ByteDance executive leaves to start cross-border e-commerce venture after Shein, Temu success in US

Ren Lifeng left ByteDance last year and recently registered Shumei Wanwu with nearly US$140,000 in registered capital

As other Big Tech executives leave for the booming AI sector, Ren is focusing on cross-border e-commerce after other Chinese-backed apps found success overseas

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Ren Lifeng left ByteDance in the second half of 2023 and has since started a cross-border e-commerce company called Beijing Shumei Wanwu Technology Co. Photo: Handout

Published: 6:30pm, 23 Jan 2024

A founding member of ByteDance’s flagship Douyin app, the Chinese version of TikTok, has left the tech giant to focus on his own start-up for cross-border e-commerce, as Chinese-backed peers like Shein and Temu gain traction worldwide.

The new venture from Ren Lifeng, who left ByteDance in the second half of 2023, is called Beijing Shumei Wanwu Technology Co. It was incorporated on January 3 with a registered capital of 1 million yuan (US$139,119), according to company registry information provider Qichacha.

The entrepreneur, who two former ByteDance employees say is known for his easy-going personality, was part of Douyin’s founding team before the short video app launched in 2016. Specialising in content and operations, Ren later headed Xigua Video, another ByteDance product with a focus on medium-length and long-form video.

In 2022, he joined Pico, the now-struggling virtual reality unit that the Beijing-based tech unicorn had acquired a year earlier. Prior to that, Ren worked at Baidu Tieba, a popular online forum owned by China’s leading internet search giant.

Ren, born in 1987, is the latest in a string of Chinese executives who have recently left Big Tech firms to pursue their own ventures. Wang Huiwen, a co-founder of Meituan, established his own artificial intelligence (AI) start-up last year, then later sold the venture to his former employer.

Jesse Lyu Cheng, a former executive at Baidu, has also recently gained widespread attention for his AI gadget start-up Rabbit, whose handheld R1 device has sold out of five batches of pre-orders since launching earlier this month.

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