Looking at Shou Zi Chew’s personal TikTok account, one might surmise that he listens to reggaeton and electronic music, is a fan of football, and an admirer of art.
The TikTok CEO keeps his feed tight, following just 57 creators, politicians, and musicians such as Charli D’Amelio, U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, The Chainsmokers, and J Balvin. While there is a smattering of work-related videos, like the company’s office in Los Angeles or his visit to the NBA All Star Tech Summit, he’s also posted his visit to the British Museum, a meal of chicken and fries in Nashville, and his excitement over seeing Rihanna perform at the Super Bowl.
But with a follower count of 18,000, Chew is hardly a familiar face to most users of the platform he oversees. So when he posted a video of himself on TikTok's official account on Tuesday, people noticed.
"Hi everyone! It's Shou here, I'm the CEO of TikTok" the 40-year-old Singapore-raised executive cheerily announced. He asked users to share what they love about TikTok and the value it brings to their lives. Then he warned them that the app could be banned in U.S.—“this could take TikTok away from all 150 million of you.”
On Thursday, Chew will introduce himself to another important audience during a Congressional hearing about TikTok's ties to China, where its parent company ByteDance is based, and about the app's data and privacy practices. Concerns that TikTok could pose a national security risk to the U.S. is one of the few topics in Washington that has bipartisan support these days, and the Biden administration is reportedly seeking to force ByteDance to divest itself of TikTok or see the app banned in the U.S.
That's put Chew, who became TikTok CEO two years ago, at the center of a high-stakes geopolitical and business standoff. TikTok has tapped an army of lobbyists, and even summoned some of the platform's top creators to Washington D.C., in an effort to convince skeptical American lawmakers that the social media app is not beholden to China's government.
Chew's low-profile means he doesn't carry any of the negative baggage of other well-known tech moguls, such as Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. That gives him an opportunity to create a friendly and cooperative first-impression, even if many people expect him to face a hostile reception at Thursday's House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.
"One of the greatest challenges that Shou is facing right now, he has to take measures to increase trust amongst a variety of stakeholders, first and foremost, politicians themselves,” says Mike Proulx, research director at Forrester, an industry research firm.
From Facebook to TikTok boss
With his close-cropped haircut and boyish face, Chew comes off like a classic Silicon Valley techie. He's often pictured wearing a sports coat or a hoodie over a T-shirt, with jeans and white sneakers.
While he’s just now making a video introducing himself, Chew, a father of two, has been running TikTok for nearly two years working from his native Singapore. He’s said that growing up on the island, he felt an urge to see as much of the world as possible. That desire led him to the University College London, where, upon graduating, he felt lost about what he wanted his next steps to be and told graduates in an address last year that “there was no big plan.”
So, he became an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. The job kept him in London for a couple more years and led to an introduction to DST Investment Management, the firm that was an early investor in Facebook. That led to a meeting with the founding team of ByteDance and TikTok.
Years later, after an internship at Facebook and attending Harvard Business School, he became the CFO of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, and then joined his old friends at ByteDance in March 2021 as chief financial officer. After two months on the job, he was appointed to chief executive of TikTok. According to a report in the New York Times, Chew's background as an executive who understands the Western and Chinese business worlds, and the beneficial optics of a CEO with that background, was one factor ByteDance prized when tapping him for the top job.
Despite his relatively limited experience at the head of a corporation facing international sanctions, Chew hasn’t appeared shaken by threats to TikTok in the past weeks such as the U.K. joining a few other countries in banning TikTok on government devices, and Senate intelligence chair Mark Warner proposing the Restrict Act, which would enable the US commerce secretary to ban TikTok and any other tech from nations considered a national security threat. Through it all, Comperemedia analyst Nicole Bond describes Chew as maintaining a positive public demeanor.
“He's basically just looking at this whole situation as an opportunity to have more open communication,” Bond said.
The charm offensive has involved a string of interviews and public appearances in recent months with Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, and others. At the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit in November, Chew discussed Project Texas, which sets up a new subsidiary called TikTok U.S. Data Security, which TikTok proposes should be controlled by the U.S. government. Chew described the $1.5 billion program as an “unprecedented solution.” ”It’s extremely expensive to build, it’s incredibly challenging to do it, but it’s our commitment to addressing some of these concerns," he said.
ByteDance followed up on Chew's comments with the first public update about its corporate structure in three years, posting a chart to its website this month that maps out the separation between the various divisions of the organization. The only direct connection to China shown in the chart is through the Hong Kong-based Douyin Group, which is the name of the Chinese version of the TikTok app.
Still, Chew and ByteDance's PR efforts can only do so much. Forrester's Proulx believes that no matter what Chew says at Thursday's hearing on Capitol Hill, he's unlikely to change the minds of lawmakers who want the app banned.
“The ship has sailed," Proulx said.
