9781422270479

Imagine being able to read a newspaper every day that was tailored specifically toward the topics that interest you. Plenty of people loved the idea and it quickly became a successful news platform that still posts an average of 600,000 pieces of content each day. By 2014, ByteDance had become established enough to enter its Series C funding round, which garnered an extra $100 million. While Series C funding is commonly the last round of a startup’s venture capital fundraising series, ByteDance didn’t stop there. Over the next few years, the company would go on to gain enough notoriety to attract multiple other venture capital investments. Their later investments would pull in not just additional millions, but rather billions of dollars from investors who believed in the company’s vision. One of the other apps that shot ByteDance to the top was released in September 2016. Known as Douyin, the app was an early version of what would later become TikTok outside of mainland China. Douyin certainly had its following, but it was the creation of another China-based app, called Musical.ly, that is crucial to the next chapter in the story of TikTok’s development. MUSICAL.LY In 2014, Alex Zhu thought he had what was destined to become a million-dollar idea. What if there were an educational app that featured short videos on a variety of different subjects? Alex and his co-founder Louis Yang were so convinced that the idea would be a hit that they managed to raise $250,000 in venture capital to make it happen. They then set out to use the money to develop an app called Cicada.

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Story of a Startup