Speaker 1: I get a call and I answered Hello, and there's
Speaker 1: this guy on the other end. Yeah, you emailed my daughter.
Speaker 1: He goes, she's twelve. And I was like, okay, you know,
Speaker 1: sorry about that, and he goes, yeah, listen, everything's all right,
Speaker 1: but you gotta answer me this one question. Why does
Speaker 1: she come home from school and say that she needs
Speaker 1: a manager? And I'm like, well, I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's because she has nine thousand fans on TikTok. There
Speaker 1: was a time when most adults didn't know what TikTok was.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard of TikTok, TikTok is the most
Speaker 1: addicting app in the entire world. If you get it,
Speaker 1: I'm warning you, you will be on it for four
Speaker 1: hours just scrolling through your four you page. Most people
Speaker 1: still don't know the real story. One day, I was
Speaker 1: on coul trip from Mountain View to San Francisco and
Speaker 1: that Tin so a loss of high school students and
Speaker 1: I was observing the behavior. How too mysterious tech founders
Speaker 1: from China that captured the attention of an entire generation.
Speaker 1: You know, I think there was some natural skepticism of like, hey,
Speaker 1: can we trust these guys we've had issues in China
Speaker 1: with intellectual property infiltrated American pop culture. You identify a
Speaker 1: couple of whales, you pay them for a certain number
Speaker 1: of posting them. Sort of a flywheel from there, because
Speaker 1: you know, the internet is like it is like high
Speaker 1: school cafeteria is the second the popular kids do it.
Speaker 1: Everyone wants to get in. Went to battle with Facebook
Speaker 1: and other Silicon Valley giants, And when I brought up
Speaker 1: the Chinese internet companies, I think that that's a real,
Speaker 1: a real strategic and competitive threat. Took on the most
Speaker 1: powerful man in the world. We're looking at TikTok. We
Speaker 1: may be banning TikTok. This season. On Foundering, we'll take
Speaker 1: you behind the scenes of TikTok with exclusive interviews of creators, investors,
Speaker 1: and employees, including the CEO of TikTok's controversial Chinese parent
Speaker 1: company byt Dance. You'll see what it was really like
Speaker 1: inside the company after TikTok landed on Donald Trump's hitlist
Speaker 1: and nearly lost it all. Check us out Foundering, a
Speaker 1: podcast from Bloomberg Technology. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.