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Agora is a leading video, voice, and live interactive streaming platform, helping developers deliver rich in-app experiences through real-time messaging. Traditionally, real-time video and voice interaction would happen as a standalone in dedicated applications such as WebEx or Zoom. But increasingly, people want to engage directly in applications they are already using.
Agora's 'Real-Time Engagement Platform' provides developers with simple-to-use, customizable, and widely compatible APIs to embed real-time video and voice into their applications without the need to design and build the infrastructure themselves. Today, Agora powers more than 50 billion minutes of human connections each month in a wide variety of use cases including social, gaming, online education, telehealth, virtual events, and many more.
Virginia Liu is the Senior Vice President of Marketing and Ecosystems at Agora. She met Tony Zhao, Agora's founder, and CEO, in 2017 while working at Microsoft and quickly learned that Agora was building APIs to enable developers to easily add real-time voice and video to their apps. Later, Tony would describe the company to her as a provider of real-time internet, since the public internet is not designed and built for real-time. Extremely impressed by the product and Tony's vision, she decided to join the company with a mandate to grow the Agora developer community and build a partner ecosystem.
Fast forward to today and Agora has grown its active developer base by more than 50X and became a publicly-traded company in 2020.
Virginia had several big career shifts that led her to believe that anyone can grow and learn a new skill if they put their mind to it. Growing up in a foreign country and having a finance background, Virginia never imagined that she could have a successful career in marketing in the United States.
"I also did not know anything about high-tech until I started working at Microsoft. We are living in an ever-changing world and being a life-long learner is essential to the success of any leader," she said.
Virginia says there are many stereotypes about women, particularly Asian women, who are often perceived as hard workers but not great people leaders. She remains forever grateful to the first manager who believed in her ability to lead. "Everyone needs a sponsor who sees your potential without bias and champions for you", she said.
According to Virginia, a leader needs to encourage creativity and innovation within any organization and empower employees working at the frontlines. She feels that this quality is important for a leader to exemplify the highest moral standards and a strong work ethic that in turn encourages others to do the same. Virginia stresses that having an open mindset and the ability to foster an authentic communication style is vital to success.
The biggest challenge potential Agora customers have faced is that the public internet is not designed for real-time voice and video traffic. And so, she says, the company has been dedicated to providing real-time internet since 2014. To solve this problem, Agora built a virtual network on top of the public internet which they call Software Defined-Real-Time Network (SD-RTN). An intelligent routing algorithm developed by Agora engineers ensures voice and video traffic is transported with the lowest latency, which is critical for all real-time applications.
Virginia describes SD-RTN as the "HOV" lane of the public internet, saying it to be on average about twice the speed of the public internet. And, she says that Agora has never had system-wide downtime in the company's history. It's a prideful record that none of Agora's competitors can match, according to Virginia.
Of course, Agora is a platform created by and for developers. While often compared to Zoom's video conferencing software, Virginia says, Agora offers much more than one-to-one communication The company's offering of highly customizable APIs can be used by developers working across the gamut of industries. She considers Zoom a "one-size-fits-all" solution, while Agora's technology allows developers to create their unique vision for an app or platform.
"We made it easy for any developer leveraging any language platform and targeting any device to use Agora. In order to appeal to creators with no coding background, we also developed a no-code solution that allows anyone to build a video application with a drag-and-drop wizard," she said.
Virginia says AI is widely being used in real-time engagement for enhancing video and audio. In fact, Agora's technology uses AI to deliver many features such as noise cancelation, facial filters, and content moderation, among others. These help increase user experience by making it more engaging and fun
With the growing popularity of live engagement features giving companies and individuals alike more opportunities to interact with each other, the real-time nature of live video also presents its fair share of issues that can be both ethical and tech-related, she says.
"As more videos are recorded and broadcasted live, AI will play an increasingly crucial role in monitoring, improving, and personalizing interactive streams, detecting harmful content, and personalizing the user experience,", Virginia adds.
This, in turn, will make it a safer experience for everyone.
Agora has constantly driven towards innovations; the channel size is getting bigger as use cases are expanding into e-commerce and entertainment. Virginia recounts the Grammy Premiere ceremony that was watched by 12 million people online and was powered by Agora's customer TVU network. Agora has also been developing solutions for the next generation of user interfaces such as VR/AR devices, IoT devices, and smart appliances. The future ahead will see more innovations coming with the latest technologies.
Virginia says that life is too short to waste on people who doubt your abilities and potential. She asks the upcoming women leaders to believe in themselves, working with and for people who believe in them.
"It is certainly noble to strive to be a great leader, but it is important to remember that your day-to-day actions are what truly inspires others to succeed."
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