I read with interest the recent article, “TikTok Founder’s Global Dream Is at Risk,” published in the 1/11/25 edition of The Wall Street Journal.  I agree with the author’s perspective, as the Supreme Court weighs a ban on the video-sharing app.  No one has more to lose than 41-year old Zhang Yiming, China’s richest person who is the founder of TikTok, and formerly CEO of ByteDance.

Let’s face it.  Many of us work toward making a global dream come true and you can devote years at it.  Zhang is pretty darn close.  His TikTok has been successful penetrating the USA market with more than 170 million users, generating one-fifth of its global revenue.

What’s at stake if the Supreme Court upholds the law and bans TikTok as of January 19, 2025, the day before President-elect Trump takes office?  TikTok would lose access to the vital USA market. It wouldn’t disappear from a mobile phone overnight, and it wouldn’t be illegal to use it, but people wouldn’t be able to download or update the app, making it gradually unusable.

It’s similar to having a WP theme for your website for years and you are notified to update for several months, but you don’t do a thing because you are too busy, and then all of a sudden, poof, your website is gone because the theme is no longer supported.  Similar to TikTok should it be banned.  It takes a while for a platform to fully shutdown but eventually, it no longer works.

Back to TikTok.  A couple of things I found striking from the article.

•  A personal note about Zhang.

When it came time to pick a college, he recalled in a speech to his alumni association, he set four criteria:  One, it had to be far from home.  Two, it had to have snow, because he had never seen any before.  Three, it needed to be close to the sea, because he loves seafood.  the fourth was the gender ratio. Engineering schools in China were about 80% male then, so an all-around college with more gender balance would minimize the time he spent on love.

•  China’s Internet users account for only one-fifth of worldwide users and Zhang concluded there was only one way for his company to compete with the best:  “Going global is a must.”

•  According to Shou Chew, TikTok’s chief in a 2023 WSJ interview, Zhang revolutionized the global industry with another approach.  “The idea is simple but so powerful:  that you should be looking for content not based on who you know, but really based on your own behavior.”

•  One thing Zhang considers nonnegotiable for a global company?  Learning fluent English.  He has pushed his people to use English in international meetings, people close to him have said.

•  In the documentary, “Free Solo,” about a rock-climber’s rope-free ascent of a peak in Yosemite National Park, taught him to focus on the present. For example, originally, he could only swim 500 meters, but now he can easily swim up to 1,000 meters. Not because his physical ability has improved, but because, he feels, he has removed the hesitation in the middle.  He stopped worrying about whether he could finish the swim.

Needless to say Zhang has no formula to guide him through TikTok’s biggest challenge yet, but he sure has some interesting insights relative to building a global empire.  We can all learn from him regardless of the outcome on TikTok.  I wonder if Elon Musk might step in and rescue the organization, make it part of X (USA-based), and cut a deal with Xi Jinping.  Who knows!