David Rosenthal: evaluation

Transcript context

…If you like the show and you want to go deeper on company-building topics with David and I, you can become an Acquired limited partner and get access to our second LP-only bonus show. On our last episode, we gave an update on a lot of our thinking from the Uber and Lyft episodes, regulation, and autonomous vehicles. We also answered a bunch of LP question and answers. If you want to join, you can become and Acquired Limited Partner by clicking the link in the show notes or going to glow.fm/acquired. Let’s dive in. I was thinking about how to frame this episode on Zoom. A good lens for Zoom as a company is almost like a bridge both between [...] here in Silicon Valley. In many ways it is classic, old school Silicon Valley. It is an enterprise software startup, it’s located in San Jose, down on The Peninsula, and the DNA, as we will see, came out of a classic 90s startup WebEx, but it’s also undeniably part of this new wave of IPOs and part of the A+ cohort of companies that are coming out here. It’s also and Acquired theme a bridge between Silicon Valley and the rise of China, in the techy [...] in China. I’m really excited to dive in here and dive in with Santi. Before Santi comes in the picture, we actually start in 1970, speaking of China in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. In the Shandong province, which is in the East Coast of China and it’s located about halfway between Beijing and Shanghai. Shandong is the religious and cultural birthplace of China. It contains both Mount Tai, which I believe is where Eric is from, it is the most revered site in Taoism, and it’s where the first emperor of China was crowned. It also contains the city of Qufu which is where Confucius was born. Both of those are going to be very apt as we will see with Eric and Zoom as we go along here. In 1970, a boy named Eric Yuan is born. It’s still in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, but his parents, as far as we can tell, are pretty well-off. His family does okay. His parents are educated, mining engineers. Eric early on, even though the country is converting to communism, started showing some entrepreneurial tendencies. His parents are mining engineers, remember. He started collecting and selling mining and construction waste and burning it down to get that raw copper inside so that you can sell the copper to recycling plants. Like every young tech entrepreneur does as a child.…

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