By the time President Trump returned to office earlier this year, TikTok’s fate should have been sealed. But that transition, if it happens, will challenge the culture that defined TikTok in its early days. In May 2020, Kevin accepted an offer to become global CEO of TikTok and chief operations officer of ByteDance. In a way, TikTok was as much like Disney+ or Netflix as it was like Facebook or Google. IPOs—“initial public offerings”—are the vehicle by which private companies become public, finally allowing investors and employees to sell their stock.