The “Verticalization” of Zoom

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

That’s the question Zoom and all its competitors haven’t really asked. Zoom has done a good job of asking why it was hard to get into a call, but hasn’t really asked why you’re in the call in the first place. Why, exactly, are you sending someone a video stream and watching another one? Why am I looking at a grid of little thumbnails of faces? Is t... See more

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.

Part of the founding legend of Dropbox is that Drew Houston told people what he wanted to do, and everyone said ‘there are hundreds of these already’ and he replied ‘yes, but which one do you use?’ That’s what Zoom did - video calls are nothing new, but Zoom solved a lot of the small pieces of friction that made it fiddly to get into a call.

Competitors are closing gaps, and fast. They’re doing everything they can to grab customers from Zoom and get a bigger piece of the market. And new ones are trying to innovate in this suddenly very high-demand market.

While Zoom, Teams and others focused on building teleconferencing features — breakout rooms, Q&A, integration with work tools, transcripts, that sort of thing — Discord has continued drilling down on quality and latency.