Shou Chew, TikTok’s Top Man

Shou Chew runs the wildly popular social media app, which lets users scroll endlessly through short-form videos, from the US and Singapore, where he was born and raised. Analysts expect it to bring in more money than Twitter Inc. and Snap Inc. combined this year, and it’s likely to reach the $10 billion-revenue figure two years faster than the decade it took Facebook. In April the average TikTok user spent 45.8 minutes a day on the app, edging out Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube for the first time, according to researcher Insider Intelligence. A Google senior vice president said in May that he’s concerned about young people increasingly using TikTok for basic search. And in July, Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, appeared to redesign the user experience on both platforms to be more like TikTok. YouTube and Snap have also seemed to be copycats.

Navigating TikTok through economic and political pressures in the US has dominated Chew’s tenure. Tight marketing budgets during the downturn have squeezed the social media industry, but brands continue to direct dollars to his app. TikTok has faced scrutiny from the Biden and Trump administrations over worries that its ownership by Chinese tech company ByteDance Ltd. could pose a national security threat. (In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray said there was reason to be “extremely concerned.” A growing list of states have banned TikTok from government-issued devices.) Chew has gone on a charm offensive, schmoozing congressional leaders and promoting a US-specific data security team that reports directly to him.