Zoom Preparing for IPO
According to unnamed sources, investment banking and capital markets giant, Morgan Stanley are reportedly ready to take Zoom public. Zoom looks set to be valued at several billion dollars, highlighting both the huge growth and potential in the video conferencing market.
At Zoom’s most recent round of funding in 2017, a $1 billion valuation was quoted. This has since apparently boosted by a $100 million injection from venture capital firm Sequoia. The increase in valuation is significant for the Unified Communications industry as video conferencing adoption continues to see rapid adoption.
Morgan Stanley
Whilst there is still no official word from Morgan Stanley, the connection to Zoom makes a lot of sense. Morgan Stanley position themselves as technology specialists in the investment world and recently hosted a media and telecom conference in Barcelona. Talks included business and digital transformation through innovations like 5G, digital factories and augmented reality.
Whilst the real world use cases for these are immature, the likes of Zoom and video conferencing providers are certainly pushing the agenda, doing more and more with video than has been possible before. The introduction of technologies like 5G and augmented reality can only enhance the video collaboration experience.
Potential to IPO
Eric Yuan, Founder & Chief Executive Office of Zoom, has a rich history of leading success in video providers. Before founding Zoom, Eric was a founding engineer and VP of Engineering at Webex. Here, he grew team from ten engineers to more than eight hundred worldwide and contributed to revenue growth from $0 to more than $700M.
Attracting significant market attention, Cisco eventually announced it would acquire Webex for $3.2 billion.
Leadership Additions
In September, Zoom announced two key additions to their leadership team. Kimberly L. Hammonds joined the Zoom Board of Directors and Aparna Bawa joined the Zoom executive team as General Counsel. A Zoom press release suggested,
“Hammonds and Bawa will help Zoom scale and drive key strategies including enterprise and international expansion”.
Aparna Bawa has a successful history of sales and acquisitions. In her previous role, she led Magento Commerce’s sale to software giants, Adobe. Before that, Bawa led the Nimble Storage public offering and 2017 acquisition by HPE.
Zoom Future
As the investment and acquisition world prepares for an IPO comeback in 2019, it’s intriguing to see what the future holds for Zoom. After experiencing exponential growth like Eric Yuan’s success at Webex and then Cisco, it isn’t too difficult to imagine a scenario much like the Webex acquisition.
Investment publications across the industry have noted both Slack and Zoom as big players to watch in the technology industry next year, with one publication citing,
“Investors may want to keep an eye out for workplace-messaging platform Slack and video conference software provider Zoom”.
There have been 32 IPOs by Bay Area companies so far in 2018. The addition of Zoom wouldn’t be a complete shock but would be a massive wave for the video collaboration community.
We are reached out to Zoom but are still awaiting formal comment on the situation.
Source: uctoday
Industry: Unified Communication news
Latest Jobs
-
- Data Privacy Lead. Client Facing London. Permanent.
- London
- N/A
-
Data Privacy Lead. Client Facing London. Permanent. London based client facing. Must be eligible to undergo UK Security Clearance (SC) Key Responsibilities: Lead and support client facing data privacy projects. Assess compliance, define and deliver strategic projects / implement privacy solutions. Manage project teams and develop business opportunities. Required Experience: Experience in data protection and privacy standards. Background in consulting. Skills and Qualifications: Business consulting experience IAPPPrivacy Manager / Privacy Technologist Location Greater London UK based role. Not able to provide VISA sponsorship.
-
- VOIP / SIP App Developer. Contract. SIP | VOIP experience needed. SC Cleared Outside IR35 Contract. London
- London
- OUTSIDE IR35
-
SIP | VOIP Developer. SC Cleared Contract. London Looking for a SC Cleared SIP / VOIP Developer to develop an application that interacts with a set of voice and video signalling API’s You will also work on developing in-house applications, browser plugins and automated tooling to support secure communication systems. Responsibilities Develop an application that will manage number mapping and associated identities using commercial SBC API’s. Develop new user-facing features using React.js or other modern JavaScript frameworks. Build reusable components and front-end libraries for future use. Collaborate with the design team to translate UI/UX design wireframes into code. Work closely with backend developers to integrate front-end code with server-side logic. Conduct code reviews and provide constructive feedback to team members. Stay up-to-date on emerging technologies and industry trends to continuously improve our front-end development practices. Troubleshoot and debug issues that arise during development and in production environments. Maintain high coding standards and practices and ensure code is well-documented. Requirement Experience of developing specialist applications using REST API’s. Good knowledge of Go, Java and Python (open to alternative combinations of languages). Proficiency in front-end languages and frameworks such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React.js, etc. Strong understanding of web standards, responsive design, and cross-browser compatibility. Experience with version control systems such as Git. Knowledge of RESTful APIs and asynchronous request handling. Familiarity with UI/UX design principles and tools.
-
- Senior Data Privacy Consultant. Client Facing | London
- London
- N/A
-
Senior Data Privacy Consultant. Client Facing | London Senior Data Privacy Consultant needed for a key client facing opportunity. Must be willing to undergo SC Security Clearance. Hybrid role- onsite with customer / office 2-3 days a week. London Key Responsibilities: Lead and support client facing data privacy projects. Assess compliance, define and deliver strategic projects / implement privacy solutions. Manage project teams and develop business opportunities. Required Experience: Experience in data protection and privacy standards. Background in consulting. Skills and Qualifications: Business consulting experience IAPP Privacy Manager / Privacy Technologist Location Greater London UK based role. Not able to provide VISA sponsorship.
-
- Security Analyst - Internal role. London commutable. Permanent
- London
- N/A
-
Security Analyst - Internal role. London commutable opportunity. Operational Security - Investigate, escalate and proactively work to ensure household name remains protected. Project Security - Coordinate, log change requests with project delivery teams to meet security requirements Policy / compliance - work with team to aid in uplifting these as and where needed This role is role to investigate, escalate and proactively work to protect a globally recognised brand. You must have current hands on operational analytical security experience with Microsoft technology stack Someone with a SOC Analyst / security engineering background would be well suited. This position will join a small team and would suit someone that has broad experience across the security threat landscape. Experience / knowledge across industry GRC standards such NIST, ISO27001 etc very advantageous and a priority. You will work across multiple teams proactively working to secure the business. Must be able to commute to Central London 3 days a week. Visa sponsorship not available Apply today to find out more.