Video calls in Zoom: the businessman who became a billionaire with the coronavirus (and why he had to apologize)

A few weeks ago you may not have known him. Or maybe not now, but it is possible that during this quarantine you have talked to your friends thanks to him. And that is giving you good benefits.

For the first time in his life, Eric Yuan, founder of the video conference company Zoom, entered the Forbes list of billionaires, with an estimated fortune of $ 7.8 billion.

The son of specialized mining engineers, Yuan was born in Shandong province, China. After studying engineering at the Asian giant, he went to work in Japan for four years before buying a plane ticket to the United States.

Apparently inspired by a talk by Bill Gates, Yuan’s challenge was to reach the richest country in the world to ride the wave of technological innovation that was growing in the mid-1990s in California. They weren’t waiting for him with the doors open, though. His visa was rejected eight times before he could finally get permission to live and work in the country.