Who is the creator of TikTok?

The platform has more than 500 million monthly active users, attracting the attention of large companies such as Facebook and Google. Learn a little more about who the creator of TikTok is and how this billionaire’s mind works.

Who is the creator of TikTok? (People)

The creative mind behind TikTok is a 36-year-old Chinese software engineer , Zhang Yiming. The engineer is a graduate of Nankai University in Tianjin, China. Zhang was born in 1983 in Fujian Province. Fun fact, his name is based on a Chinese proverb about “surprise everyone with a first try”.

TikTok was not his first attempt, but it has certainly surprised the world with the value of his company ByteDance, founded in 2012, with an estimated value of 75 billion dollars.

Zhang Yiming’s Early Works

Upon leaving college, the Chinese’s first work experience was at a digital travel booking startup , Kuxun. Zhang may have been a normal engineer at first, but by the second year he was in charge of a team of 40 people. His team supported backend technologies, among other services.

The engineer also spent time at Microsoft , before founding his company, ByteDance.

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance

The company, which is now worth about $75 billion, was founded in 2012. Zhang owns 24% of ByteDance. Anyone who thinks TikTok was the company’s first successful product is wrong. ByteDance already has in its portfolio:

• Toutiao (News platform with over 240 million downloads);
• Xigua Video;
• TopBuzz;
• BuzzVideo;
• FlipChat (A rival to WeChat);
• Duoshan (Video Messaging App);
• Various social networking apps running in China.

About TikTok

TikTok continues, in China, with its original name: Douyin. In the US, TikTok is the most used social network by teenagers, downloaded more than 1 billion times.

One thing that speaks to Zhang’s leadership style is that he made it mandatory for members of the management team to post personal videos on TikTok. Made as a joke, they must post and receive a certain number of likes, otherwise they do push-ups.

The software engineer is seen as charismatic, passionate and young by his teams, not leaving aside the logical part, which the business needs.

This was a profile summary of Zhang Yiming, the billionaire creator of TikTok.