The “Verticalization” of Zoom

The success of companies like Slack, Zoom, and Atlassian in challenging the dominance of Microsoft and Google’s productivity suites accounts for part of this interest, but the rise of remote and distributed teams is the most important secular shift driving the trend.

We will probably see Zoom competitors emerge in the next 2 months that serve the JTBD of online collaboration and online socializing much better than Zoom does. I think there are lots of low-hanging fruit in this product space that I’d like to see more of.

Zoom, actually, I think used the original internet concept of reducing friction. Go back three years before Zoom, remember how painful it was to download an app like BlueJeans or Skype. It was so painful. Even today when people send me a BlueJeans link, I'm like, "Please guys, let's not do this. Please go to Zoom." You want one click, start talking... See more

There’s a pressing need — and an opportunity — to build vertical-specific tools for workers striking out on their own. Much has been written about the proliferation of vertical software tools that help firms run their businesses, but the next generation of great companies will provide integrated, vertical software for individuals going solo.

You can join a Zoom with a link, but a company basically needs to onboard all of its employees if it wants to use Slack to communicate. Plus, Slack is mainly a B2B product, while Zoom serves (and counts in its 300 million figure) both B2B and B2C. As a result, Slack’s growth has been excellent but not as eye-popping as Zoom’s.

Zoom is the Napster of the event industry, the ease with which you can put on good-enough virtual events with a global audience, almost for free, much to the undercutting of the underlying economics of the physical events world. All types of business event — conferences, trade shows, conventions — are in danger of their revenues streams of tickets,... See more

The benefit of building for a particular vertical is focus. Startups are able to align execution to a particular type of work and provide greater value for workers in a specific industry. A vertical approach also means more focused marketing, sales, and user acquisition strategies. Given that the online creative economy is growing at nearly 20% per... See more