Tik Tok Founder Zhang Yiming Retires At Age 38
Tik Tok Founder Zhang Yiming Retires At Age 38. The founder of Tik Tok’s Chinese owner said on Thursday that he will give up his job as CEO to focus on longer-term initiatives, a step that comes amid uncertainty over whether the Biden administration will force the sale of the popular short video service’s U.S. arm. The Chinese businessman and entrepreneur has an estimated net worth of $44 billion according to Forbes.
According to Yahoo News, Zhang Yiming said Liang Rubo, a co-founder, will succeed him as ByteDance Ltd. CEO. Zhang said leaving day-to-day management will “enable me to have greater impact on longer-term initiatives,” but gave no details of his next role.
Zhang Yiming is a Chinese billionaire internet entrepreneur. He founded ByteDance in 2012 and developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform Tik Tok formerly known as Musical.ly. According to Bloomberg Billionaires Index Zhang’s personal wealth is estimated at $45.5 billion. On May 20, 2021, Zhang Yiming announced he would be stepping down as CEO of ByteDance by end of the year due to lack of necessary managerial skills.
Zhang thought that Chinese smartphone users were struggling to find information in mobile apps available in 2012 and the search giant Baidu was mixing search results with undisclosed advertising. His vision was to push relevant content to users using recommendations generated by artificial intelligence. This vision, however, was not shared by most venture capitalists, and he failed to secure funding until Susquehanna International Group agreed to invest in the startup. In August 2012, ByteDance launched the Toutiao news app and within two years attracted more than 13 million daily users. Sequoia Capital, which rejected Zhang the first time, came around and led a US$100 million investment in the company in 2014.
Zhang focused on expanding ByteDance globally, as opposed to other Chinese tech CEOs who focused on the domestic growth of their companies. Zhang insisted that ByteDance’s workplace productivity app Lark be targeted at the American, European and Japanese markets, rather than limiting the focus to China as originally proposed. Zhang’s management style with ByteDance was modeled on US tech companies such as Google and included bi-monthly town hall meetings and discouraging employees from referring to him as “boss” or “CEO,” as is the Chinese convention.
In September 2015, ByteDance launched its video sharing app Tik Tok (known as Douyin in China) with little fanfare. The product was an instant hit with millennials and became popular worldwide. ByteDance bought Musical.ly a year later for US$800 million and integrated it into Tik Tok.
