[2] Tyson Mao was born in San Francisco to a Taiwanese American family; his parents were immigrants from Tainan, Taiwan.

He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area[3] and previously used to work as a Poker Product Manager for Zynga.

In 2017, Mao opened the Wursthall Restaurant & Bierhaus in San Mateo, California with partners Adam Simpson and J. Kenji López-Alt.

Tyson Mao's unofficial beginner method is a set of 8 videos which can be viewed at Rubiks.com.

This method is most famous for being used by Will Smith in a past film The Pursuit of Happyness, that was released in 2006.