From Facebook Intern to TikTok CEO: Shou Zi Chew’s Journey to Rival Mark Zuckerberg
Talk about a twist of fate: Shou Zi Chew, the current CEO of TikTok, once interned at Facebook under none other than Mark Zuckerberg. Fast forward a decade, and he’s now leading TikTok—one of Zuckerberg’s fiercest competitors in the social media arena.
Born and raised in Singapore, Chew’s career took him from an economics degree at University College London to an MBA at Harvard Business School, where, during his summer internship, he worked at a fledgling company named “Facebook.” Little did he know then that this would set the stage for his eventual clash with Zuckerberg, his former mentor.
After his stint in California with Facebook, Chew’s journey took him around the globe—London, Singapore, Hong Kong—before landing him in Beijing. In 2015, he joined Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, eventually helping take the company public as its CFO in 2018. But his story with Meta was far from over.
In 2021, Chew joined ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, initially as CFO. By the end of that year, he was named CEO of TikTok, simultaneously holding the CFO position at ByteDance. He eventually stepped away from ByteDance’s CFO role to focus entirely on the short-form video platform that has taken the world by storm.
With over 150 million monthly active users in the U.S. alone and more than 1 billion globally, TikTok is now a dominant force in social media—an empire not under Zuckerberg’s control. But that wasn’t always the case. Back in 2016, Zuckerberg reportedly attempted to acquire
Musical.ly, a lip-syncing app that would later become the backbone of TikTok. The $800 million deal fell through when ByteDance acquired the app in 2017, merging it with TikTok and catapulting the platform into viral fame. Zuckerberg’s own attempt at a TikTok clone, Lasso, flopped and was shut down by Meta in 2020.
Now, as the U.S. debates banning TikTok and criticism from Zuckerberg intensifies, the rivalry between the two former allies continues to grow. Zuckerberg has expressed concerns about TikTok’s influence and the national security implications of its ties to China. In 2020, he acknowledged the app’s potential threat to free speech, but also highlighted the valid security concerns surrounding its massive data pool.
From interning at Facebook to leading the competition, Shou Zi Chew’s journey is a reminder of how quickly the tech world can turn the tables. And with TikTok’s meteoric rise, it’s clear Chew’s vision has set him on a collision course with the very company he once worked for.
