The Facebook Intern Who Toppled Mark Zuckerberg’s Empire
In the early 2000s, a young economics graduate from Singapore arrived at Harvard Business School to understand how global business worked. One summer, he landed an internship at a California company that was still trying to figure out how to make social media profitable. The name of that company was Facebook, and the intern’s manager was Mark Zuckerberg.
At the time, Facebook was the cool new startup with beanbags, hoodies, and caffeine-fueled optimism. Shou Zi Chew saw it as a window into Silicon Valley’s young empire. Nobody could have predicted that a decade later, he would stand on the other side of the battlefield, leading the one platform Zuckerberg couldn’t conquer.
A Global Detour That Changed Everything
Image via Wikimedia Commons/Lukasz Kobus
After his brief stint at Facebook, Chew didn’t stay in Silicon Valley. He moved across London, Singapore, and Hong Kong, while gaining experience in finance and tech investment. His career gained traction when he joined Xiaomi in 2015, a Chinese smartphone company competing head-to-head with Apple and Samsung.
As chief financial officer, he helped take Xiaomi public in 2018. But the real plot twist arrived in 2021. That year, Chew joined ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, as its chief financial officer.
Within months, he stepped into the role of TikTok’s CEO, managing one of the fastest-growing social media platforms in history. The promotion would position him right in Zuckerberg’s line of sight.
The App Zuckerberg Couldn’t Buy
In 2016, Zuckerberg had his eyes on a rising music app called Musical.ly, popular among American teens for its lip-syncing videos. He reportedly tried to buy it, hoping to add another trophy to Meta’s growing collection. ByteDance moved faster and purchased the app for $800 million.
A year later, Musical.ly merged with ByteDance’s short-video platform TikTok. The result was explosive. Within a few years, TikTok became the world’s viral online entertainment hub. Zuckerberg tried to counter with his own short-video app, Lasso, but the experiment fizzled out by 2020.
Chew had taken the reins of a digital phenomenon. TikTok changed how people consume content.
An Intern Turned Rival
Image via Wikimedia Commons/Jernej Furman
By 2023, TikTok had more than one billion users globally and around 150 million in the United States. Its harmless short-video trend turned into a political flashpoint when American lawmakers raised national security concerns over the app’s Chinese ties.
Chew found himself testifying before Congress, coolly defending TikTok’s data policies while subtly reminding his audience that American social media giants didn’t exactly have spotless records either.
Meanwhile, Zuckerberg shifted between warning that banning TikTok could threaten free expression and calling attention to the app’s data risks. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone that the man who once gave Chew his first shot in tech now viewed him as one of his most serious business threats.
Today, Shou Zi Chew leads a company that has succeeded where almost every Meta rival has failed. His journey has come full circle. The former intern is now the face of a platform that keeps Zuckerberg awake at night.