Seattle-based money expert and self-described financial feminist Tori Dunlap credits TikTok with transforming her business, HerFirst100k, an education platform that helps women gain financial knowledge and independence.
Amin Shaykho is the CEO of Seattle startup Kadama, an app that provides an online tutoring service for both students who need help and tutors who are looking to connect with those students. He said over 70% of his app’s users come from TikTok, equating to millions of dollars a year for his business.
Both entrepreneurs were strongly against bipartisan action taken this week by lawmakers in the House of Representatives, who moved to ban the short-form-video social media platform in the U.S, citing national security fears over TikTok’s Chinese ownership.
“To say TikTok transformed our business is the understatement of the year,” Dunlap said. “A ban on TikTok would severely impact me and many other people I know, especially women, especially people of color who are building businesses using organic social media.”
U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) also cited the potential harm to users, many of them people of color who rely on TikTok for their livelihoods, in a statement about her no vote on the House bill.
A former marketing professional, Dunlap quit her job after saving her first $100,000 by age 25. She’s now a best-selling author and top-rated podcast host who dispenses her financial wisdom to women through workshops and a community that has grown to millions. It might not have happened without TikTok.
The fifth video she ever posted on the platform went viral in July 2020. A year later, she had a million followers. Another viral video in 2021 led to the attraction of 100,000 email subscribers a week later. She credits the app with landing her book deal and attracting certain press opportunities — she pitched the TODAY Show through a TikTok video. She now has 2.4 million followers.
“Unheard of. Crazy,” Dunlap said of the way TikTok has impacted her business. “One of the things I’m most proud of is that we built our business without paying for any sort of advertisements. Organic social media like TikTok has been the backbone of that.”
Amin Shaykho said a TikTok ban “would be terrible” for Kadama.
The tutoring app he built at the University of Washington alongside his brother Dani Shaykho and friend Marwan El-Rukby grew because of the viral nature of their content on TikTok.
“We joined TikTok at the golden era. This is how we’re going to build a massive audience,” Amin Shaykho said in a GeekWire profile in February 2021. “It’s all about growing a following base that down the line will be users of our product.”
Now with 2.1 million followers, Kadama’s TikTok videos are a mix of random life hacks, tech tips, shopping deals and more. A video of Dani Shaykho holding a stick of deodorant and offering up iPhone tips previously went viral with 14 million views. In between that sort of content they throw in videos promoting Kadama as part of a school tips series.
Amin Shaykho said if a U.S. ban happens, he estimates the startup would have to cut ties to thousands of tutors as Kadama would expect a massive hit on customer acquisition.
“Over 70% of students discover us from TikTok,” he said. “It’s the only short-form platform that’s cracked a proper algorithm that gets you to your desired demographics. We can get the same amount of views on many platforms, but TikTok will have the highest conversion to customer.”
With 170 million monthly users in the U.S., TikTok has risen in just six years to become one of the most popular social media platforms. The Washington Post reported Thursday that hundreds of thousands of content creators make a living on the app, and the careers of artists and influencers have skyrocketed.
‘It’s the very same people who are advocating for small businesses and for economic prosperity, but not realizing that if you ban this app, you’re cutting a lot of small businesses at the knees.’
— Tori Dunlap
Furthermore, the Post reported, “more than 7 million American businesses market or sell their products through TikTok” and the app “drove $14.7 billion in revenue for small-business owners last year and contributed $24.2 billion to U.S. gross domestic product.”
Dunlap believes there is a misconception around TikTok that it’s just a bunch of videos of teens dancing. She says real change has happened on the platform.
“We have changed people’s lives with our content around financial literacy and around personal finance,” she said. “TikTok is an educational platform now at this point, and there’s so much incredible content out there that is so valuable, that makes an impact, that allows people to live better lives.”
She also laughs off the concerns over privacy, security, and potential data theft as being the reason for any ban.
“This is what Facebook has been doing for what, almost 20 years now? It’s a foreign government so everybody’s more afraid?” she said. “At this point, if you’re online at all, you don’t really have that much privacy. We need to talk about every app’s infiltration into our lives and the data that they have. This is not just a TikTok conversation.”
The ongoing saga has made Dunlap encourage the businesses she consults to be cautious about building an audience on a single platform that could potentially disappear. She’s been focused since day one on growing her email subscriber list, which is now at 500,000, to be sure she has a stable way to engage her users directly.
Whatever happens to the ban proposal in the U.S. Senate or with President Biden, Dunlap and Shaykho both blame out-of-touch lawmakers with playing political games and not recognizing the app’s value to U.S. businesses.
“We are dealing with lawmakers who are largely older and who have probably never touched TikTok a day in their lives,” Dunlap said. “It’s the very same people who are advocating for small businesses and for economic prosperity, but not realizing that if you ban this app, you’re cutting a lot of small businesses at the knees.”
Shaykho said revenue going to small businesses and creators will vanish, and it seems like many of politicians don’t even understand the technicality of what is going on.
“We need younger people in Congress,” he said.
