[eddieplan9]

I think the article did a really good job highlighting the power of combining a worship-level deference towards algorithm and an incredibly deep pocket. In the West, if you are an upstart, you don't have the latter - who can spend $1B on paid install in a year while seeing uninspiring retention? - and if you are big, then you cannot afford the former given the immense scrutiny from the public and the press.

Another interesting factor is that ByteDance has unfettered access to both the Chinese and the Western markets. This makes it attractive to investors who wants to bet on an upstart who can fallback to its mature Chinese business.

I personally think TikTok is still unproven outside of China if you look beyond the hype. But I also agree the big US companies are sleeping at the wheel. But if you are printing money like FB, why not?

[oefrha]

> In the West, if you are an upstart, you don't have the latter

In the East, or the North, or the South, if you acquired another company for 1B you’re certainly not an upstart. (Unless you still consider Dropbox, Airbnb, etc. upstarts.)