The best case I can make is that their reasoning might have been like this:
(1) Permanent or not, right now the pandemic is clearly generating huge interest in videoconferencing.
(2) Our big competitors (Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, etc.) can afford to speculatively invest heavily into their products just in case it does take off, remote work really is the future, etc.
(3) For us, things are unlikely to ever go back to how they were before the pandemic. If we do nothing, we risk getting left behind. If we invest heavily too, although it may turn out badly, at least we're giving ourselves a fighting chance. We are betting the company on something; it's just a matter of choosing what to bet it on.
It's hard to evaluate the risk of getting left behind. Network effects (don't want to ask all your friends who have Zoom set up already to switch technologies) might be a big enough moat that they never even needed to worry. Or maybe not.
if you took the Zoom product right when the pandemic hit and lockdowns started, and just did the bare minimum necessary to make it stable, performant, and scalable to handle HUGE influx in demand
would that have been good enough? with focus on, other than improving latency/audio quality/video quality and supporting small meetings all the way up to 500 person meetings, did you need to double engineering staff to achieve this, or could you have gotten away with less and the rest of the engineers got stuck working on random useless features just because it was cheap to borrow money and finance their salary at the time?
> Basic (free or free with credit card): 100 participants. Pro: 100 participants. Business: 300 participants. Enterprise: 500 participants.
I think the relevant question is if the company would be in a better position today if they did the minimum vs loading up on staff and then laying them off.
How much did it actually cost them to pay the extra employees?
How much market share is worth paying ~1500 employees for two years?
If Zoom fails, will it be because of this cost, or because they couldn't do more.
(1) Permanent or not, right now the pandemic is clearly generating huge interest in videoconferencing.
(2) Our big competitors (Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, etc.) can afford to speculatively invest heavily into their products just in case it does take off, remote work really is the future, etc.
(3) For us, things are unlikely to ever go back to how they were before the pandemic. If we do nothing, we risk getting left behind. If we invest heavily too, although it may turn out badly, at least we're giving ourselves a fighting chance. We are betting the company on something; it's just a matter of choosing what to bet it on.
It's hard to evaluate the risk of getting left behind. Network effects (don't want to ask all your friends who have Zoom set up already to switch technologies) might be a big enough moat that they never even needed to worry. Or maybe not.