Zoom: The Next Platform for Billion-Dollar Apps

The Signal: A few weeks ago, Zoom rolled out Zoom for Home, “a 27-inch screen with three wide-angle cameras, eight microphones and touchscreen display” priced at $599. According to the product’s video ad, the hardware’s key use case is collaboration (particularly around whiteboarding and annotation). 

And earlier in July, the company unveiled its hardware-as-a-service program, which “provides access to Zoom Phone and Zoom Rooms hardware solutions with a budget-friendly subscription service.”

Zoom -- a company now valued at $70B -- once projected its entire market opportunity in the company’s S1 to be $43B… by 2022. 

Clearly, the addressable market has gotten much bigger. 

The Opportunity: According to Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, the communications company is prioritizing the buildout of its API and SDK (software development kit):

“Look at the things Zoom is being used for now, like, for example, telemedicine. We don’t have this expertise. So, a healthcare startup with this domain expertise could leverage our SDK and API and embed it into their telemedicine application. The user doesn’t have to know it’s Zoom. You could do the same for fitness classes, teachers, etc. Each vertical use case can be a huge market on its own.”

The long-term goal is to become a platform to house billion-dollar apps.

To identify opportunities in the video app space, we did a deep dive on the Zoom app marketplace (~800 apps). At present, the top 5 categories in the marketplace are scheduling, collaboration, learning & development, education, and productivity.

• Niche scheduling apps 
  With 21% of the apps, scheduling apps are No. 1 in the Zoom marketplace.
  
  While there are numerous all-purpose apps in the category (e.g., Calendly), a number of scheduling apps indicate there’s an opportunity for function or industry-specific solutions: 1) Rooster (job interviews); 2) ScuolaSemplice (classes); 3) Punchpass (group fitness); 4) LawTap (law firms).

• Monetizing webinars and video chats 
  The transition to video chat learning and webinars has been a boon for Zoom-related learning management systems, particularly those that help to monetize remote instruction: 1) HeySummit (tools to increase engagement and revenue for webinars); 2) Podia (sell online courses, memberships, and digital downloads to your audience; 3) Session (turn your Zoom class into a business)

• Productivity & meeting management 
  The 5th most-popular app store category is productivity. This also happens to be the category for Docket, which won the Zoom App Marketplace Competition for products using Zoom’s APIs (securing $2m in funding as a prize). 
  
  Docket is a workspace for collaborative agenda creation, decision documentation, and action-item tracking. 

• Asynchronous video recordings
  Loom (valued at $350m) is another video chat service that is often compared to Zoom. However, the 2 are quite distinct as Loom provides asynchronous communication (e.g., video recordings are not meant to be consumed live).
  
  However, there is no technical reason why Zoom can’t provide this functionality,  partnering with apps that provide this solution: 1) Asana Moments; 2) Clipwise; 3) Flixier.

• Healthcare
  The rise in telemedicine has -- unsurprisingly -- led to a number of health-related apps being built on Zoom for all types of use cases: 1) SockyApp (behavioral treatment of autism); 2) Nutrition Maker (online dieticians); 3) Exercise Pro Live (physio therapy); 4) Next Patient (telemedicine).