The e-commerce giant, Alibaba's interesting story is captured in Alibaba's World by Porter Erisman, who was one of the first western employees at Alibaba. Erisman was instrumental in Alibaba's international expansion and served as the Vice-President at the company from 2000 to 2008. This international best seller has been selected by the Wall Street Journal as one of the 'Best Business Books' of 2015.
Porter has portrayed an insider's picture of the world's largest e-commerce site, from its modest beginnings in Hong Kong and rural China to its present-day dominance of the online China trade. Alibaba, which wanted to become the Amazon of China, had a turbulent start when the dotcom bubble burst. It eventually turned out to be the second most valuable internet business after Google. Today, it is a symbol of the rise of the Chinese consumer.
Another interesting aspect of this book is that it is filled with anecdotes and stories about the mysterious Jack Ma who was an English teacher and had twice failed his university entrance exams, and the first time he saw the internet in Seattle he used it to search for "beer"! A small guy with a huge ambition, Ma's desire to grow a China-based internet company was engrained in a sense of service to his countrymen as well his own desire to become very wealthy.
Erisman also details the story of how Jack Ma and Jerry Yang, the Taiwan born founder of Yahoo became friends and ultimately joined forces to defeat eBay in China, no small undertaking, given the size and scope of eBay's worldwide operations. There is a witty moment where the sensitive, confrontational Google leaders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, meet Jack Ma, Porter Erisman, and a few other members of Alibaba's leadership in a cluttered conference room in a hotel in mainland China. The Google founders failed to understand Alibaba's business model. The only conclusion that Erisman and his team could draw was that eventually Google would try to swallow them up.
In the concluding part of the book, "Alibaba and the 40 Lessons", Erisman talks of his learnings from his stint at Alibaba, and briefly explains the theory behind each of them. Each one of them is very interesting, especially the one about "Don't change rabbits", which talks about not losing focus and "the most important guanxi is with your customer" which focuses on relationships with customers.
This book has been written in a very direct and simple style and is an easy read. Before joining Alibaba, Erisman worked with Ogilvy & Mather in Beijing. He is the writer/director of 'Crocodile in the Yangtze', an independent documentary memoir about the rise of Alibaba and Jack Ma and the eight years that he spent with the organisation. Currently he is into a lot of speaking engagements and also working on his next book on the e-commerce boom in the emerging markets.
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