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00:00This is my kitchen table and also my filing system over much of the past three decades. I've been an investor the highest quality of mankind. I've often thought as private equity. And then I started interviewing Oh I watch your interviews because I know how to do it. I've learned in doing my interviews how leaders make it to the top. I asked him how much he wanted. He said to 250. I said fine I didn't negotiate with him. I did no due diligence. I have something I'd like to sell and how they stay there. You don't feel inadequate now because the only the second wealthiest man. Was that right. I'm at the New York Offices of Ticktock and I'm about to interview the CEO Tick Tock about how I can become a tick tock star among other things. Now I am older than many of your tick tock followers I believe. Maybe you have some people my age but my impression is it's for younger people. Is that wrong. There is really something for everyone on tick tock. I would I would have you insult to tell you I do it. Well I. I am not an expert on tech talk. I have looked at it but I haven't seen anything that looks like me. I think you may be surprised. For example for example there is something called Book Tock Tick Tock. It is a hashtag. And it really is a trend where people share short videos on their favorite books and you'll be surprised how many views they have. We have 40 billion views on book talk a lot and there are many other categories. There is clean talk which is about people cleaning 30 billion views. I personally am a very amateur golfer hashtag. Golf has more than 10 billion views on ticktock as well. So I believe there is something for everyone. The way we want to present this is we have a machine learning recommendation engine which personalizes your experience when you use ticktock and we believe that something for you. Well. So can anybody put a video on ticktock. Yes very easily. How do you control somebody put something on that's dangerous or pornographic or are not appropriate. This is a great question. One of the most important things that I have been focusing on since I took on the role nearly a year ago is on the safety of our platform. It's something we take absolutely seriously. And we have elevated this as a top priority for myself and for the company. We put a significant amount of investment into it and we believe that we need to continue to invest and trust and safety to stay ahead of our growth. Because of the growth of the platform. So for example making sure that making sure that our community guidelines which are published transparently online are well understood by our users. Making sure that we have the tools and the capabilities to ensure a safe environment a safe thing and inclusive environment environment on our platform so that our users feelings feel like you feel that is a trusted environment to do publish and to inspire the creativity they want to. So let's suppose I want to be a tick tock person. I want to be on tick tock but I have to make a living. Can I make a living by just being on tick tock. Are there people that make a living just by being on tick tock. Most of our users come on tick tock to to share how they feel and to inspire you know to inspire the world. But they are people who come on. Tick tock. And this is something we're extremely proud of. We have enable them. We have given them the platform and the tools to actually make a proper living. And most of these are small businesses or individuals. I can give you an example. I have been looking at my own ticket out recently and I saw this video on T case surf and turf. It is a restaurant in Denver. I think it's the first like own family operated seafood restaurant in Denver. What I've heard is doing the pandemic business was poor for a lot of restaurants including them. But what one created did was to create videos on what you know how great the restaurant was. It became an overnight sensation. It went viral. And now business is booming for for that company. So there are thousands upon thousands of examples like that across the U.S. and across the world. You know this is something that we are immensely proud of that we have a platform that small businesses can make yourself to get to grow their business. Well let's suppose I want to be a tick tock performer and I want to get paid for. Do I do something that says this restaurant is great and hopefully restaurant will pay me. Is that how people get paid by being on tick tock. There are several mechanisms to do it. The first is if you become if you have enough followers certain brands will get in touch with you either through us or otherwise to for you to represent the brand. So you become their brand ambassador. So that's one way some of our creators get paid. Beyond that we have provided them with tools to monetize you know to get in touch with their followers and monetize that debt as well. For example we have a live streaming service. So as a creator you can you can launch you can have a life streaming session. And that is an exclusive exclusive session where you can interact with the followers and your followers can give you virtual gifts. And that's one way you can monetize. The other example is e-commerce. We provide our creators with the tools to be able to sell merchandise on the platform as well. This is to a new part of our business but is something that people are very very excited about. How do you make money. In other words somebody goes on tick tock and they're making money for this restaurant in Denver. How do you make any money. We make money primarily through advertising and also providing services like live streaming and e-commerce style uses. And we we do have a service fee that that we charge to provide those services. But if somebody just uploads their video on tick tock do they pay you a fee for that. Or no it's absolutely free. Are there companies now that specialize in making people tick tock stars. Somebody says I want to be on tick talk. I want people to watch me. Maybe I can sell my my services or an advertising company or some way. There are other people that polish up people's tick tock presentations. The way our platform works and my advice to anyone who wants to be famous in our platform is to just be themselves. What we have found is that this community is is this community once real content. They want the real raw content. They want to see people being themselves. So that is many people tell me it's a breath of fresh air. This this sunny corner of the Internet. So my advice to anyone who wants to be famous is really to be themselves. So recently Mark Zuckerberg announced at his quarterly earnings after explaining why the stock went down by 25 percent as a result of the declining use of Facebook. He attributed to tick tock and Tick Tock was becoming a big rival he said. How did it feel to be blamed by Mark Zuckerberg for the decline in value of Facebook. We are a very young company at this point and we are still very big competitors in the market. Some of them have been around for a long time with a lot of resources. So the way we look at it there's still a long way for us to go in terms of achieving the mission that we want to achieve. We think that there are a number of things that makes us unique in the market. The first is that we are pioneers in what we do. We have innovated this form of short video combined before you feed and we are confident that in the coming years we will continue to innovate on that front and bring the best and the most interesting value proposition to our users. So if Mark Zuckerberg were here would you say don't worry about us. We're not a big competition to you or would just say we're coming after you. I think for us David we are more focused on ourselves. I think over the long run the biggest competitor that we have as cliches is going to sound is going to be ourselves. We have a mission which is to inspire creativity and to bring joy. And we believe that our most important focus is to focus on delivering that mission. But let me ask you this. Most of the large Chinese technology companies let's say Alibaba by do 10 cent. They have gigantic market values and they're very prominent in China not as prominent outside of China as obviously in China and certainly not that prominent in United States. Tick tock by contrast is not in China but it's gigantic outside of China the United States and everywhere. What did Tick Tock do that enabled a Chinese based company parent company at least to do so well outside of China. We think it's challenging to build a global company in general but the best ones we have seen so far are ones that take very consistent global learnings in a debt them to the local to the local do the local countries do are operating in. So you need to be global and local at the same time. And it's something that we're investing in. For example here in the U.S. we have a very sizeable team here in New York and Austin. In L.A. at this point in becoming more local is something we will continue to invest in. Let's talk about the beginning of our tech talk. So what is bright dance. Bite Dance was the parent company when was byte dance started and who was the founder of Byte Dance. I was very fortunate about 10 years ago to to have to have had the chance to participate in the company as an investor. Baghdad was founded in 2012 by evening and the original. Like any good startup story the original the original product has evolved over time. And there were many hits and misses you know ISE the evolution of the company. One thing that has remained very consistent for dance is the mission. The mission for by dance today is to inspire creativity and to enrich life. And what I've noticed over the course of the decade that I've known the company is that they have been very consistent in wanting to deliver this mission to as many people as possible and driven by this mission. What struck me in the early days of Big Dance was the desire to be mobile. The focus on machine learning recommendation and this desire to be global. And it's been very consistent over the last 10 years. I should disclose that my own investment company is an investor in by dance. We took an investment a number of years ago and I assume it'll be a good investment. I don't know. But let's talk about how tech talk evolved out of bite dance. So when the tick tock come along the original apps that were developed by Bike Dance had a very similar concept which was to recommend content to users based on machine learning machine learning algorithms that tries to understand the user's behavior. The first iteration of it that was successful was a new set. So they took news content in it recommended news to users based on their will and behavior on the app. Now sometime between 2012 and 2016 that evolved into short video and that evolved into tick tock. And did anybody think it would turn out to be a global phenomenon. At the beginning. No. No. Right. So let me ask you about the tick tock and regulation under President Trump. There was a concern that certain information that tick tock was getting from people using tick tock was somehow going to be detrimental to the United States. And there was an effort to force ticktock to sell its U.S. business. What happened to that effort. We believe that our approach to all of the governments and regulators around the world is to be collaborative and to be very transparent to be available to explain what we do and who we are and answer any questions that we have. That's the approach we have taken. And that approach has been an approach that has been very beneficial for us over the course of the last few years. But there was a proposal at one point that require you to sell the tick tock business in the US. I think it was gonna be sold perhaps to Larry Ellison's company Oracle. Is that off the table now. And right now you are not being forced to sell anything is that right. We have to move beyond that conversation and it's OK. And the current administration and by the administration have they picked up the cudgels and said well we want to engage in the same fight or right now. You don't have to worry about that again. We are taking the approach now to be very transparent to be very engaged very collaborative and to answer any questions that they may have. OK. But the biggest concern that people had at least some people in the Trump administration had and maybe other people is that the data that you have on your computer is about who is watching what. I presume that you have would somehow get fed back that China and China would have it for its use. The Chinese government. Is that true that your data is subject to being given to or you're forced to give it the Chinese government. We disagree with that. The waste it took to set up today. First of all Tick Tock is not available for download in China. It operates outside of China. The data is the data for all users ISE is stored in Virginia and in Singapore with a backup in Singapore and we believe that we have a very rigorous and robust system to protect the data security of our users. What do you do with the data. So let's suppose I go on tick tock and I like certain kinds of things to watch. You presume making can your algorithms know that. What do you do with that data. You sell it to another company or you do nothing with it. It is our recommendation engine. The best way to think about it is that is just pure mathematics is it. It digests the behaviour that our users have on our platform including likes. What videos do you like. The comments. How long you stay on that particular video. So on and so forth. So signals like behavioral signals like that. And it recommends and it recommends the content that you could potentially be most entertained by. So. So that's really how the that's really how the data is being used in our platform. And how many countries are you in now. Outside of China and India essentially all the other every country. And today you have something that's proprietary such that somebody couldn't come along and compete. In other words there's always people coming along trying to disrupt companies. And that certainly happens a lot in the tech world. Are you worried that somebody is going to come along with a new product that's slightly better than yours. Or do you think that's unlikely given how dominant you are in the business now. David this is a very competitive space and in our industry they are players with like the big muscles. They have more resources. They have been around for a longer period of time. And I think it keeps us on our toes. Now we have you know we have our strengths. We are pioneers in this. You know we believe that we are innovative and we will continue to innovate. And we have a very unique community that we talked about that we believe is very special and not easily replicable. So we have other advantages. We are confident but at the same time. Competition is very intense. Now China has been a little tougher as some people would say on Chinese tech companies than it was a year or two ago. And there's been what some people would say a clamp down on Chinese tech companies. Has that affected you in any way. I think in in in this day and age we have to be very collaborative and be very transparent and have an active dialogue with regulators and governments around the world to help them understand our business and to answer any questions that they may have. As I mentioned earlier Mike my firm did invest in it but I don't have any inside information. And I don't know if you're going to give me the inside information but is there any plan to take bite dance public at some point. Our current focus given the growth of our company is to really focus on the business. There is just so much we can do especially for Tech Tongue that really our management focus is on growing the business at this point and making sure that we are investing in the right things that we invest in. At some point we will access the capital markets. At some point we will. But that is really not the priority at this point. And when you go into the public markets what do you think when they are public documents or revealed will be the biggest surprise at the size of the platform or the profitability of it. What do you think is likely to be the biggest surprise. Has a very good question. I need to go back and think about it. I think most of what we do is is followed. And many people sort of you know thankfully have a lot of interest in our business today. So I'm not sure whether there will be any big surprises as we look forward to what you're going to be doing over the next year or so. What are you most focused on. I'm most focused on trust building. We are a young company and I think trust is something that we have to very. Let's talk about your own background. So you mentioned you're a Singaporean. Were you born in Singapore. I am born in Singapore. OK. And did you go to college and high school in Singapore. The thing about growing up in a small island like Singapore David is you get wanderlust at a very young age. It's a tropical paradise. It's a tiny island. I love it but it's very small. So after high school and after national service we have national service there. I went to the U.K. for college and then subsequently to here in the U.S. for business school and then my wife. All right. You went to Harvard Business School. I did. And so how do you think Harvard Business School was. Was it smarter people. They are smarter than you thought or not as smart as you thought they'd be. It was a great I had a great time there. The most important moment was I met my wife in business school. So to me this is you know it was a great two years. OK so you graduate from Harvard Business School and what year. In 2010. All right. So what did you do then after business school. I joined an investment company called DST which invests in Internet companies. This year a male nurse company. Yes. And so what did you do for him. You look for Internet related investments. That's what I did. OK. And how many years were you there. I was there for about five years. And it was doing this time that I got to meet and meet and invest in guidance. OK. So after you left your e-mail news operation what did you do. I joined a company called Shell Me where I initially was the CFO and then ran the global operations for the company. So you did that for a while and then a headhunter called you up and said guess what. We want you to come to bite dance or how did that happen. It wasn't a headhunter. I've stayed very close to the folks and bite dance because of my early relationship with them. So they reached out. There's a little known fact about me which is I used to be a creator. I actually had one hundred and eighty five thousand followers on that account. And so I had to go through that process of learning how to connect with my followers and using the product. And it was an amazing way I found the product. So amazing in terms of being being able to communicate the messages I wanted to. My father was. So I love the product. I've known the team for a long time. I think that a mission is something that I really truly believe in. So when the opportunity opened up it was very organic for me to have one hundred eighty five thousand followers. Now I did. You did. Now you've given them up or what you have now. That account was used to sell products. So I've since transitioned into sort of a more consumer base more sort of personal account. All right. So you were recruited to become the CFO of Bite Dance. Yes. Right. And you had that job. You're the CFO of Bite Dance. And after just like five weeks they promoted you to be the CEO of Tick Tock. Is that right. It was after it was after a couple of months. A couple months. OK. So was that a promotion. I think it's the nature of the job is very different. And what is the biggest challenge that you have as a CEO is to keep the regulators away or to get more customers more avatars or what is the biggest challenge. There are a couple of things that keeps me awake at night. I think that's the question. The opportunity that we have. I believe that we have something that is very unique. We pioneered this sort of short video format and we have a very unique community today that has all of these kind of raw authentic content that people love. And I think the opportunity that we have to take this to more people around the world to inspire them and for them to bring more joy to more people. This is a great and unique opportunity. Cuse me very very excited. At the same time there are challenges that we have to work through for example making sure that we are investing enough more and more into safety to stay ahead of our growth because it is something that is very important to us. So challenges and opportunities that you know both excite me equally. Since you took the job of CEO of Ticktock we've been living in Covid. How hard is it been to manage the company during Cobra. You mostly been isolated or how have you been operating during Covid. It has been a challenging time I think for many businesses around the world including ours. We are a growing company. It is difficult for new employees were joining us to not have the opportunity to mingle and interact with other people offline in the offices. So it is something that you know. Thankfully we are at the stage of the pandemic where we can start thinking about returned to office. It is something that you know we want to provide especially the newcomers in our company took the right opportunities to do integrate and to blend in and to make sure that you have have the right opportunities to interact with with as many people as they want. So as you look at Tick Tock what is your favorite single thing you've watched on Tick Tock. Is there one thing you've watched. You said this is my favorite number of them. I am an amateur golfer. So passionate golf has 10 billion views or more. I'd take targets is very very entertaining. So if you watch golf on Tick Tock you get to be a better golfer or not necessarily. Unfortunately not necessarily. Help say when you are not working at Tick Tock and you're not golfing year or any outside interest you have or you don't have any outside time. I do think I do. I do. I'm a very I'm an m an immature theoretical physicist. As in I'm reading books on theoretical physics and and trying to understand it. So there's something I love. I've interviewed many people over the years. I've never interviewed anybody who said that their hobby was amateur theoretical physics. So that must be unusual. So do you regret not becoming the next Albert Einstein or something like that. I don't think I have the ability to be that. I hardly understand the mathematics behind some of the more complex theories but I find it very interesting. So today as we look forward to what you're going to be doing over the next year or so what are you most focused on. I'm most focused on trust building. We are a young company and I think trust is something that we have to earn through actions. For example through our continued investment in safety. So that is a big focus for me that we are focused on not only growing our business but earning trust with the right stakeholders around the world along the way.

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The David Rubenstein Show: TikTok CEO Shouzi Chew

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