. You know, you look at the total cost of ownership, Zoom also is much better, right? In terms of support cost, AI cost, right? I think I want a public investor understand that Zoom is, in terms of product positioning, is much better, you know, than any of our competitors. I think those two things.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's... Yeah, please go ahead. There's another question.
Philosophy on stock-based comp has changed at all, and if you would consider paying more cash instead of stock today, just given the attractiveness of your stock?
Curious if your stock-based compensation philosophy has changed. Would you consider paying cash in lieu of stock to some degree? Right.
I should have shared with you our latest slide deck we just discussed recently. You are so right on, and we completely changed. I think we, you know, during the COVID, given the stock price way too high, we have, you know, the equity program, you know, to reward our employees. I think looking back, that's a mistake. We already corrected that mistake or fixed that. That's, you know, we really, you know, and put a lot of effort on that to fix this problem. I think I can tell you the problem already fixed, so yeah.
Was that the answer you were expecting to hear? Okay.
I can invite you to join our next East Coast meeting about this topic. So seriously, we take it very, very serious. Already fixed. So yeah.
That's great. So in the final minute or so that we have, what are you looking for in Kelly's replacement?
Where's Kelly? ... Maybe Kelly can help answer that question. So, but anyway, I appreciate for Kelly's great job, right? And she joined us two years before IPO, and I knew her for many, many years. And, fantastic work here. And, essentially, you know, with Kelly's great help, you know, we grew our business sort of from zero to one, right? Given the Kelly, the passion, you know, back to the startup. And, you know-
You didn't tell her you planned to be a much larger company than that, right? She was like-
So-
I signed up for $1 billion in revenue, and so what have you done?
Yeah. We, you know, I think that, you know, next one, next step will really help us to one to five or one to 10, right? With greater background on how to scale a company, right? And, yeah. So yeah, I think it is more like a $2 journey.
Okay.
Yeah.
Great. With that, any final? There's one more question. 30 seconds you have.
I just wanted to follow up, so would love to be able to double-click at some point into what that roadmap looks like, 'cause you're speaking at a very high level, generalities, and you clearly have a very specific vision in mind, but would love to be able to actually see what that means, like from an articulation standpoint, and then when you spoke, so that's one thing. The second is, you spoke about competition, but in reality, you've kind of kicked everybody out except maybe Microsoft, right? I mean, Webex is in my mind, a real competitor. Skype no longer is. You're competing against Teams, right? So would love to hear what your thoughts are against that.
Yeah, it's two great questions. Down the road, maybe we have, we reserve more time. We have a product roadmap. You know, like this morning, a group of CEOs from Japan, they are visiting us. We share our product roadmap, right? So we have three key pillars, right? Workplace roadmap, business service roadmap, and AI roadmap, right? Those three things together, you know, create our AI first, you know, and work platform. Back to Microsoft. Actually, I did not share, you know, at earnings call. You know, like last quarter, one of the customers, it's not a small customer, it's a $1 million ARR customer. They dropped the Teams. They switched to the Zoom platform, 'cause we also have a built-in the Team Chat solution. Unfortunately, we did not market it well. It's shame on us.
When customer realized, "Wow, you also have a Team Chat, you have everything. Why not standardize on your solution? Because the product is much better, the employee happier." You know, this never happened before. Last quarter, you know, one company, they did that. I do think you're given some time, and the customer realized, you know, we are much better positioned, 'cause we truly care the customer, and the product is much better. You bundle everything together, it's sort of for free. Guess what? The total cost of ownership is not free, so we, we've got to tell a better story, and we did not do good, we did not do well on that front, so we got to fix that as well, so yeah.
Thank you so much. We heard a lot about AI-
Yeah, of course.
... from the architecture.
Yeah, first, work platform.
Work platform. We talked a lot about the cultural alignment and the operational efficiencies you're looking to unearth, and we talked a lot about your aspirations to reaccelerate growth, your balanced approach to buying back stock versus investing in innovation, buying companies, and what you're looking for in your CFO. I think I got maybe half of that list. Matt says I got everything right.
Yeah. We want to deliver happiness to our investors, so that's-
That's the next step.
Yeah.
Eric, thank you so much for joining us once again. Always special to have you.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.