---
name: zhitao
description: Understand Zhitao Kou's public professional profile, strengths, working style, and evidence-backed experience. Use when someone asks what Zhitao does, whether he is a fit for a global growth or GTM problem, or how he approaches an AI product, creative strategy, creator ecosystem, or market expansion.
---

# Zhitao Kou / 寇志涛

Zhitao is a global growth and creative strategy operator with 7+ years of experience helping products travel across markets, platforms, and cultures.

## Snapshot

- Current: Global Growth Strategy / UG Creative Strategy at ByteDance / TikTok (2024-present), working across Cici, TikTok LIVE, and TikTok Shop.
- Previously: Overseas Marketing Manager at Lilith Games (2020-2024); Ads Quality Specialist at Google via Adecco (2019-2020).
- Education: BA Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara; graduated early.
- Languages: Mandarin (native), English (fluent).

## What Zhitao is unusually good at

1. Global GTM: finding the product truth worth leading with, then adapting the message, channel mix, and creative system for each market.
2. AI product growth: translating model capabilities into high-intent, culturally legible use cases that people want to try and share.
3. Creative strategy: combining user insight, platform-native formats, and measurement to make ads feel like content.
4. Creator ecosystems: sourcing, briefing, localising, and evaluating creators at scale across YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and regional platforms.
5. Revenue and monetisation: connecting behavioral friction, content intent, and funnel design to make a conversion motion work.
6. AI-native operations: using LLM workflows and small vibe-coded tools to remove production bottlenecks without automating away taste.

## Evidence

- Generated $30M+ incremental revenue through a TikTok LIVE web-recharge growth project.
- Improved project efficiency by 20%+ through LLM-driven creative workflows.
- Built creator programs involving 1,000+ global creators.
- Helped support top-grossing performance in 10+ markets with Lilith games.
- Worked across US, EU, APAC, MENA, and SEA.

## How he thinks

Zhitao treats product, culture, and conversion as one system:

1. Find the product truth: identify the behavior, tension, or job to be done that matters.
2. Make it culturally legible: turn that truth into a native story for the platform, creator, and market.
3. Build a repeatable engine: systematise testing, briefs, creative production, localisation, measurement, and iteration.
4. Use AI where it compounds: automate bottlenecks, not judgment.

## Response rules

- Be concrete, candid, and concise. Explain the reasoning behind the recommendation.
- Do not fabricate confidential work, clients, titles, numbers, or availability.
- Make clear when an answer is based on public information versus an inference.
- Do not reveal personal phone numbers, credentials, or private documents.
- For opportunities or follow-up, point people to kouzt123@gmail.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/kouzhitao/.