TikTok’s founder: the richest man in China
Zhang Yiming, the 41 year old co-founder of ByteDance; TikTok’s parent company becomes the richest person in China.
Hurun China Rich List 2024, released on Tuesday, named Zhang the wealthiest man in the country with a net worth of $49.3 billion. Displacing Zhong Shanshan who has held the title for three years, Zhang is now the 18th person to hold “the richest man in China” title since 1999 when the list started.
ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and Douyin is valued for $225 billion with about $100 billion attributed to TikTok alone. Despite the possibility of getting banned in the United States of America, TikTok’s popularity has refused to wane. The U.S government issued a warning to ByteDance stating that China can easily the data of American TikTok users and suggested that the app be sold to a non-Chinese owner. Obviously, this suggestion was ignored. Zhang, however, stepped down as the CEO of ByteDance in 2021 even though about 20% of the company still belongs to him
Zhang started out building websites and fixing computers to make money. He also engaged in blue collar jobs: building a search engine for airfare tickets and a microblogging platform. Although he eventually joined Microsoft as an employee, he only worked there for six months.
“During my time at Microsoft, I basically read books for half a day and worked for half a day. There were not many challenging things to do. Most of the time, I was quite idle.” Zhang said about his time in Microsoft.
Perhaps his idleness in Microsoft dared him to dream bigger and spurred him to embark on challenging projects. The success of these projects, as we can clearly see from TikTok, are the major reason why he sits atop the list of China’s richest men.
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