Spaces Blog

Obsession With Product

December 2022 I got a call on my cell phone from Eric Yuan, founder of Zoom. For the next thirty to forty minutes, I got advice on an enterprise deal I was working on and how to improve my product – I had emailed him a few times prior, and persistence + doing something of value led to the call. Some of the best advice I've ever received comes from my messages to him (I send him so many, and I'm so grateful he has the patience to get back to me). As a thank you, I got in contact with Joe (owner of the Golden State Warriors), and they sent him a signed Steph Curry photo. I don't know Joe, I don't know Steph. I just get things done.

The next week or so, I'm on a Zoom with his Chief Digital Officer, getting feedback on my presentation for next-generation education tools (Spaces) – I asked him to grill my PowerPoint on things I can do better with the slides. I met with their ex-president, the first-ever field salesperson + the person who started Zoom for education. Constantly learning from their experience.

Our Google collaboration stems from Alphabet Board members making an introduction to Google Vice Presidents who accepted us in the program. Meeting with their engineers and learning as much as possible, I recall one specific conversation about best practices on how Google encrypts information at rest. Bottlenecks that I would have to deal with, optimising cloud solutions and so on..

But how did I manage this and many conversations like this? My story couldn't be further from the typical Ivy League student in Silicon Valley. I went to some schools that could even be considered the roughest in the country. Being from a place where the average salary was 30k NZD 15k USD (trying to find the stats for reference on the govt site; I'll add when I find them), we were not judged by what we had but by who we were. It taught us to make the most out of the resources we have around us. I think this has been key.

I am obsessed with building the best products; I believe we have to learn from the best to do so. I will never back down, and I will always make it happen. For example, the charity I founded does the largest supercar events in the country with a police escort, something never done before. If I have a vision, I will die to make it happen. I have a book releasing in a few months with the help of Ferrari, which will fund my projects helping kids in poverty. The LA musical studio I created was created during a level 4 lockdown in New Zealand, where we couldn't even leave the house. Against all odds, we have to succeed. It's the only way.

Why did I try to align closely with Zoom?

Being a technical founder, advice has exponentially more value, which is the key to good products. Any advice or feedback directly gets converted into code, and the company's direction becomes customer lead. He (Eric) taught me to create value for users constantly, love them, and focus only on what they need and provide it. The first university staff member who reached out after a month of Spaces launching was from their side, not us reaching out to them; they saw their students love it and sent me an email.

This is what real software business is. It's not a race to unsustainable ARR figures like every founder boasts, but it's a different story under the surface. It's about fixing problems for users and using your software to make their lives easier.

After every workshop for Spaces I run in person, I have students waiting at the end to tell me how much it helps and how easy it is to use.

The best approach to B2B SAAS is creating a platform, not just an app. I saw Zoom, especially since they started in education + in Australia, as the best example I wanted to mould my strategy after. Eric would call people who cancelled the product to learn why; he focused on how he could make something people love using. He focused on delivering a service that is so often forgotten in software. I love working with users to build something they love.

Even if you look at Zoom's focus now, it's on being a platform - perhaps the reason Microsoft Teams dominated from day one and the secret to their success: they were already a platform. The introduction of docs + WorkVivo to the stack shows a shift in focus to a platform, an entrenched approach - evolving from the previous click-to-join 'app approach'. This is the same approach with Spaces from day one and how I approach software.

If you go on YouTube and listen to Eric speak. He does so with honesty and integrity - this is real business.

I'm constantly learning from him, and his recent messages remind me to focus on the product.

What did this result in?

Every feature the spaces have is either from staff or student feedback or something I learned from one of these meetings. That's why people love it.

My favourite product feature is within the Paths student support platform. It's like nothing I've seen. When doing a pilot, we realised the massive disconnect between staff and students. Students are being asked to fill out forms on Google or Microsoft – which, by the way, don't look very pretty – and they have no idea who they are contacting or how their information is stored.

Staff can create profiles that float on the side showing who they are, building trust and they can see exactly how their information is stored and encrypted in a modal window explaining the process.

Here's a video of my favourite feature below: