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Before leaders conquer the world, they have to conquer themselves first. Learn about global leaders' stories and find principles you can apply to your own life.
Hi everyone.
Welcome to Conquered a podcast about
how global leaders conquer themselves
before they conquer the world.
I am your host, Alex Wu.
So I am always fascinated by the
makings of a conqueror or a leader,
I am interested in their upbringings.
Books and events that shaped
their values and world views.
Also, the process systems, mental
models, and, principles that they live by.
In this very first episode, I want to talk
about Zhang Yiming, founder of ByteDance
and that is the company behind TikTok.
I bet most of you have never heard
of ByteDance or Zhang Yiming.
I'm sure you've used TikTok
a lot so ByteDance now has 4
billion monthly active users.
There are only 8 billion
people in the world, so it's
crazy if you think about it.
Half of the world population are using
ByteDance products on a monthly basis.
Only meta the company that
runs Facebook, Instagram, and
WhatsApp is on that same level.
So TikTok is really the first Chinese app
that dominates on an international scale.
I am pretty sure that TikTok inspired
a lot of other Chinese companies
to aim higher and, go global.
From day one, in the past few
weeks, I became very obsessed
with the company and Zhang Yiming.
I've done a lot of research.
I was able to find this great book that
is English on TikTok and the company.
It's called Attention Factory
by Matthew Brennan, the story
of TikTok and China's ByteDance.
I'm gonna quote a lot from this book.
Great book.
Also, there are a few biographies
in Chinese that I've read also,
I found most of the interviews.
Talks that he gave on YouTube.
There are also a few other articles and
podcasts or essays, on Zhang Yiming.
I'll try to list all of
them out in the show notes.
I hope you enjoy this episode.
Let's get started.
So I wanna start with this
paragraph in the Brennan book.
The attention factory Yiming
had once famously said that
in launching a business, he is
creating two types of products.
First, the consumer facing
platforms and second.
The actual company itself.
There's arguably a third product
the entrepreneur has been carving
out over the years himself.
Indeed, Yiming runs his life
as if it was a software product
undergoing constant tests and
iterations to reach optimization.
I like this quote a lot.
I think it sits at the core of
why I am doing this podcast.
Like I mentioned before, I'm
interested in the accomplishments,
the success that they have achieved.
But more importantly, I want to explore
their personal development the founders'
development how they became who they are,
and, with the rise of AI and, different
models, language models, we now have
a new lens that we can use to think
about learning, growth and development.
In this very first episode I'm
going to borrow a lot of ideas and
terminologies from machine learning.
Not to be technical, but to be practical
actually to analyze how people like
Zhang Yiming were shaped over time.
My goal is to build a framework to
explain how reward environment data, data
sets, and feedback shaped who we become.
I hope you will be able to apply
the learnings to your own life.
So let's dive in.
Zhang Yiming was born in 1983 in
a small city called Long Yen in
Fujian Province in Southern China.
Long Yen is a coastal city, is
actually not far from Taiwan.
Very interesting.
Another famous internet tycoon named
uh, Wang Xing was born here also.
He's the founder of Meituan.
He's best known for creating
that super app in China.
Think of it as.
DoorDash plus Expedia,
something like that.
Zhang Yiming is born to
a middle class, family.
His dad is an official at the
local city Science and Technology
Commission, and his mom is a nurse.
His dad later would start his own
electronics factory far from home,
I think in Guangdong Province.
His business does okay.
And I think Yiming lives very
comfortably in his early life.
But unlike his counterpart mark
Zuckerberg who had access to
computers since elementary school
I don't think Zhang Yiming had
computer around when he was young.
And that's something I'm gonna try to
draw parallels throughout this episode.
I just find it interesting to compare,
Zhang Ming to mark and Zuckerberg.
'cause both companies are kinda on
the same level and they're constantly
competing against each other.
And ultimately it's a competition
between, the founders.
'cause both companies are
still considered founder led.
So zhang Yiming grew up with no computers,
but he is obsessed with something else.
According to himself, he
started reading very young.
His dad would order weekly
children's magazines for him to read.
Since kindergarten throughout middle
school and high school, he claimed to
have read 20 to 30 newspapers a week.
He devours every article
without missing a single word.
Think about it, 20 to
30 newspapers a week.
That is a lot.
In China students don't
have much free time.
They're very busy.
With mostly schoolwork.
I'm just very impressed by how Yiming
was able to find time to actually
read those through 20, 30 newspapers.
That is a lot.
And he didn't let that affect
his academic performance.
His studies very hard.
He is one of the top
students in the school.
And the high school he went to is
a top high school in the province.
He is especially good at biology.
He even wants to study biology in college.
I guess then comes what is arguably the
most critical decision in a young Chinese
student's life choosing a university.
What's interesting here is not which
university Zhang Yiming chose, but
how he made that decision because it
turns out that Yiming really thought
carefully about what actually mattered
to him and distilled everything down
to four very concrete conditions.
And these four conditions are first it has
to be a comprehensive university because
universities like that tends to have a
more balanced gender ratio which makes
it easier for him to find a girlfriend.
That's very interesting 'cause when
I was evaluating universities that
never came to my mind the gender
ratio but I guess I ended up at a
Engineering focused university in Beijing.
And the university is famous for the
seven to one male to female ratio.
Anyway, so the second criteria
that Yi ming listed was it has
to be very close to the ocean.
'cause he grew up by the ocean.
He can't live without the seafood, the
third one, it has to be far from home.
I think he's an adult now, so he wants
that freedom and that that space,
from families to allow him to explore.
And the last one it has
to snow in the winter.
When he grew up it's a southern part
of China, so he's never seen snow.
So he wants to see snow.
Again very interesting.
These four conditions are multidimensional
I guess he knows himself very well.
I think that's what I find remarkable.
I grew up in China in the eighties
as well, just like Zhang Yiming.
Most of my peers including myself,
had no real sense of direction.
We were, laser focused on, on
one thing and one thing only.
The national entrance exam that
single score was everything.
It's very different from the college
application process in the us.
There's no personal statements,
no recommendation letters.
There's no GPAs to look at, no portfolios.
I guess that's not accurate.
I guess for most of the the engineering
science focused universities.
There's no requirement
to submit portfolios.
I think for liberal like
for art schools, yeah.
You have to have a portfolio anyway.
It's like, um, your SAT score is
the only thing that matters, that,
that is extremely one dimensional,
but at the same time, it guarantees
fairness because there's so many
ways that, people can cheat when
it comes to subjective things like,
recommendation letters projects, anyway.
For most of the Chinese students
around my age when it came time
to choose a university, we simply
deferred to our parents or teachers.
Like I said, Zhang Yiming
was very different.
He knew how to think about the problem.
He analyzed what mattered to him.
He set clear constraints and made a
decision based on his own experience.
It's tempting to explain this by
saying that, oh, Yi ming he was born
differently, he was wired differently.
He's a genius.
But I think that misses the point.
I think most of us are not that different.
When it comes to, iq, you
know how smart we are.
Most of us, Yeah, for sure there're
people who's more gifted in
math, in physics stuff like that.
But the majority of us,
we're not that different.
Yeah.
I don't think Yiming is
born very differently.
So I guess that's where
my theory comes into play.
If we apply the machine learning
framework here we can think of our
kindergarten, K through 12, kindergarten
to high school education as the quote
unquote pre-training phase where
students are learning knowledge and
forming their values and the worldviews.
For most of the Chinese students,
the reward is very narrow and it's
very focused, and that is you have
to have good grades perfect scores
top elite universities very focused.
But, easy to follow, easy to implement.
And think about it the training
data the data set for most of the
Chinese students are textbooks test
questions quizzes, things like that.
And Zhang Yiming was trained
on a very different data set.
Remember, he reads
newspapers and magazines.
They're very different from,
textbooks like, physics, biology,
chemistry, very different.
So he was exposed to, politics economy
technology markets, business, societies,
real issues happening in the real world.
As a result, I think he is able
to connect ideas, rather than just
memorizing answers credits to his parents
indulging him in following his passion.
I think.
He knows how to analyze a real problem
not just the fictional ones on paper.
Thanks to all of the years
that he spent reading devouring
those newspapers and magazines.
I am a father.
Now, so I think about the
reward and the data set.
I would feed to my kids.
'Cause when they're younger
parents can exert a lot of
control over, what they read.
And, eventually, you know what they
think about how they look at the world.
All of these are, very
interesting things that I started
observing and thinking about.
I want to mention something else where
there's another benefit from Zhang
YiMing's obsession in newspapers.
After he started his first company
in about 10 years, his first breakout
app is an news app called Toutiao.
That means headlines.
And they were able to hit a hundred
million daily active users, very fast.
Something no one has never done before.
So you can see the obsession in newspapers
early on in his life leading to that
success later on in his company building.
And just like Steve Jobs once
said, you can only connect the dots
looking backward, but not forward.
So anyway back to Zhang YiMing's
College selection process.
It turns out, those four
conditions are very effective.
There's only actually one university
that fits all four criteria,
and that is Nanka University.
In, in Tianjin a coastal city.
It's actually not too far from Beijing but
it's a thousand miles from his hometown.
It's a great university.
And I would say Zhang Yiming
made the perfect choice.
He found his girlfriend, he met
his girlfriend at Nanka University.
They got married after graduation one of
his roommates become his co-founders, at
a few startups that he founded later on.
And I believe that roommate
his name is Leon Rubo.
He is actually the C-E-O-C-E-O at
ByteDance right now most importantly
Zhang Yiming found his life of work.
And that is, coding programming.
Software stuff.
He goes to Nanai University,
but there is one problem.
Remember I mentioned before he was
really good at biology in college.
So he actually applied
for the biology major.
But his scores were not high enough to get
into that major, because that major at the
time was extremely popular among students.
So he ended up picking electrical
engineering as the major more
specifically microelectronics.
So more like semiconductors.
I think his dad had some influence
in picking microelectronics.
Remember his dad was running his
own electronics factory, so I'm
pretty sure he talked to his dad
anyway.
So college life starts but I guess he
is not really enjoying his he didn't
enjoy electrical engineering that much.
He found the bread
boarding, process too slow.
He has no patience for that.
And you can see here, breadboarding
is really just a prototyping with,
different chips different wires.
It can be very messy.
And that, that's what I studied
in college, so I understand,
where he's coming from.
But yeah, anyway, for Yiming,
he's like, oh, this is, too slow.
I want something that's more immediate.
I really need some immediate feedback.
I guess that's just, how he is.
So he bought a desktop computer.
And he started learning
programming himself in the dorm,
and he got pretty good at it.
He's very good at setting up and even
repairing desktop computers, not just
his own, but he was helping his roommates
or even other students in the school.
And he actually made a
good income by doing that.
But more importantly he decided to switch
major in junior year because he realized
that speed is so important to him.
And you will see that again
and again in his later career.
This kind of fast iteration AB testing
try something, prototyping something
very fast is more natural to him.
Software is more natural to him
compared to, hardware engineering
it takes a lot of time and
patience to, probe around to debug.
And the engineering cycle is a lot longer.
So that's why he decided to
switch major from electrical
engineering to software engineering.
And again, that's how he
discovered his life of work.
Also as a college student you're supposed
to have a lot of other, activities, fun
things to do outside of schoolwork, right?
But for Zhang Yiming, he had no
interest in social activities or
aspiration to go abroad, to go to
the us to pursue a master's degree.
He had none of those.
He did a commencement speech
back in 2016 at nanka University.
And I quote, the loneliness of University
Life gave me the quietest time of
my life to read while others spent
their time playing games or cards.
I read.
All kinds of books, or maybe I
should say all sorts of random
books from different disciplines,
biographies of people, newspapers, and
magazines from both China and abroad.
And I have to say,
biographies are wonderful.
Nourishment for the soul.
I read a lot of them.
If there's one lesson I took away
is that all great people before they
became great lived lives that seemed
ordinary and dull during small,
insignificant things every day.
But eventually those tiny dots
connected into lines and those
lines became their achievements.
End quote.
Obviously he's paying tributes
to Steve jobs, the connecting the
dots reference, but also I think
he's talking about, being patient.
Being patient is very important.
Later in his career, he would
talk about this concept of
delayed gratification a lot.
And, we're seeing where that idea
was born back in his college days
and I cannot agree more.
I think reading is very important
to quote Charlie Munger.
He said, in my entire life, I
rarely see a successful person
that does not read ferociously.
And I'm a big fan of this podcast
founders podcast by David Sandra.
And he would read biographies a lot
of biographies and, you'll see all
of these successful great people
entrepreneurs, leaders, they read a lot.
Elon Musk Warren Buffet a lot of them
bill Gates, they devour shelves of books.
And Yiming is no different.
He reads a lot.
He learns from those
readings, those biographies.
But also I think, he started
dreaming about creating a company
that might change the world someday.
Before we wrap up his college days
I want to talk about this anecdote.
So he had a major crush on a girl,
and, he's a very direct person.
So he asked her out and he
got turned down, immediately.
I guess Yiming is, he's,
he's not very tall.
He is he's just mid person.
I guess He's not that
attractive on the looks.
But my main point is he
was not discouraged at all.
He was not heartbroken at all.
And he said that the no in this case
is really just a feedback for him
to adjust his strategy or tactics.
Because without any feedback, he
wouldn't know, what to change.
He has no information to, work on.
He just, keep making contacts find ways
to create opportunities for them to spend
time together, get to know each other.
And yeah, he won her over and that girl
uh, became his wife after they graduate.
You can see that Zhang Yiming is
really not bothered by emotions.
Even when approaching romance,
he is being very rational.
And after he founded ByteDance
the company, he had to go out
of his way to pursue some of
the best talents in the world.
And his method is not that different
from how he won over his wife.
He might take no as the initial reply,
but he won't take no as the final answer.
He's very persistent.
Yeah, I just want to share that story
to the audience, for you guys to
really understand how he operates.
So to recap his college days I think one
of the key lessons is you have to find
what you are truly passionate about.
You have to find something that is.
Natural to you.
Something that, you feel, I
wouldn't say it is effortless,
you wouldn't see it as, work.
It might seem like work to
other people, but to you it's
like play and, do not settle.
You should keep searching if
you haven't found that thing.
And once you find the thing you
shouldn't hold anything back.
You should give everything you
have and work on that thing.
You should be obsessed about that thing.
So Yi ming, he did not enjoy
electrical stuff that, that is okay.
He became quite good at coding and
he also forgot to mention he started
managing projects, software projects.
He actually became contractor.
A lot of people, they outsource
their projects to Yiming.
Within the school, there students or even
outside the school there are companies
that outsourced their projects to Yiming.
I also want to mention, Jeff Bezos went
through something similar where he was
in theoretical physics and he realized
that, oh, he might not be able to become
the top theoretical physicist, and
he's just not that passionate about it.
So he changed his major
to electrical engineering.
And later he founded Amazon.
The rest is history.
There's this really good book that
is about to come out by Bill Gurley.
But he also has a talk that he
gave at the University of Texas in
Austin called, running Down A Dream.
So it's the same name,
the talk and the book.
They're the same name where Bill talks
about, how you should chase curiosity
and then do everything you can to
become the best or at least the most
knowledgeable person in that domain.
And that's how you can
find your dream job.
So I highly recommend all of you to
check this out if you haven't already.
Okay.
Now, Yi ming, graduated, from college
and actually instead of trying to
find a job which is not that hard
for him to do but I think maybe it
is, from his dad just watching him
running, owning his own business Yiming
immediately co-founded a business
with two schoolmates after college.
And their company is to
develop an enterprise software.
I think of it as Slack.
Before Slack.
The project and the
company quickly failed.
He's just very, inexperienced.
I guess so he, he then joined a travel
search startup called Kuxun, so think of
it um, as, Expedia of China at the time.
So Yiming was employee number five
and so I'm quoting himself here.
I was an ordinary engineer at the
beginning, but by the second year I
was in charge of about 40 to 50 people
responsible for backend technology
and other tasks related to products.
Because I was young at the
time, I could work nonstop night
and day and pull all-nighters.
If I did go home early from
work, I usually would read books.
And study until one or two at night.
That period feels very fulfilling.
For those two years I was
studying day and night.
So here you can see his
unmatched work ethics.
He has that innate drive.
He just want to keep
improving keep getting better.
Like I mentioned, he sees himself as
as a product that needs iteration.
What do you do?
How do you get better?
You make the feedback loop run faster.
You gather data from work from
real projects and, you read
books, you absorb information.
I think he hates the idea of,
wasting time or, being inefficient.
And he had that same
expectation for his employees.
Later on he sees the company
as an extension to himself.
So around 2008 he left Ku Xun because
the company wasn't doing well.
it imploded from some management issue.
So Yiming joins Microsoft.
Because he wanted to see how,
established corporation, how they
manage their operation, the process.
He's just curious to see.
But very quickly he realized that um,
he's the wrong he's the wrong fit.
He's bored all the time at Microsoft.
So he's looking for a way out.
I am gonna take a tangent to talk
about Wang Xing again, because here is
where there's some crossover between
Zhang Yiming and Wang Xing so when
Yiming was looking for a way out.
Out of Microsoft Wang
Xing actually reached out.
They were both in
Beijing around that time.
WangXing is a very, interesting figure.
He was born in Long Yen, the
same city as Zhang Yiming.
His family is very wealthy.
I think his dad runs a big company.
And he's like a billionaire or something.
And hin is very smart.
Studies very hard.
So he actually, he got admitted to
Qing Hua University, and that is.
The top engineering university
in China in Beijing.
And after graduating from Qing Hu he
was admitted by Delaware University.
So he went there for his PhD. But
around 2005 Wang Xing actually
dropped out of Delaware because he was
witnessing the, I guess in the US how
social network is getting traction.
And he's like, oh, this is my opportunity.
I have to go back to
China to do something.
So he went back to China.
He started Xiaonei net which
later changed to renren.com.
Uh, Xiaonei is a direct copycat
from face from Facebook.
Pixel by pixel is not an exaggeration.
But he ended up selling xiaonei, nee
after Xiaonei, he starts looking
for other ideas, you know
what else what else is around?
Besides Facebook?
So he sets his eyes on Twitter.
So he founded this company called FanFou.
Again, it's a direct copy of Twitter.
And that's when um, you know, Wangxing
reached out to Yiming to join FanFou.
Here's another anecdote.
WangXing actually reached out to
Yiming before Yiming joins Microsoft.
That's after Yiming left Kuxun.
Yeah, Wang Xing just founded Fanfou.
He's looking for a technical partner.
He reached out to Yiming, they're
from the same hometown, I believe
they speak the same dialect.
The social media thing is,
is taking over the world.
You know, Come on, Yiming let's,
um, let's do something together.
Let's change the world together.
And it's very hard.
It's hard.
It's very hard to say no
to, it's a proposal that's
very hard to say no to, but.
Again Yi, ming just being
very rational person, he knows
very clearly what he wants.
Fanfou at the time wasn't getting
enough traction, so Yiming turned
WangXing down the first time.
But I guess now Yiming decided to leave
Microsoft and WangXing reach out again.
I think Fan Fou was doing pretty
well, and Yiming said yes this time.
So he leaves Microsoft and joins
FanFou as a technical partner.
But while Yiming was at Fanfo
he was actually poached by.
Joanne Wong she's a investor a
managing director for a PE firm
in China at the time called SIG.
Joanne poached Yiming to run
this website called 99 fang.com.
Joanne wanted Zhang Yiming to
be the CEO and 99 fang is really
the Zillow of China at the time.
Joanne later becomes the first angel
investor in ByteDance, I want to recap.
Zhang yiming's.
Early professional life.
Again, if we try to apply the machine
learning framework here I see this
phase as more like a fine tuning phase
where, he's, Zhang m has found his
life of work in the software business.
So within six years he has become
a veteran in Chinese internet.
He had experience in enterprise
software, travel, travel, search,
business, real estate business.
That's with nine, nine fang.
He worked on search engines, social
networks even content portals.
He has worked at startup environments,
big corporations like Microsoft.
So he has become a leader,
a very seasoned leader.
' cause yeah, towards the end he he is
the CEO at 99 Fang, this venture backed
company that's growing really fast.
And
This is part of the iteration,
he just keeps iterating on
himself, just like a software.
He fine tuned himself in
this real business world.
So I. I think it's very important to, to
note that if you are early in your career
if you want to really achieve something,
you know, like Zhang Yiming and maybe some
other successful entrepreneurs or leaders,
you have to work very hard, extremely hard
and try all sorts of different things.
When you are young you cannot stop.
You have to speed up.
You have to accelerate all the time
because you know you have nothing to lose.
You are young, you have the time, you
don't have a lot of family commitments.
Yeah.
Why not put all of the time into
work and just getting better.
At the time, I think Yiming was on wei bo
it's a, Chinese version of Twitter a lot.
'cause, actually Fan Fou didn't succeed.
And then WEBO took over and
becomes the Chinese Twitter.
So Yiming was on Webo a lot.
And one of his tweets that was from
2010 says mediocrity pulls you down like
gravity only escape velocity can free you.
So yeah, he's just talking about,
you have to work really hard.
You have to move very fast in order to
to avoid become a mediocre he's not,
he's talking about not just himself, but
also how you, how to build a company.
I think a lot of his tweets
he also talks about constantly
about delayed gratification.
Yeah, he's just he's a
very ambitious person.
He's very ambitious and he's
willing to put in the hard work.
We can all acknowledge, how
hard, Yiming has been working.
But I wanna say regardless of his,
personal endeavor his personal
commitment to achieving something great.
There, there's also a technology
backdrop in China around 20 10.
The early internet era in China, it
was really about three giant companies,
three giants, and they are Baidu.
That's, the.
Search engine, the Google
of China and Alibaba.
They're the e-commerce giant.
And then Tencent, they're
the, yeah, the social media.
Social media giant.
And yeah, the acronym for
these three giants is bat BAT.
And those three represent the,
what they call the first half.
If internet, the whole internet
Era is is a soccer game, you
have first half and second half.
BAT, they dominate the first
half of Chinese internet era.
Now with the, emerging mobile
internet with the introduction
of, iPhone and smartphones.
There are three newcomers Toutiao
that is actually like I mentioned
before, that is ByteDance.
The first breakout, the first
killer app from ByteDance.
And it was so popular.
And then people really
considered total as ByteDance.
'Cause ByteDance back then did not
have a lot of product offerings.
So Toutiao is really the only one.
So it's Toutiao Meituan, like I mentioned
founded by hin, it's the DoorDash.
DoorDash and Expedia another super app.
And then finally Didi founded by Chwei.
And that is the Uber of China.
So the second half is considered
dominated by these three newcomers.
And the, people call them the, TMD for
those of you who don't really speak
Chinese, it's actually a a curse word.
TMD is short for a very
popular curse word.
And that's why, it becomes popular.
It seems like the power has been.
Transferred from BAT to TMD.
In recent years I think Alibaba and
Tencent, they still remain at the top.
They're the most dominant
internet companies in China.
And ByteDance is now at the same
level as Alibaba and Tencent.
It actually, it, it leads in
revenue and profits, among all of
the internet companies in China.
There's another popular opinion to.
Replace Baidu with with ByteDance.
And those three form the new BAT.
And remember ByteDance is still
a private company, so that's
just some background information.
Yeah, this is what I was talking about.
ByteDance now replaced Baidu
to become the new B in the BAT.
Around 2011 Zhang Yiming saw more
and more people starting using
mobile phones on the subway.
To read news, instead of the
more traditional newspapers.
' cause before that everyone was
reading the same newspaper, they
watch the same television programs.
But now with the smartphone, it
is possible to deliver highly
customized content to each individual.
And Zhang Yiming is very observant.
And he started thinking about, what
that could mean for his company
at the time and for what's gonna
happen in the next few years.
So over the next six months, 99 fang.com.
Under Zhang Yiming's leadership launched
five mobile apps targeting separate
subcategories of the real estate market.
And you can see how
aggressive Zhang Yiming is.
He launched not one, not two, but
five mobile apps within month.
However, that was still not
enough for his ambition.
I quote from the Matthew Brendan
book attention Factory quote,
aiming resolved to resign from
his position as CEO of 99 Fang.
He could no longer restrict himself
to just the real estate sector.
The rise of the mobile internet
was a massive once in a lifetime
opportunity for entrepreneurs like him.
He felt compelled.
To try something bigger, something
that could touch everyone.
So there we go.
So Yiming started forming ideas
about a a new company his own
company by himself from scratch.
So he showed his business plan
to Joanne Wong on a napkin.
And yeah, Joanne was in I guess she
was she believes in the entrepreneur
himself, not much in, in the
business idea, she figure, you
know, Yiming will figure it out.
So that is how the company ByteDance was
founded uh, Yiming rented two apartments
as the home for the company very soon.
And, there is a picture in the book
showing the a apartment complex that
Bytedance was in in his early days.
This brings back my memories.
I am pretty sure that I rented
a room in my senior year around
2009 in that neighborhood.
Not in the same apartment complex,
but across the street, I believe.
Yeah, that area that, that apartment
complex is very close to the
south entrance to my university.
At the time, I used to bike to the
university, go to the labs and stuff.
I even recognize the gym in this picture.
That was my gym.
I don't think I ever
run to Zhang Min though.
They, I believe they moved in around 2012.
So three years after I graduated.
So now comes the early days of ByteDance.
Boy do they move fast.
So the nascent company released over
a dozen apps for testing in the first
half of 2012, talking about iterations
fast iterations and executions.
They released two apps even before
they moved into the apartment office.
That's how fast you
know, they were moving.
Soon enough, ByteDance released their
first flagship app called Toutiao
which means headlines English.
It is a news app that sends a highly
personalized feeds to to customers.
To smartphone users.
So it's kind of like, you know,
Google News or apple News.
So again, to quote Yiming, just as
Zuckerberg founded Facebook to connect
people and people, Travis founded
Uber to connect people and cars
Toutiao makes information and people
more widely and efficiently matched.
Also here is a you see
how ambitious Yiming is.
And he believes in the vision
and it's a grand vision.
And I have another quote from
the Attention Factory book.
The team set about building a more
ambitious app with a broad vision to
aggregate and organize many content
forms from across the internet.
An app powered by big data and
machine learning that would serve
people with a tailored feed according
to their personalized preferences
and do away with human curators.
So according to, Yi ming, um, the app
is much more than just a news app.
I guess his secret weapon is an epiphany.
He had where in the smartphone era
information has to find people instead
of, the other way around the old way where
people are searching for information.
In, in the new era information
is searching for people.
Yeah, Toutiao got a very good
start by the end of 2012.
There were 50 million downloads
already, so that is, very impressive.
Zhangyi Ming started with Joanne's
help trying to raise series B 'cause
they raised series A very early on.
But to a lot of people's surprises,
especially to Zhang Yiming's
it was really hard to raise a
Series B for Biden at the time.
Joanne personally introduced eing
to at least 20 of her venture
capital friends, not even one was
optimistic about the company, and
Ying kept getting turned away.
Ying was just too young looking.
He spoke quickly in a soft voice and
gave off the air of being a gentle.
Mild mannered software programmer
rather than a tough business leader.
He was the opposite of the brash and
confident Jack Ma style entrepreneur
that many Chinese investors favored.
It's understandable.
Again, like I said, Yiming is
a very is a very soft spoken a
very typical kind of engineer,
software engineer type of person.
I found, actually, I found the series
B pitch deck by from ByteDance.
It's actually, it's a great deck
full of, solid ideas, solid data.
I can see that Yi ming put a
lot of effort in putting that.
The pitch deck together.
But the thing is no one believes in him.
'Cause at the time there were
so many portal websites they're
the entry point of internet.
And then and then now they're just porting
the experience over to mobile phones.
And most of the investors, they, they
don't see how Bytedance or Toutiao
can can compete in that market.
So fortunately finally Joanne got
introduced to Yuri Milner's DST Global.
So DST was one of the most prolific
and successful foreign investors
in China's internet industry.
They have backed an all star lineup of
Chinese companies, including Alibaba,
jd.com, Meituan Didi, and Xiaomi.
And guess who Yuri sent to Beijing
to do due diligence on ByteDance.
It's uh, and he is uh, Joe s Chu.
So he, he is now the CEO of TikTok.
So that is amazing that, that
is amazing, turns out Shouzi was
with DST as a partner at the time.
He would then join Xmi as a CFO
and help with the IPO of Xmi.
After that he was actually poached by
Yiming to become the CFO of TikTok.
And, the rest is history.
During COVID he was promoted to be the
CEO and he led TikTok through a lot of,
few years of, ups and downs, challenges.
Great story.
But, you would've never predicted
that Shouzi would have saved
the Yiming, not once, but.
I, while they were raising series
B, but a second time a decade later.
That is amazing.
So thanks to DST and Shouzi ByteDance
closed series B, they raised 10
million at 60 million valuation,
and they are off to the races.
So now ByteDance survived its
early days and Yiming is on
his way to conquer the world.
In the next five years, he made three
major strategic decisions that sends
his company to the top of the world.
The first one is they went all in
on recommendation engine in 2013.
And then in 2015 they went
all in on short video.
Two years after, in 2017, they
went on in, on globalization.
So it's just like how Netflix evolved
from, first DVD by mail, then to streaming
and then to original contents to sustain
growth Yiming and the ByteDance made those
bets at those critical moments to keep
evolving and keep growing the business.
So Yiming knew that the early success of
Toutiao comes from customized content.
And to take that to another level, you
need the best in class recommendation
engine, which will become the
ultimate moat for the company.
And no one in China at the time truly
understand the power of recommendation
engine, yet not even the giants like BAT.
But the problem is that uh, Yiming did
not have a strong technical team either.
What does he do?
He starts learning about the
recommendation system himself.
Finding all of the books that he can find.
So I quote from the Brendan book, Yiming
Got wind of an upcoming book, putting
into Practice Recommender Systems.
It was perfect for them.
And written by one of China's leading
experts in machine learning at the time.
Xiang, Yi ming personally?
Reached out to Shang, who was then
working as a researcher at video
streaming site Hulu, to request a
copy, yet was rejected on account
that the book was not yet published.
Frustrated Yiming, decided
to teach himself pouring
over what could find online.
Ironically, years later, Xiang ended
up joining ByteDance, becoming one
of the pivotal machine learning
experts at the company's AI labs.
Even later described Sean's refusal
to send him a copy of his book as
having severely delayed the progress
of the company's recommendation
capabilities, reflecting that there
were only a few companies that
really made their minds up to make
recommendation engines and many failed.
In this story Yi ming sheer
determination and self-study reminded
me of a niche story about Elon
Musk during the genesis of SpaceX.
So I think I, I was able to
find this story on, on Reddit.
So in his, in Elon's quest to build
the lightest possible rocket shell
Musk hunted down an expert on an alloy,
and cold emailed him personally to ask
if it would yield a better airframe
than standard materials while the
expert told him it wouldn't work.
The act itself revealed the shared
DNA between the two founders.
So neither Elon nor Yiming were
burdened by what they didn't know.
They simply viewed
expertise as a resource.
They could either cold call, or
acquire or replicate through,
brute force self-education.
Of course self-learning
can only get you so far.
So IMing started poaching people
from Baidu the search giant in
China, and he was able to build the
best team on recommendation engine.
And the payback is immediate almost.
The daily active user for Toutiao grew
from 10 million in 2014 to 30 million
in 2015, and then to 80 million in 2016.
The AD revenue soared from 40 million.
In,
2014 and then to 200 million in
2015, and then to 1 billion in 2016.
So not only is toutiao a attention factory
but also it is a cache printing machine.
So ING built a very
differentiated product.
While other news apps are focusing
on creating the content to, is solely
focusing on distributing content and
the recommendation engine serves as the
foundation, it makes toutiao much better.
And it would go on and make
all of the future products by
ByteDance much, much better.
By, around 2016 toutiao has accomplished
phenomenal growth and success.
But it is not time to celebrate yet.
Toutiao is still facing fierce
competition, from internet giants
and from traditional news outlets.
And from Yiming's perspective, the delayed
gratification mindset is kicking in.
It's not time to celebrate yet.
So what was not mentioned in Brandon's
book Attention Factory but I found
in this other book was the fact that
starting in 2014 Toutiao had a lot
of lawsuits from major news outlets.
It reminded me of the legal battle
between the New York Times and
open AI around content copyrights.
Because remember, Toutiao
does not generate any content.
And yet it is hoarding all of the
ads dollars from advertisers that
is the power of the user attention.
So, Yiming spent a lot of time
addressing these legal issues as the CEO.
Uh.
Um, Remember, he's a very soft leader.
He is non-confrontational, but
he is very sincere and honest,
and that's his true strength.
Most of these cases were dismissed
or settled or dropped, but it got,
Yi ming, thinking about long-term
solutions to these copyrights disputes.
So far Toutiao has been focusing solely
on how to distribute information and
how to recommend content to users,
but apparently that is not enough.
They have to be able to generate
original content themselves.
ByteDance started investing in
individual content creators in
2014 ByteDance allocated about $1.5
million to incentivize in creators.
And that number became.
One $50 million in 2016, a
hundred Xed in two years.
And here you see the future
TikTok ecosystem taking shape.
So, you know, TikTok is
not an overnight success.
It is far from it because Yiming
and the ByteDance team, they made
a lot of mistakes very early on.
They learned a lot and then
they learned their lessons.
They kept getting better and better.
So now the year is 2015.
The whole of China's internet
industry knew that engagement
is shifting towards videos.
I'm quoting from the Matthew Brennan book.
ByteDance entered the
Race relatively late.
There were dozens of Chinese
apps that had already introduced
new ways of consuming videos.
ByteDance flagship app to was already
featuring short videos, which were
experiencing an explosion in usage
over the first quarter of 2016.
The average time an active
user spent on the app per day
was an impressive 53 minutes.
This had grown to a formidable 76 minutes
per day by the third quarter of the year.
Yeah, think about it.
Let it sink in a little bit.
76 minutes on a single
app back in 2016 in China.
Over half of the growth came
from short videos alone.
Short video consumption within total
during the first half of 2016 was
growing at a monthly rate of 35%.
There was simply no way the
team could sit by anymore.
They had to put serious effort into
building dedicated short video platforms.
So yeah, that's the tipping point for
short video and everybody sees it um,
and uh, is already late in the game.
So what they do and yeah, in a very
typical uh, Yiming's fashion yeah,
they launched a three pronged attack.
The three pronged strategy consists
of watermelon video, which imitated
YouTube, the clear global leader in
online video and volcano video, which
imitated the clear leader in China's
short video market at the time.
Finally, the wild card in the mix was
a me later known as doin a clone of
musically the Western market leader
of short videos for young people.
So, Yeah, Yi ming doesn't like to
put all the eggs in one basket.
And with the infrastructure, with the team
that he has built already, he's chasing
after three very different markets.
YouTube Chinese short video platform, and
then the Westerns short video platform.
And so musically was mentioned.
I want to cover the
musically story briefly.
It was the short video app that
took over the US before TikTok.
I won't go into details, but if you are
interested in the history buy the Brennan
book or go to acquire the podcast where
Ben and David did an amazing episode
on the topic just search for TikTok.
I did not know much about musically
before I started the research.
But to sum it up, the company
was based in China actually.
But it became very popular among
American teens around 2014 to 2017.
And as far as the name goes,
rumor says that the two founders
wanted to name it musical.
However the US domain
name was taken of course.
So they got a Libyan country code domain,
and that is what the dot LY is for.
I just found that story very interesting.
Yeah, the two founders are really,
they're very smart, they're very they're
hustlers and I respect them a lot.
So back to by ByteDance.
So a me is short for awesome me,
and it is supposed to
mimic the musically vibe.
But it wasn't doing very
well in the first few months.
The biggest reason is that a
me is copying the strategy from
musically to target young teenagers.
But unlike teens in the us that
demographic in China had very little
time, free time due to tons of
homework and after school activities.
Remember I was talking about Zhang
Yiming high school days when.
All of the students were laser focused on
studying and getting high scores in tests
so no one really has the time to do any
funny videos nor is their parents gonna
allow them to use cell phone excessively.
So there are internal conversations
now about shutting Amy down.
After the long cold Start but Yiming.
Reasoned as such, the logical
correct thing is definitely right.
And others meaning musically
have already verified this path.
Our data is poor because we
haven't done a good job ourselves.
So again, his.
Looking at the success that musically
has achieved in the us and he is self
reflecting on things that could have
been done better with their own team.
So under Yiming's guidance, the
team keeps it running with the
shifted focus now away from teens,
but to trendy urban youth in China.
The first step, it needs
a new name and a new logo.
This is also where TikTok gets its
iconic logo inherited from Douyin
according to the Brennan book.
The young designer tasked with
the redesign had his epiphany when
attending a rock concert lit up by
beam of swirling colorful lights with a
surrounding dark stage inspired by the.
Psychedelic visuals at the live event.
He said about creating an image
that would capture the show's
euphoric feel and decided to toy
around with the musical note sign.
He ran the icon through.
Various filters and settled on using
something known as a glitch effect.
The style is reminiscent of the static
distortions of an old television
suffering from a weak signal.
The overall impression was
one that perfectly conveyed
the feeling of shaky movement.
Also the Chinese name doin
literally means vibrating music.
So the logo matched the name very well.
It was different, it was creative
and instantly recognizable.
So with the new look and the
new strategy Dou in previously
a Amy is now getting traction.
Apparently it has achieved product
market fit also, it is finally getting
the top priority support from the
mothership ByteDance with Yiming's
approval the recommendation engine.
It's cranking up and up.
So during the golden week in China seven
day Chinese national holidays Douyin's
daily active users, doubled from 7
million to 14 million in October, 2017,
and then to 30,000,002 months later.
Now with enough positive data 'cause,
E means always looking at data.
He's just very data-driven.
All of his decisions are data-driven.
He's, he does not allow his emotions
to affect his decision making.
That's why they were holding it
down before, while figuring out the
product market fit for doin, but
now, all of the data are suggesting
that, this is something special.
So eing went all in on doin.
During the holiday week of Chinese
New Year, in February, 2018, Dowing
spent $500,000 a day on ads across
major online channels to acquire users.
The daily active user numbers jumped
from 40 million to 70 million.
Then by this double down again and upping.
The daily promotion
budget to $2.8 million.
That's per day to buy
traffic that is crazy.
So by April, but it, it is effective.
By April, 2018 daily users had
exceeded a hundred million.
And Douyin has.
Has this new tagline called record
Beautiful Life and that helped doin
crossing the chasm into the mainstream.
Around October, 2018, doin had 200
million daily active users and over
20 billion of daily video views.
Wow.
What a run.
Yet, it is still not the
time to, to celebrate.
Remember Yiming was really
big on, delayed gratification.
So one of the giants is not happy
about what Douyin is able to achieve
because before uh, WeChat dominated
the screen time for most of the Chinese
users in fact, I think it was over 50%.
For most of the Chinese smartphone
owners they would spend half
of their time on WeChat.
And now I guess TikTok is, uh, Dou
ing is creeping in and then start
stealing screen times from WeChat
and Tencent, so they're not happy.
And they tried a lot of different things.
They would cut off how uh, doin links
get shared within the WeChat platform.
They launched their own
version of the short video app.
They invested in.
One of the biggest competitors called
Qua Show the name that came up before
so it is and again, Tencent, they
made a lot of money from the WeChat
pay the, all of the mobile games.
They have a really big marketing
budget to compete with doin and still
somehow Bytedance survived and thrived.
It is a miracle that ByteDance
was able to survive under BAT.
I think, thanks to the recommendation
algorithm doin doesn't really
rely on social media to share
or discover new content.
And to this day, ance is the only
major internet company that did
not take any investments from
Tencent or Alibaba and survived
and competed at the highest level.
So after Tencent failed to, compete with
uh, Douyin uh, Yiming still didn't stop.
Bytedance launched TikTok
the international version of
Douyin, um, Yiming actually he
is aiming global from day one.
You can see that like I mentioned
before, TikTok inherited the iconic logo.
And it has proven itself in the
Chinese market, in the extremely
competitive market in China.
But for TikTok to conquer the US
market, Yi ming, needs an opportunity.
And in 2017, musically
put itself for sale.
At the time ance Facebook, Tencent,
Snapchat, they had all expressed interest.
There's one more complication though.
One of the early investors in
musically named the HUN has the right
to veto any future acquisition deal.
I quote from the book for us to
get a deal done, Yiming has to
figure out a way to work with Ian.
It was not an easy deal.
End quote.
Revealed musically.
Board member Han Tung to meet Ian's exact.
Demands the final agreement
involved bundling together
three separate transactions.
Yi ming committed to buy one of fusion's
companies for 86 million and invested 50
million in one of his other companies.
For musically and its investors,
the price tag of 800 million
was a satisfactory return.
So this acquisition was done late
2017, and it opened the door for
Bytedance to compete in the US market.
Looking back, Yiming was probably
the only person that could get a
deal done, and it turned out to
be a huge win for him and ance.
It unlocked the growth potential
globally because at the time I
think do in's, growth would saturate
within the Chinese market very fast.
And rumor says that mark Zuckerberg met
with musically team multiple times in 2017
and even flew to Shanghai to meet with
the founders, but he ultimately walked
away out of concerns about the app's,
young user base and Chinese ownership.
And I think mark would regret
that decision because after
seeing tiktoks success in the
US market mark launched Lark.
No, not Lark lasso launched lasso
trying to compete against TikTok, but
it wasn't near, it wasn't even close.
It wasn't even close.
But however, I think re's on Instagram,
it was a very very good product.
And, yeah, it becomes a very
meaningful short platform in the US.
Really the rest is history.
We all know the story.
During the beginning of COVID,
TikTok gained 110 million daily
active users within two months.
Even with all of the controversies
around TikTok happening in the last
few years, it is still the number one
short video app in the us of course.
Mark.
Uh, A lot of people try to copy
and compete with TikTok, but
the content machine, or shall I
say the attention factory that,
Yi ming built is too powerful.
At its peak in 2022 daily active
users of TikTok worldwide was over 700
million, and that's daily active users.
So TikTok has even become an important
news source for the younger generation
Now in Pew Research Center, new
survey, 43% of adults under 30 say
that they regularly get news there.
Up from 9% in 2020.
So it looks like ByteDance is going back
to its roots since the Toutiao days.
And that's, I find that interesting.
Yeah.
So many people are, just
getting news from TikTok.
So it's not just a funny
video platform anymore.
People are getting information
and are learning things.
From TikTok I think there's a
hashtag called book tok where.
People are sharing book
reviews, summaries.
So it's just an amazing platform.
But make no mistake it's not
like, you know, Yi ming only hits
home, runs every single time.
He tried a lot of things.
There are a lot of failed
apps over the years.
Social networks mobile gaming
enterprise software, even metaverse
some consumer electronics as well.
Yeah, a lot of those failed.
But that is okay because,
it's just part of the process.
You don't know until you, you try it out.
You have to put it out on the market
for the customers to try and remember.
In the early days Yi ming learn that
even negative feedback is better
than no feedback at all, right?
You want to learn and then
keep making adjustments.
Bytedance recently launched a chat,
GBT like, chat bot it's called
uh, uh, so, focusing on the mobile
users with the really powerful
conversational capabilities.
And data says that it now
has over a hundred million
daily active users in China.
And that makes ByteDance the only
company with three apps with over a
hundred million daily active users in
China and their toutiao d in and Dobo.
What an accomplishment.
Also it's worth mentioning
that the ByteD ance has another
video editing app called Capcut.
It's really easy to use, really powerful.
It's actually getting a
lot of the loyal fans too.
I use that.
From time to time to
added to added videos.
I'm just getting started.
I'm just learning.
But yeah the initial user
experience is great for me.
Even though Bytedance is still a
private company there is some data.
That suggests that they've already
hit 155 billion in revenue in 2025
with a net profit of 50 billion.
They're valued at 330 billion.
And yeah, that is just a
phenomenal company that Yiming
built in the past the decade.
As we wrap up here I wanna turn back the
time to the turbulent times during COVID.
In May, 2020 ING hired a Disney
executive Kevin Meyer to be the
CEO of TikTok and the COO of
Bytedance reporting directly to ing.
As we all know it did not go very well.
First India banned TikTok in June,
2020, and then Trump threatened
to shut down TikTok in July, 2020.
So Kevin resigned after three months
and Yiming put showed to as the CEO
to run the TikTok operation issue.
On May 20th, 2021 ing surprised
everyone with an internal letter.
So I do have this letter and of
course it was in Chinese, but I
went with a little help of chat.
Bt I was able to translate it.
Let's hear how Yiming himself
reflects on his career.
I'd like to read this letter to you and I
find it very enlightening and inspiring.
In the past few months, many
colleagues have asked why I stopped
updating my bimonthly OKRs this year.
Uh, Yiming is a big fan of OK r. To
be honest, I was not satisfied with
last year's annual OKRs, exploring
long-term strategy, studying
organization and management, and
improving our social responsibility.
So starting from the new year holiday, I
began thinking about new OKRs, bimonthly,
annually, and the long-term ones.
And how they shouldn't be just
linear extensions of the past.
Then I had a different idea.
I decided to step down from the CEO role
and put aside day-to-day management.
As the founder, I want to focus
on long-term, important topics,
visionary strategy, corporate
culture, and a social responsibility.
We were fortunate to ride the wave of our
times, applying machine learning to mobile
and video, and achieved some results.
Yeah, he's been very modest.
Some results.
After graduating and before founding
ByteDance, I taught myself many things,
how to distribute information more
efficiently, how to combine product and
technology, and how to treat a company
itself as a product to be improved.
These ideas helped shape ByteDance
and the entrepreneurial journey
enriched those ideas in return.
Although our business is performing well
today, the bigger question is in the long
run, can we avoid becoming complacent?
Can we not only grow larger, but also grow
more creatively and meaningfully living
up to our mission of inspire creativity?
Enrich life, sustain the deep thinking
and the bold imagination are the
foundation of innovation, but people tend
to focus on changes in business models
and brand channels while ignoring the
technological transformations brewing
beneath the surface, only a few can
perceive the future and create the trends.
Today the EV industry is
booming, but most people forget.
Tesla was founded 18 years ago.
Testing prototype.
Built from laptop batteries.
Many people know the Mac package
manager home brew, but few remember
that in the 1970s hobbyists at the
Home Brew Computer Club were already
demoing the Apple one and other
early personal computer prototypes.
Fields like virtual reality.
Life sciences and scientific computing
are showing Don like promise and exploring
them requires breaking free from the
inertia of our existing businesses.
At the same time, technology now
plays a much larger role in society.
And we must keep learning how
a company can better fulfill
its social responsibilities.
At our seventh anniversary celebration, I
shared a quote from Alice in Wonderland.
Sometimes I've believed as many as six
impossible things before breakfast.
I love thinking about things that are
theoretically possible, but not yet real.
My email signature has always
said, I enjoy daydreamy.
By daydreaming, I don't mean zoning out.
I mean thinking independently about vast
rarely discussed ideas, but with the
busy pace of work, I've increasingly
found myself unaware of many things
that have already happened in the
real world over the past few years.
I felt like I've been
living off past knowledge.
Before 2017, I kept up with new
developments in machine learning,
but in the past three years
I haven't been learning much.
I've saved countless professional
videos and articles on total and.
Uh, The watermelon short video
platform he was talking about.
But my fragmented reading has made
progress painfully slow and I struggle
to keep up in technical discussions.
Three years ago, I shared
something with a few founders.
A CEO must avoid a common negative
scale effect As the business and
organization grow, the CEO becomes
a central bottleneck, constantly
listening to reports, approving
requests, and making decisions.
This leads to an overly
internal perspective and
very slow knowledge updates.
So over the past six months, this idea.
Took shape.
I should adjust my role.
Step away from CEO duties and dedicate
myself to learning systematic thinking,
exploring new things, hands-on
experiments, and creating more
possibilities for the next decade.
Meanwhile, the company has made progress
in social responsibility and philanthropy,
education, brain disease research,
digitizing ancient books and more.
I've been personally involved and I
hope to participate even more deeply.
At the same time, there are many
important things The company
must continue to improve.
I hope someone better than
me can lead daily operations
and ensure healthy growth.
I am not a traditional mature manager.
I am not very good at socializing.
I prefer studying organizational and
market principles to reduce management.
I enjoy being online reading,
listening to music, and daydreaming.
In March, I discussed this idea
in a small group and it suggests
that Rubo take over as CEO.
Everyone understood and supported it.
Ruble is a co-founder.
Ance is the second company
we've built together.
So Ruble is his roommate.
As I mentioned before they
co-founded actually he, uh.
joined uh, Yiming when he was
running 99 fan as the CEO, and
then they co-founded Bytedance.
He has taken on product and engineering
leadership, facial and internal
tools, HR and management systems from
purchasing servers to finishing the
systems I wrote half of to important
hiring and institutional design.
For the next six months, he will
work side by side to ensure a
smooth transition by year end.
Please support Rubo in his new role.
A few years ago on a trip, I
posted something on WeChat moments.
Travel is partly about switching time
and space, making it easier to view
yourself as an outsider and examine
your life after stepping down as CEO.
Beyond focusing on long-term
strategy, culture, and responsibility.
I will also be able to observe the company
more easily from an external perspective.
Back in our 2012 business
plan, I told the team treat the
entrepreneurial journey as traveling
together and enjoying the scenery.
I hope everyone can support me in
this journey within the journey.
Yeah, fascinating.
Um, Yiming is so rational.
Like I said, he boasted the concept
of delayed gratification all the
time and during my research, I kept
asking the question, how can someone.
So big on delayed gratification.
Create something that takes
instant gratification to a level
human has never seen before.
It looks conflicted.
But maybe as Fitzgerald's wrote the
test of a first rate intelligence.
It's the ability to hold two opposing
ideas in mind at the same time and
still remain the ability to function.
I guess the main takeaways from
researching Yiming's career, there
are a few points I want to make here
hopefully you will find these insightful
and you can figure out a way to
somehow apply these to your own life.
So first Yiming is a soft leader.
He's not a loud one but he
is a very, strong leader.
He knows exactly what he wants.
He knows exactly where
the company is heading.
He's very data driven.
Uh, Ming is a softer leader calm,
non-confrontational, and highly rational.
This style is actually more common
in Asia than in Silicon Valley,
but it is no less powerful.
He leads through context systems and
incentives rather than charisma or
force this reality changing force.
Second, he is an unusually
independent thinker.
At a time when most Chinese
entrepreneurs were focusing on
copying Silicon Valley to China.
Yi ming choose a very different path.
He wasn't interested in cloning products.
He wanted to reinvent how information
flows and that independence taken to
an extreme became his greatest edge.
Number three.
He aims global from day one.
And that represents a new generation of
the Asian entrepreneurs being the best
example Yiming has always followed a
global technology trends closely and built
ance with a global mindset from the start.
This wasn't an afterthought.
It was a core design choice, visible
in how he named the company, built
the teams, and thought about products.
Number four he is an impatient
hustler with a long-term horizon.
So he is very impatient with inefficiency.
But he's very patient with outcomes.
He understands that, no pain,
no gain, and he moves fast.
He tests very aggressively
and reiterates relentlessly.
Yet when conviction is formed, he's
willing to wait and compound over years.
Like what we saw, where the
ding it's a perfect sample.
Number five, he's very data-driven.
He's very decisive.
Early in his career ing tried many
jobs, products, and directions
to gather fast feedback.
And once the data become clear,
he made big concentrated bets.
So he would explore first
and then commit second.
Again remember once he's, certain that
doin has found a product market fit.
He does not shy away from putting in crazy
marketing dollars to push for downloads.
He did the same thing with TikTok.
In the US finally.
It takes the right people,
the right place, and the
right time to be successful.
Ultimately ByteDance exists because
ING was the right founder at the
right moment, surfing the mobile
internet wave with perfect timing.
The open question now is whether
the same mindset and discipline will
allow him to write the next wave ai.
And recently we I've seen news coverage
on, Yiming now is now is taking a more
active role in front of the media.
That reminded me of, Sergey maybe
aiming is back in the founder mode.
Because AI is an opportunity that
humanity has never seen before.
I think with the foundation that uh,
Yiming laid out for at ByteDance's
already with all the work that they've
done on the recommendation engine and the
uh, recent advancement in the chat bot.
They also have their
own foundational models.
So yeah, I'm excited to
see what's next for Yiming.
Super excited for him.
And yeah, that's it for the first episode.
I hope you enjoyed the story
and I'll see you next time.