CEO of Tiktok, Bytedance
TikTok CEO Success Story | Shou Zi Chew Exclusive Interview | Celebrity Conversations 2024
TikTok CEO Success Story | Shou Zi Chew Exclusive Interview | Celebrity Conversations 2024
In this exclusive interview, we sit down with Shou Zi Chew, the CEO of TikTok, to discuss his incredible success story and journey to becoming the head of one of the world’s most popular social media platforms. Learn about his leadership strategies, vision for the future of TikTok, and the challenges he's overcome in the fast-paced world of tech and entertainment.
Whether you're a TikTok creator, entrepreneur, or someone curious about the future of social media, this conversation provides invaluable i...
About Shou Chew
Shou Chew, CEO of TikTok, has continued to address concerns about data security, child safety, and the platform's relationship with the Chinese government. In a March 2023 appearance before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, Chew stated that ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government, describing it as a private company. He outlined "Project Texas," an initiative he said involves storing U.S. user data on Oracle servers in the United States, overseen by American personnel. Chew also testified that TikTok does not share U.S. user data with the Chinese government and would not honor a request to do so. During a January 2025 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on child online safety, Chew described TikTok's policies, including a 13-and-up age requirement, default private accounts for users under 16, and a 60-minute screen time limit for users under 18. He stated that the company had invested more than $2 billion in trust and safety efforts that year and employed over 40,000 trust and safety professionals globally. In other public appearances, Chew has emphasized TikTok's economic impact and its use of AI. At the APEC CEO Summit in November 2024, he said the company had invested over $1.5 billion to secure U.S. user data and planned to spend 12 billion euros over the next decade on data protection in Europe. He also stated that TikTok supported nearly a quarter-million jobs in the U.S. and contributed almost $24 billion to the country's GDP. At the FII8 conference in October 2024, Chew discussed the platform's recommendation algorithm, describing it as based on machine learning and interest signals rather than follower counts. He also noted that 125,000 businesses in Saudi Arabia use the platform. Chew has stated that the company is investing billions of dollars in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, including a $12.2 million commitment to support small and medium-sized businesses.
Transcript (62 segments)
D
David0:00
My impression is it's for younger people. Is that wrong?
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Shou Chew0:04
There is really something for everyone on TikTok. I would... have you installed TikTok yet, David?
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David0:09
Well, I'm not an expert on TikTok. I have looked at it, but I haven't seen anything that looks like me.
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Shou Chew0:16
I think you may be surprised. For example, there is something called BookTok. Our recommendation engine personalizes your experience when you use TikTok, and we believe there's something for you as well.
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David0:29
So can anybody put a video on? How do you control if somebody puts something on that's dangerous or pornographic or not appropriate?
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Shou Chew0:37
This is a great question. One of the most important things that I have been focusing on since I took on the role nearly a year ago is the safety of our platform. It's something we take absolutely seriously, and we have elevated this as a top priority for myself and for the company. We put a significant amount of investment into it, and we believe that we need to continue to invest in trust and safety to stay ahead of our growth because of the growth of the platform. For example, making sure that our community guidelines, which are published transparently online, are well understood by our users, making sure that we have the tools and capabilities to ensure a safe and inclusive environment on our platform so that our users feel it's a trusted environment to publish and inspire the creativity they want to.
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David1:33
So let's suppose I want to be a TikTok person. I want to be on TikTok, but I have to make a living. Can I make a living by just being on TikTok? Are there people that make a living just by being on TikTok?
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Shou Chew1:41
Most of our users come on TikTok to share how they feel and to inspire the world. But there are people who come on TikTok, and this is something we're extremely proud of. We have enabled them, we have given them the platform and the tools to actually make a proper living. Most of these are small businesses or individuals. I can give you an example: one creator created videos on how great a restaurant was, it became an overnight sensation, it went viral, and now business is booming for that company. There are thousands upon thousands of examples like that across the US and across the world. This is something that we are immensely proud of, that we have a platform that small businesses can use to grow their business.
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David2:30
Let's suppose I want to be a TikTok performer and I want to get paid for it. Do I do something that says this restaurant is great and hopefully the restaurant will pay me? Is that how people get paid by being on TikTok?
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Shou Chew2:42
There are several mechanisms to do it. The first is if you have enough followers, certain brands will get in touch with you, either through us or otherwise, for you to represent their brand, so you become the brand ambassador. That's one way some of our creators get paid. Beyond that, we have provided them with tools to monetize, to get in touch with their followers and monetize that as well. For example, we have a live streaming service, so as a creator you can launch a live streaming session. Another example is e-commerce; we provide our creators with the tools to be able to sell merchandise on the platform as well. This is still a new part of our business, but it's something that people are primarily doing through advertising and also providing services like live streaming and e-commerce. We do have a service fee that we charge to provide those services, but if somebody just uploads their video on TikTok, do they pay you a fee for that? No, it's absolutely free.
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David3:44
Are there companies now that specialize in making people TikTok stars? Somebody says I want to be on TikTok, I want people to watch me, maybe I can sell my services to an advertising company in some way.
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Shou Chew3:55
The best way to be a TikTok star is to just be themselves. What we have found is that this community wants real content, they want to see people being themselves. Many people tell me it's a breath of fresh air, it's the sunny corner of the internet. So my advice to anyone who wants to be famous is really to be themselves.
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David4:19
Recently Mark Zuckerberg announced his quarterly earnings after explaining why the stock went down by 25% as a result of the declining use of Facebook. He attributed it to TikTok and said TikTok was becoming a big rival. How did it feel to be blamed by Mark Zuckerberg for the decline in value of Facebook?
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Shou Chew4:42
We are a very young company at this point, and they are still very big competitors in the market. Some of them have been around for a long time with a lot of resources. So the way we look at it, there's still a long way for us to go in terms of achieving the mission that we want to achieve. We think that there are a number of things that makes us unique in the market. The first is that we are pioneers in what we do; we have innovated this form of short video combined with...
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David5:12
So if Mark Zuckerberg were here, would you say don't worry about us, we're not a big competition?
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Shou Chew5:17
I think over the long run, the biggest competitor that we have, as cliche as it is going to sound, is going to be ourselves. We have a mission which is to inspire creativity and to bring joy, and we believe that our most important focus is to focus on delivering that mission.
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David5:32
But let me ask you this. Most of the large Chinese technology companies are certainly not that prominent in the United States. TikTok, by contrast, is not in China but it's gigantic outside of China, in the United States and everywhere. What did TikTok do that enabled a Chinese-based parent company to do so well outside of China?
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Shou Chew5:53
We think it's challenging to build a global company in general, but the best ones we've seen so far are ones that take very consistent global learnings and adapt them to the local countries that they are operating in. So you need to be global and local at the same time, and it's something that we're investing in. For example, here in the US, we have a very sizable team here in New York, in Austin, in LA at this point, and becoming more local is something we will continue to invest in.
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David6:28
Let's talk about the beginning of TikTok. So what is ByteDance? ByteDance was the parent company. When was ByteDance started and who was the founder of ByteDance?
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Shou Chew6:40
I was very fortunate about 10 years ago to have had the chance to participate in the company as an investor. ByteDance was founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming. Like any good startup story, the original product has evolved over time, and there were many hits and misses in the evolution of the company. One thing that has remained very consistent for ByteDance is the mission. The mission for ByteDance today is to inspire creativity and to enrich life. What I've noticed over the course of the decade that I've known the company is that they have been very consistent in wanting to deliver this mission to as many people as possible. Driven by this mission, what struck me in the early days of ByteDance was the desire to be mobile, the focus on machine learning recommendation, and this desire to be global. It's been very consistent over the last 10 years. I should disclose that my own investment company is an investor in ByteDance. We took an investment a number of years ago in it. I assume it'll be a good investment, I don't know.
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David7:46
So when did TikTok come along?
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Shou Chew7:49
The original apps that were developed by ByteDance had a very similar concept, which was to recommend content to users based on machine learning algorithms that try to understand the user's behavior. The first iteration of it that was successful was a news app. So it took news content and recommended news to users based on their own behavior on the app. Sometime between 2012 and 2016, that evolved into short video, and that evolved into TikTok.
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David8:20
All right, so let me ask you about TikTok and regulation. Under President Trump, there was a concern that certain information that TikTok was getting from people using TikTok was somehow going to be detrimental to the United States. What happened to that effort?
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Shou Chew8:38
We believe that our approach to all the governments and regulators around the world is to be collaborative and to be very transparent, to be available to explain what we do and who we are and answer any questions that they have. That's the approach we have taken, and that approach has been very beneficial for us over the course of the last few years.
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David9:02
But there was a proposal at one point that required you to sell the TikTok business in the US. I think it was going to be sold perhaps to Larry Ellison's company Oracle. And the current administration, the Biden administration, have they picked up the cudgel and said we want to engage in the same fight, or right now you don't have to worry about that again?
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Shou Chew9:21
We are thinking the approach now to be very transparent, to be very engaged, very collaborative, and to answer any questions that they may have.
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David9:30
But the biggest concern that people had, or at least some people in the Trump administration had and maybe other people, is that the data that you have on your computers about who's watching what, I presume the data you have would somehow get fed back to China and China would have it for its use. The Chinese government. Is that true? That your data is subject to being given to or you're forced to give it to the Chinese government?
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Shou Chew9:51
We disagree with that. The way TikTok is set up today, first of all, TikTok is not available for download in China. It operates outside of China. The data for TikTok users is stored in Virginia and in Singapore, with a backup in Singapore. We believe that we have a very rigorous and robust system to protect the data security of our users.
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David10:14
What do you do with the data? So let's suppose I go on TikTok and I like certain kinds of things to watch. You presumably, your algorithms know that. What do you do with that data? Do you sell it to another company or do you do nothing with it?
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Shou Chew10:28
It is our recommendation engine. The best way to think about it is that it's just pure mathematics. It digests the behavior that our users have on our platform, including likes, you know, what videos do you like.
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David10:43
Do you have something that's proprietary such that somebody couldn't come along and compete? In other words, there's always people coming along trying to disrupt companies, and that certainly happens a lot in the tech world. Are you worried that somebody's going to come along with a new product that's slightly better than yours, or do you think that's unlikely given how dominant you are in the business now?
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Shou Chew11:01
David, this is a very competitive space. In our industry, there are players with bigger muscles, they have more resources, they have been around for a longer period of time, and I think it keeps us on our toes. We have our strengths. We are pioneers in this, we believe that we are innovative and we will continue to innovate, and we have a very unique community that we believe is very special and not easily replicable. So we have our advantages, we are confident, but at the same time, competition is very intense.
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David11:37
Now China has been a little tougher, some people would say, on Chinese tech companies than it was a year or two ago, and there's been what some people would say a clamp down on Chinese tech companies. Has that affected you in any way?
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Shou Chew11:49
I think in this day and age, we have to be very collaborative and be very transparent and have an active dialogue with regulators and governments around the world to help them understand our business and to answer any questions that they may have.
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David12:04
As I mentioned earlier, my firm did invest in it, but I don't have any inside information, and I don't know if you're going to give me the inside information, but is there any plan to take ByteDance public at some point?
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Shou Chew12:15
Our current focus, given the growth of our company, is to really focus on the business. There is still so much we can do, especially for TikTok, that really our management focus is on growing the business at this point and making sure that we are investing in the right things. At some point, we will access the capital markets, at some point we will, but that is really not the priority at this point.
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David12:37
And when you do go into the public markets, what do you think, when your public documents are revealed, will be the biggest surprise?
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Shou Chew12:44
I need to go back and think about it. I think most of what we do is followed, and many people thankfully have a lot of interest in our business today, so I'm not sure whether there will be any big surprises.
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David13:00
As you look forward to what you're going to be doing over the next year or so, what are you most focused on?
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Shou Chew13:05
I'm most focused on trust building. We are a young company, and I think trust is something that we have to earn.
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David13:12
Did you go to college and high school in Singapore?
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Shou Chew13:14
The thing about growing up in a small island like Singapore, David, is you get wanderlust at a very young age. It's a tropical paradise, it's a tiny island, I love it, but it's very small. So after high school and after national service, we have national service there, I went to the UK for college and then subsequently to here in the US for business school, where I met my wife.
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David13:37
How did you think Harvard Business School was? Were the people there smarter than you thought or not as smart as you thought they'd be?
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Shou Chew13:43
It was great. I had a great time there. The most important moment was I met... and how many years were you there? I was there for about 5 years, and it was during this time that I got to meet and invest in ByteDance.
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David13:57
So after you left Yuri Milner's operation, what did you do?
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Shou Chew14:01
I joined a company called Xiaomi. I did that for a while.
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David14:05
And then a headhunter called you up and said guess what, we want you to come to ByteDance, or how did that happen?
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Shou Chew14:09
It wasn't a headhunter. I stayed very close to the folks at ByteDance because of my early relationship with them, so they reached out. There's a little known fact about me, which is I used to be a creator. I actually had 185,000 followers on my account, and so I had to go through that process of learning how to connect with my followers and using the product. It was an amazing way. I found the product so amazing in terms of being able to communicate the messages I wanted to my followers. So I love the product, I've known the team for a long time, I think that the mission is something that I really truly believe in. So when the opportunity opened up, it was very organic for me to... did you give them up or what? You have that account? That account was used to sell products. I have since transitioned into a more consumer-based, more personal account.
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David15:07
So you were recruited to become the CFO of ByteDance, and after just like five weeks they promoted you to be the CEO of TikTok. Is that right?
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Shou Chew15:16
It was after a couple of months, a couple of months.
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David15:20
And what is the biggest challenge that you have as the CEO? Is it to keep...?
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Shou Chew15:24
There are a couple of things that keep me awake at night, I think that's the question. The opportunity that we have, I believe that we have something that's very unique. We pioneered this sort of short video format, and we have a very unique community today that has all these kind of raw, authentic content that people love. I think the opportunity that we have to take this to more people around the world, to inspire them and for them to bring more joy to more people, this is a great and unique opportunity. It keeps me very excited. At the same time, there are challenges that we have to work through. For example, making sure that we are investing enough more and more into safety to stay ahead of our growth, because it is something that's very important to us. So challenges and opportunities, they both excite me equally.
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David16:21
Now since you took the job of CEO of TikTok, we've been living in COVID. I think for many businesses around the world, including ours, we are a growing company. It is difficult for new employees who are joining us to not have the opportunity to mingle and interact with other people offline in the offices. So it is something that, thankfully, we are at the stage of the pandemic where we can start thinking about... TikTok, what is your favorite single thing you've watched on TikTok? Is there one thing you've watched and you said this is my favorite?
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Shou Chew16:55
There are a number of them. I am an amateur golfer, so #golf has 10 billion views or more on TikTok. It's very, very entertaining.
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David17:06
So if you watch golf on TikTok, do you get to be a better golfer or not necessarily?
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Shou Chew17:10
Not necessarily, unfortunately. It does help, yes.
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David17:14
When you are not working at TikTok and you're not golfing, is there any outside interest you have, or you don't have any outside time for?
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Shou Chew17:20
I do, I do. I'm an amateur theoretical physicist, as in I'm reading books on theoretical physics and trying to understand it. So that's something that I love.
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David17:32
I've interviewed many people over the years. I've never interviewed anybody who said that their hobby was amateur theoretical physics, so that must be unusual. So do you regret not becoming the next Albert Einstein or something like that?
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Shou Chew17:42
I don't think I have the ability to be that. I hardly understand the mathematics behind some of the more complex theories, but I find it very interesting.
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David17:52
So today, as you look forward to what you're going to be doing over the next year or so, what are you most focused on?
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Shou Chew17:57
I'm most focused on trust building. We are a young company, and I think trust is something that we have to earn through actions, for example through our continued investment in safety.