The Truth About Tik Tok's New CEO Shou Zi Chew
Axios is reporting that TikTok has its first CEO since Kevin Mayer resigned amid a fistfight of sorts with the Trump administration which wanted the social media platform to sell its U.S.-based business dealings to a U.S. entity. University College London and Harvard-educated Shou Zi Chew has stepped up to the plate, after spending just a month as TikTok's parent company's ByteDance CFO (via Twitter).
We challenge you to find a resume more impressive than Chew's, who lists stints at Goldman Sachs' Investment Banking Division, and as leader of Xiaomi's Financial Management and Investment teams on his CV (via Wall Street Journal). In fact, Chew once tweeted that Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun (also known as China's Steve Jobs), is a personal mentor of his. Chew, as per Variety, was an early believer in ByteDance. While a partner at DST Investment Management (via Linkedin), he was one of the company's first investors. TikTok announced Chew's new role as part of a "strategic reorganization," highlighting his decade of experience in the technology sector.
Shou Zi Chew's surprising beginnings in the tech world
Shou Zi Chew got his start in the tech sector the same year that he met the woman he would later marry, Vivian Kao. Kao and Chew (both graduates of Harvard Business School) were completing internships in California and got to know each other during what Kao later told Harvard Business School was "an amazing summer." Kao was working for a clean-energy startup. "I was working for a startup that summer, too" Chew recounted to Harvard Business School, "It was called Facebook." Both would go onto work for Goldman Sachs, and then move together across the pond, to London, and then further afield to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Beijing. A decade later, and the two added two kids to their family.
Chew's beginnings at Facebook most likely cemented his interest in the tech world. But he's a tech executive with a mission. While at Xiaomi, Chew helped lead a corporate push to make the company a more responsible "local citizen" in all the countries it operates in (via Youtube).