Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance in 2012 and developed the news aggregator Toutiao and the video sharing platform TikTok, formerly known as Musical.
14 Facts About Zhang Yiming
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On November 4,2021, Zhang Yiming stepped down as CEO of ByteDance, completing a leadership handover announced in May 2021.
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Zhang Yiming was born on April 1,1983, in Longyan, Fujian, China.
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In February 2006, Zhang Yiming became the fifth employee and the first engineer at the travel website Kuxun, and he was promoted to technical director a year later.
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In 2008, Zhang Yiming left Kuxun to work for Microsoft, but felt stifled by its corporate rules.
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Zhang Yiming soon left Microsoft to join the startup Fanfou, which eventually failed.
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In 2009, when Expedia was about to acquire Kuxun, Zhang Yiming took over Kuxun's real estate search business and started 99fang.
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Zhang Yiming thought that Chinese smartphone users were struggling to find information in mobile apps available in 2012, and the search giant Baidu was mixing search results with undisclosed advertising.
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Zhang Yiming's vision was to push relevant content to users using recommendations generated by artificial intelligence.
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Sequoia Capital, which initially rejected Zhang Yiming, came around and led a US$100 million investment in the company in 2014.
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Zhang Yiming focused on expanding ByteDance globally, as opposed to other Chinese tech CEOs who focused on the domestic growth of their companies.
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Zhang Yiming insisted that ByteDance's workplace productivity app Lark be targeted at the American, European and Japanese markets, rather than limiting the focus to China as originally proposed.
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In May 2021, Zhang Yiming said that he would step down as CEO and be succeeded by Liang Rubo.
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Zhang Yiming was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People of 2019.