Last week I found myself at TikTok HQ in Barbican, in a room filled with the wider ByteDance ecosystem: CapCut, Douyin, Lemon8, Toutiao, Xigua Video and Gauth. Some were familiar. Others opened a door onto an entire landscape I had not yet explored.
Different doors into the same house
There is more to TikTok than the app itself. CapCut serves video makers; Lemon8 is built around lifestyle creation; Toutiao focuses on news; Xigua supports longer-form video; and Douyin represents a much broader Chinese ecosystem. Gauth helps students understand their homework.
What struck me was the clarity of intention behind each tool. Every app does something specific. None is trying to be everything, yet all are built by the same company and work in parallel—different doors into the same house.
Every tool had a purpose. The experience showed what becomes possible when technology and creativity meet with intention.
An event designed to engage
Across two floors, the experience included demonstration booths, activities, prizes, useful branded merchandise, a live DJ and food from the onsite chef. As someone who manages events, I was impressed by how meticulously the evening had been planned.
It was sensory overload of the best kind: an environment filled with things to discover and people actively making. The video above was, naturally, created in CapCut.
What founders can learn from builders
As I move further into the technology world, I am finding people who are genuinely interested in the creative and community-centred work I do. That crossover is where the possibilities become exciting.
My vision extends beyond what is happening today towards what might be possible tomorrow. Founders and start-ups outside the technology sector can learn a great deal from builders: how to give a product a clear job, how to create connected systems and how to use tools in service of work that matters.