ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo told the company’s employees they lack a “sense of crisis” in an annual meeting on Secret Confessions (2025) Week 8 Highlights Episode 46Tuesday, as the co-founder of Douyin and TikTok owner fears the ten-year-old firm is becoming “mediocre” and thus unable to “break new ground.” In his speech, Liang outlined three goals for ByteDance in the new year – maintaining a “first day of a startup” mindset among staff, enhancing community trust, and staying focused on a select set of priorities, according to the Chinese media outlet ThePaper. Overtly, while the tech unicorn’s short-video operation grabbed the largest market share, the emergence of rivals Kuaishou and WeChat Channel has posed a threat, and within the organization, Liang highlighted issues of low efficiency and sluggishness in seizing opportunities during his speaking, the most urgent problems to be solved currently to cope with external competition.[ThePaper, in Chinese]
