Cheetah Mobile CEO reflects on a big year, including $168M IPO

World Today

Cheetah Mobile, a company that offers a family of applications to clean and secure mobile phones while also saving battery life, was publicly listed in the United States this year. The Beijing-headquartered tech company is a spin-off of the Kingsoft Corporation. Mark Niu interviewed CEO Fu Sheng to discuss the future of the company.

Cheetah Mobile now has more than 860 million users with 65 percent of their monthly active users from outside of China.

Fu, a native of Jiangxi province, China, has led Cheetah Mobile since its inception four years ago.

“I wasn’t from a very good school, never studied abroad and didn’t have a privileged upbringing. Eleven years ago, I was an ordinary worker moving to Beijing to look for work. To compete fiercely and to eventually become a leader in a new place, it’s an amazing feeling,” Fu said.

Early on, Cheetah struggled to make an impact in China’s mobile security market, which is dominated by a few big companies such as Tencent and Qihoo. But when Fu studied the U.S. market, he saw an opening.

“Utility apps, the category, the top 10, top 100 in Google Play is very small startup companies to build utility, security apps on the mobile side. So we think that is a good chance to enter the global market,” Fu said.

After targeting the overseas market, monthly active users grew by 700 percent in just a year and a half.

In May, Cheetah raised $168 million after it listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Fu recently wrote a blog that expressed his hopes of building a company filled with dreamers who he believes are the people who inspire others around them and ultimately transform the trajectory of a company.