TikTok has empowered millions of Americans to express their voices in their own authentic way and has provided a global stage for their creativity in… - Shou Zi Chew

Oh, who am I? I grew up in Singapore. I was born there, my great-grandfather moved there many years ago. I had a typical Singaporean childhood. I wanted to see the world, because Singapore is fantastic, but it’s tiny. So I went to the UK for college. I joined Goldman Sachs, worked there for a couple of years, met an internet entrepreneur who started an investment company to invest in Facebook. So I joined him, and through that I met the guy who founded ByteDance. And in his earliest iteration, the idea was so simple, but so powerful.

About 10 years ago, I met these founders who were building a very cool app. The idea behind it was interesting. Let’s recommend content to people based not on who they knew, but on their genuine interests. They were small then—a team of 30. But I became a user of TikTok and really connected with what it was trying to do. It brought joy to a lot of people, and that was something I was drawn to.

Every time I meet a user, I feel like the level of understanding and the conversations that we have are significantly different than with someone who’s never used it before. People who use it really understand.