Quitting Microsoft because he was bored to start a business, the 38-year-old man founded a social network with over 1 billion users, surpassing from Mark Zuckerberg to Jack Ma

Just last year, ByteDance – the parent company of TikTok, the world’s most valuable startup is still under pressure from many sides. The Trump administration wants the company to sell off its US assets. Meanwhile at home, they are under pressure as the Beijing government aggressively regulates technology startups. Not to mention that India has blacklisted some of the company’s social networking apps.

However, overcoming all those obstacles, ByteDance still thrives. Currently, the company’s founder, Zhang Yiming, 38 years old is one of the richest people in the world. However, this made him more scared than excited.

The company’s shares trade on the private market at a valuation of $250 billion. At this level, Zhang – who owns a quarter of ByteDance can hold a fortune of more than 53 billion USD, putting him at the top of the ranking of China’s richest billionaires under the age of 40, according to data from the Institute. Shanghai Hurun study. Hurun even predicted that the “father” of TikTok could become the richest man in the country.

“The possibility of Zhang Yiming becoming the richest person in China comes from the assumption that ByteDance will list successfully,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman of Hurun.

ByteDance is best known for its short video apps TikTok and news gathering app Toutiao. Last year, the company’s revenue doubled after expanding beyond advertising, turning to both e-commerce and online games. They are currently considering IPO options in a few business segments.

“Zhang is a celebrity who thinks long-term and is not easily convinced by short-term successes,” said Ma Rui, an investor. “He’s setting up a sustainable, global business.”

In its latest funding round, ByteDance reached a value of $180 billion, an increase of $20 billion from three years ago. However, a Bloomberg source revealed, in the private market, a few investors recently sold shares of this company at a valuation of $ 350 billion.

However, this seems to be bad news for Zhang as this time in China, the government is trying to realign the power of large domestic corporations and their billionaire founders.

Just look at Jack Ma to know. After being investigated for alleged monopoly, Chinese authorities fined Alibaba a record $2.8 billion and the country’s central bank was even forced to reform Ant’s entire financial empire. Group.

While ByteDance is not currently a target of the Chinese government, its dominance in the social media space and its advantage in making deals are both in sensitive areas that the Chinese government is not aware of. Quoc is watching.

“There will be no more tough games in the US with Mr. Trump and the potential for a ban or forced sale of assets. However, pressure on technology stock prices and the Chinese government are part of what could put ByteDance in trouble. difficult”.

Born in the southern province of Longyan, Zhang is the only son in the family. He studied programming at Nankai University. Here he gained a lot of followers on the school’s online forum by always fixing computers to help his classmates. He joined Microsoft when he just graduated, then because he was bored with his job, he thought about starting a business.

Zhang’s breakthrough came in 2012 when, from his Beijing apartment, he created the first blockbuster of ByteDance – an app for sharing jokes, although it was later ordered by the government to be removed.

After working with the news app, Zhang created TikTok, an app with more than 1 billion global users, and a twin app specifically for the Chinese market called Douyin. This company has attracted famous investors including Softbank, Sequoia Capital…

Source: Bloomberg