Ray Cao on TikTok’s Culture, Context Not Control, and Advertising on TikTok

Source: Lenny’s Podcast Speaker: Ray Cao Link: Episode

Key ideas

1. ‘Context, not control’ is TikTok’s core operating principle. Rather than assigning people to narrow lanes, TikTok gives every employee full business context and encourages them to think as business owners. Silos slow things down; context enables people to connect dots across functions without stepping on each other’s work.

2. TikTok’s content graph is structurally different from Meta’s people graph and Google’s intent graph. Ads on TikTok distribute based on what people want to see, not who they know or what they searched. This requires a different optimisation mindset: test more creatives, use broader targeting initially, and treat discovery rather than intent as the primary mechanism.

3. Engineering, product, and sales operate unusually close at TikTok. Cao describes large cross-functional meetings (180+ people) where engineers, PMs, and salespeople read shared documents and discuss priorities together. PMs attend client immersion trips. This keeps the product team proximate to market reality.

4. ‘Always day one’ maintains startup energy at scale. TikTok explicitly cultivates the belief that the company is still a young, hungry startup. Cao notes that co-founder Shou Zi Chew is reachable by internal message from any level — a structural choice designed to prevent the distance that accumulates in mature organisations.

5. For advertisers, test at least ten creatives per week. TikTok’s algorithm is a content graph that distributes based on engagement signals; a single creative exhausts its audience quickly. Volume of creative testing is a stronger predictor of advertising success than spend level.

Summary

Ray Cao is the Global Head of Monetisation Product Strategy and Operations at TikTok, where he has worked for over four years. Prior to TikTok he spent six years at Google scaling Google Shopping globally.

This conversation offers an uncommon view inside TikTok’s culture and operating practices. Cao describes the three cultural principles he credits most for TikTok’s velocity: context not control, always day one, and cross-functional proximity between engineering, product, and sales.

He also covers how to succeed as an advertiser on the platform — how TikTok’s content graph differs from Meta and Google, why broader targeting outperforms narrow targeting early on, and why creative velocity matters more than creative perfection.

‘Context, not control’

Cao identifies human-made silos as the primary cause of slowness in large organisations. TikTok’s countermeasure is to give every employee full business context — including strategic intent, competitive landscape, and cross-functional goals — and expect them to think about the whole puzzle rather than just their piece. The discipline this requires is ‘reactive doing’: when you identify something worth changing, you reach out to whoever owns it rather than acting unilaterally. The goal is proactive thinking combined with collaborative execution.

TikTok vs Google: cultural differences

Cao identifies three structural differences between Google and TikTok:

• Customer centricity: TikTok treats users, creators, and advertisers as equal customers. Google is more technology-driven and less market-driven.
• Product development: TikTok runs many simultaneous experiments; Google takes a more engineered, sequential approach.
• Global prioritisation: TikTok launches in non-US markets first when those markets are the better test environment. Google’s gravity pulls decisions toward the US market regardless of fit.

Cross-functional meeting structure

TikTok runs quarterly large-group meetings (around 180 people) that include ICs from engineering, product, and go-to-market. These use an Amazon-style document reading format: a shared doc is read in silence, then discussed. This keeps alignment not just at the leadership layer but at the IC level — a deliberate investment against the silo formation that large companies experience.

TikTok advertising: practical advice

• Organic first: Create a business presence and post organically before running ads. Learn what the platform’s community responds to.
• Broad targeting: Narrow audience targeting typically underperforms on TikTok. The content graph distributes based on engagement signals, not audience definitions. Start broad.
• Creative volume: Aim for at least ten different ad creatives per week. High creative volume is more predictive of success than high spend on a single creative.
• TikTok-first creative: Content made for Instagram or YouTube rarely performs on TikTok. The platform has its own aesthetic and behavioural norms. Brands that build dedicated internal TikTok creative teams consistently outperform those that repurpose assets from other channels.
• Full-funnel thinking: Cao argues TikTok drives action, not just awareness. TikTok Shop and shopping ads are a growing proof point.

On hiring and fit

Cao is direct that TikTok is a ‘rocket ship’ — a lifestyle, not a 9-to-5. He does not regard people who leave as failures; he explicitly holds end-of-employment conversations asking whether the next destination is a genuine step forward for the person’s career. He looks for curiosity, discipline, and the ability to prioritise across a broad mandate.