When Zoom first came out several years ago, hardly any businesses were using it. There was no need. If you run a company, you could just meet with other people in person, thrash out some issues, and then return to work. Any enterprise managing remote staff used Skype if it needed to talk to them in person which, usually, it didn’t.
That happy state of affairs, however, came to a crashing end with the advent of the coronavirus pandemic. All of a sudden office-based businesses had to start thinking about new ways to facilitate collaboration.
Zoom immediately came out of the woodwork as a leading contender. The video calling app had long been a competitor of Skype and some of the others, but it wasn’t able to get into its stride until disaster struck.
Companies wanted tools that would allow them to easily share chats with multiple people, not just one or two. So while Skype was okay for one-on-one meetings, it was pretty much useless for bigger meetings involving multiple stakeholders.
Zoom was able to step in and fill the void immediately. Thanks to the media, word soon got out about the app, and anyone who hadn’t heard about it at the start of the year surely had by the end of 2020. It was a game-changer.
Zoom might be the reason that the economy doesn’t seem to be going into a downward spiral. Companies outside of the hospitality industry have been able to move to a largely online model where workers come into the office perhaps once a week. The rest of the time, they’re communicating through video apps, replacing the traditional in-person setup.
Nobody is saying that Zoom is ideal. But it does provide a minimal level of service that enables companies to carry on much as they once did. If this crisis had hit ten years ago, we’d all be in a lot more trouble right now. And it is unlikely that the government would have initiated such extreme shutdowns.
How Zoom will make money in 2021 remains to be seen, according to an article on Impact Marketer. But it is clear that the outfit is riding high right now in a way that it probably never expected in its wildest dreams.
So what does this have to do with startup founders like you?
Well, it means that practically every business is now operating a “bedroom model.” CEOs and executives are literally running their operations from their homes in the same way that founders once did to save money. Except, this time, the problem isn’t funding – it’s disease. It’s a different mindset.
For startups, this is great news. Before the pandemic, founders worried endlessly about whether their companies would appear professional when run from home. Companies spent a fortune on renting addresses and flexible office space that they could use when entertaining clients.
Now, though, that’s all gone. Everyone expects you to be working from home. And there’s no shame in it. So if you have a dorm room business idea, then go for it.
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