A $100 million bet can sound pretty massive. That's what Zoom (ZM -0.82%) is investing in enabling apps on its eponymous platform. 

In this Backstage Pass video, which aired Sept. 28, 2021, Motley Fool contributors Jon Quast and Brian Withers explain why it's not that big a bet. And why it could pay off handsomely.

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Jon Quast: I'll take Dwight Schrute's. I don't think he's the real Dwight Schrute, [laughs] but I'll take this question on Zoom apps if they are or can monetize them. I don't think that they are any of them. They definitely can. He says, "Why make such a huge bet when there's so much presumed to do."

I don't think it is that big of a bet personally.

Here's why ... I think that they've allocated 100 million [dollars] to fund the app development program. If you look, that's less than two percent of their cash. This is very little that they are actually putting out there. They're just throwing up the seeds and seeing where it develops. Now, in time, maybe they're going to strike gold in the app development, a new use case that they never even foresaw is going to start to blossom and then they can step in, fund it more and then monetize it as well. I think it's more of, just throw out some seeds and see what grows.

Brian Withers: Yeah, I'm excited about what the app place can become as more and more companies look to integrate Zoom or take stuff from Zoom meetings. Asana was a great example. You can create Asana action items right out of the meeting, refer a link back to the Zoom webinar where you came up with the idea in the first place. How many times you've been on a project to get to where you're getting close to the end and you're going through the old action items and nobody knows what the action item means? It would be really cool to go back to that meeting and find the spot where we were talking about and go, I get it. We either address it or we didn't. It's a good little bit of history right there.

Jon Quast: Another one that I mentioned was DocuSign is launching an app. I was just thinking, how often are you in a meeting where you have to sign something? Yeah, what a great integration there.

Brian Withers: Yeah, and I know that DocuSign wanted to do the notary services via video so that it can complete the process virtually.