Zhang Yiming: TikTok’s tech boss

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:08)
Welcome to Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service. Every episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money.

**Simon Jack** (0:15)
Then we judge them. Are they good, bad or just another billionaire?

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:19)
I'm Zing Tsjeng, and I'm a journalist, author and podcaster.

**Simon Jack** (0:22)
I'm Simon Jack, I'm the BBC's business editor.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:24)
And on this episode, we have one of the richest people in the world, whose name you might not be familiar with, but whose product you almost certainly will be.

**Simon Jack** (0:33)
You say almost certainly will. It is TikTok, and I have to confess that I am not a TikTok subscriber. I don't have it on my phone, but I'm going to download it right now. I will start my TikTok journey during this podcast.

**Zing Tsjeng** (0:47)
And I think the billionaire creator, Zhang Yiming, the man behind TikTok, will be very happy to hear he signed up another customer. So while Simon is downloading the app for the very first time, let's quickly go over Zhang Yiming in numbers. So he's 41 years old, and he's currently worth a very cool $43 billion. Now this makes him the second or third richest person in China, depending on the day you're looking it up.

**Simon Jack** (1:12)
He founded the tech company ByteDance, which I have heard of because it became very politically sensitive in the US. ByteDance makes apps, including TikTok.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:20)
ByteDance has also been called the world's most valuable startup because it makes TikTok, which also has over a billion users worldwide and a new one.

**Simon Jack** (1:29)
OK, so listen, whilst I'm downloading it, you tell me about TikTok. What's it all about?

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:33)
So TikTok, for those of you who have been living under a rock.

**Simon Jack** (1:37)
Oh, thank you.

**Zing Tsjeng** (1:39)
Is one of those social media apps that has exploded in popularity over the last few years. So it really took off during the pandemic when everyone was locked at home, just scrolling through their phone. And what it is, is basically a never ending newsfeed of videos, videos from all over the world, from all sorts of different users. You don't even really need to be following anyone for your feed to be populated with videos that TikTok thinks you will like. And it turns out that TikTok is very good at knowing what you'll like. We'll discuss its super powerful algorithm later on in this episode.

**Simon Jack** (2:12)
So in a way, this is a story about the power of AI, the power of algorithms, social media, how they keep our attention, how they drain our attention, how they shorten our attention.

**Zing Tsjeng** (2:22)
Yes. And I actually do think there is an argument you could mount for TikTok dramatically reducing my attention span and the attention span of people that I know. It's also super addictive and super creative, some would say. So young people really love it. You know, the reason why it's become so successful is because people are just pumping content into it non-stop and the algorithm is very good at serving it to people.

**Simon Jack** (2:45)
Okay. The first thing it's offered up to me is choose my interests. So comedy, animals, fashion accessories, definitely no for that one. Pop culture, yep. DIY and life hacks. Let's go for that one. Okay. The person behind it is the thing we are discussing today. So Zhang Yiming apparently lives a very private life. He's not a very flashy individual.

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:08)
No, we actually don't have that much information about how he spends his time and money.

**Simon Jack** (3:11)
Oh, hang on a second. Sorry about that. Hang on.

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:14)
See, TikTok just launches you straight in there.

**Simon Jack** (3:17)
Okay.

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:18)
So we do know that Zhang is a big admirer of Mark Zuckerberg. At one point, he even stowed himself like him by purchasing 99 T-shirts and wearing a new one every day for 99 days. Presumably, this is some kind of life hack to save time.

**Simon Jack** (3:32)
Mark Zuckerberg, of course, founder of Facebook and now Meta, which owns WhatsApp. It owns, what's the other one again?

**Zing Tsjeng** (3:37)
Instagram.

**Simon Jack** (3:38)
Instagram, of course. And we've already done him on our billionaire podcast. So have a listen to that one if you haven't heard it yet.
But unlike Mark Zuckerberg, who's kept an iron grip on the company he founded, Zhang stepped down from the company he founded. In his last speech at the company, he said, some media want to add drama when they report on startups and people's stories by making experience seem legendary or dramatizing people's characters. I often said it was nothing special. We're very similar to one another. We're all ordinary people. If you keep an ordinary mind, accept yourself as you are, and do well for yourself, you can often do things well. Ordinary people can do extraordinary things. So ordinary people, not really why we're here.