It has been three weeks since the quarantine has begun in France. People are getting used to it and finally, understand the word “confinement”. To be honest, when I heard Mr. Macron saying that close would be closed, I immediately thought “Holidays!!”. I was sooo wrong! A few hours later, I received an email from my school announcing that all the courses would be done online.
Since then, Zoom became the app I used the most. It’s crazy how useful it is, not only for teachers to do their course but also for team projects. This tool is not revolutionary and other software proposed the same services, such as Skype. Sadly, Skype has the worst image of the world for me, with all the calls starting the same way and an impossible to close pop-up app. Zoom is easy to use, interactions are smooth, lagging time are rare and apparently, people are loving it this they’ve reached their all-time high users recently (12,92 million people in end 2019, +2,22 in February). Of course, the current context could be the reason, but I think we are observing a new emerging trend.
Why would I spend my time at work when I can work from home? The answer is pretty easy, social interaction. We need to be around people to bond, develop our social abilities. The fact is, Zoom has enabled that. By providing rooms for organizations, you can enter in a Zoom meeting if you have the link as if you would enter a real meeting. So startup can create desks of employees easily and cheaply. No need to go pay the high fees of WeWork (even if to be honest, working in a WeWork is awesome, mainly for the free beers). Same concept can be applied to education or training sessions. Of course, this is bad news for WeWork, which failed to persuade people they are a tech company last year for its IPO.
Now let’s be honest, it’s not tomorrow everybody will work from home. First of all, because it’s impossible. Some activities, and not only blue-collars activities, require having office space. Being able to receive a potential client on site is great for the image. And most big companies will not make the shift right now. But what this period is doing is making companies realize it’s possible and can be effective, and to employees that are quite nice to avoid the crowded subway.
We’ll see after this pandemic episode how this evolve. And if you’re thinking of buying Zoom Technology stocks, make no mistake!
