‘Over Time the Trust Will Come’: An Exclusive Interview With TikTok’s CEO

TikTok has irreversibly bent our tradition’s trajectory, however that doesn’t assure it’ll be round to reap the advantages. (India banned the app way back, and it’s below rising scrutiny in a handful of different nations.) It has walked the political tightrope this far, however any dangerous PR might knock it off. Maybe that’s why TikTok’s chief comms officer—who used to work in US politics herself—made a present of recording my dialog with Chew along with her telephone.

The overprotectiveness isn’t stunning, after all. TikTok is aware of Chew can’t play the sport in fairly the identical approach lots of his Silicon Valley counterparts do (taunting the media, for instance, will all the time be off-limits for him). Instead, he has chosen a gentler type of evangelism, telling folks that issues actually are nicer in his walled backyard, if solely they’ll give the app an opportunity. And that the backyard might be even nicer if all of us produce extra content material.

This interview has been edited for size and readability.

Shou Zi Chew: Almost each time I go to a brand new metropolis, I try to meet just a few creators. And then I comply with them on my TikTok. So it turns into like a friendship, sending messages, and we simply keep in contact.

Dexter Thomas: That is cool.

It’s actually enjoyable, yeah. [Chew pulls out his phone.] Follow me, I’m @shou.time. I’m going to comply with you.

OK.

This is you, proper? [reading from my first post] Uh, your caption says, “This is a terrible app.”

Well, I didn’t prefer it again then as a result of it was all Musical.ly children. My opinion has modified.

You have solely two feedback on this publish. OK. You ought to publish extra.

I ought to. But proper now, right here we’re in Mesa, Arizona, on the first dwell TikTok live performance. Why Mesa?

Well, the climate is implausible this time of the yr.

I suppose, however why not Los Angeles? Why not New York? Is this a delicate launch to see if it really works?

With the primary time, you be sure you handle your expectations, proper? It is necessary that the occasion goes easily. The complete level was, how will we make one of the best of expertise offline, on-line?

I additionally hear you’re sponsoring the Met Gala.

Yeah.

Why?

Why not? Did you see the press launch about it? It’s very cultural. Fashion is an extremely necessary a part of TikTok. Louis Vuitton has 12 million followers on our app.

I believe the world doesn’t know a lot about you as an individual. So let’s go away TikTok alone. Who is Shou Zi Chew?

Oh, who am I? I grew up in Singapore. I used to be born there, my great-grandfather moved there a few years in the past. I had a typical Singaporean childhood. I wished to see the world, as a result of Singapore is implausible, however it’s tiny. So I went to the UK for school. I joined Goldman Sachs, labored there for a few years, met an web entrepreneur who began an funding firm to spend money on Facebook. So I joined him, and thru that I met the man who based ByteDance. And in his earliest iteration, the concept was so easy, however so highly effective. So I met him in 2012, and … [The door opens and a couple walks in. They are the owners of AZ Taco King.]