That same year, ByteDance paid an estimated $900 million to acquire Musical.ly, a social video app based in Shanghai with more than 200 million users worldwide and a large following in the U.S. He rolled out an overseas equivalent of the Douyin video app, dubbed TikTok, in 2017. In 2016, Zhang added to his product lineup by introducing a video sharing app, Douyin, for the Chinese market. In August 2012, five months after founding ByteDance, Zhang launched his first mobile app, Toutiao or Today’s Headlines, an AI-powered daily curated feed of news content personalized to users.
But in going global, the China-originated ByteDance could encounter heightened distrust and scrutiny especially as security concerns have enveloped Chinese telecom giant Huawei in readying the launch of its fifth generation, high-speed networks internationally. As a privately financed digital content startup founded by a tech entrepreneur, ByteDance has a different relationship with the Chinese government and its grip on state-owned conglomerates. private equity investor KKR, Chinese investment firm Hillhouse Capital and corporate venture unit SIG Asia. Its backers span top-notch venture capitalist firm Sequoia Capital China, Japanese tech conglomerate Softbank Group, U.S. ByteDance has a valuation of $78 billion ─ one of China’s 86 “unicorns” in 2018. Zhang, 36, is among a new generation of home-grown Chinese tech leaders with an international vision inspired by the early success of China’s tech pioneers of the late 1990s such as Robin Li of Baidu, Jack Ma of Alibaba, and Pony Ma of Tencent.
APP TICK TOCK APP TIKTOK SERIAL
Their story may also hold lessons for American companies who have watched similar ventures into China meet serious constraints.įrom the start, Zhang, a former Microsoft engineer and Chinese serial entrepreneur, had the goal of running a borderless company. His strategy of dual versions of Tik Tok - one for China’s internet censored market and another for the rest of the world - could be a new model for other digital content companies aiming for such global reach - including China-based digital startups with new ambitions to venture out beyond the home market. Chinese entrepreneurs such as ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming are showing that they can succeed in an openly competitive market internationally rather than only in China where the Great Firewall regulates the internet and blocks access to several U.S. Since little translation is required, TikTok reaches well beyond other successful Chinese apps such as Tencent’s messaging app WeChat, which is ubiquitous in China but mostly used elsewhere among Chinese communities keeping in touch with people back home. The scrappy, goofy, fast-moving content has hooked young audiences around the world. On the app, homemade videos showcase everything from comedy to lip syncs to dog grooming tips that users create and share on their phones. In just two years, TikTok has emerged to rival companies like Netflix, YouTube, Snapchat, and Facebook with more than one billion downloads in 150 markets worldwide and 75 languages. His strategy of dual versions of Tik Tok - one for China’s internet censored market and another for the rest of the world - could be a new model for other digital content companies aiming for such global reach.įew tech startups have taken off as quickly as Beijing-based ByteDance, the creator of the highly popular 15-second video app, TikTok. TikTok reaches well beyond other successful Chinese apps such as Tencent’s messaging app WeChat, which is ubiquitous in China but mostly used elsewhere among Chinese communities keeping in touch with people back home. In just two years, TikTok has emerged to rival companies like Netflix, YouTube, Snapchat, and Facebook with more than 1 billion downloads in 150 markets worldwide and 75 languages. Few tech startups have taken off as quickly as Beijing-based ByteDance, the creator of the highly popular 15-second video app, TikTok.
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