Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built

Poorly written, The writer went from financing deal to financing deal with next to no explanation of the innovations, staff issues or personal issues Jack Ma faced. For instance, the writer referred to certain products but never explained what they were or to explain how they were innovative. He frequently referred to the fact the consumer-to-consumer portal Taobao is free, failed to explain how it's a money-making enterprise. And then there are the many other companies such as cloud computing, shopping search engines to which a passing reference was made but were never adequately described Moreover, some conclusions reached by the author didn't naturally follow the proposition asserted and left me confused. Finally, as for Jack Ma--we heard about his speaking engagements, but nothing at all about his personal life. Altogether, this was a remarkably unbalanced and sometimes bewildering account that left me with more questions than it answered. Where or where was the editor?

After reading this book, I cut Jack 's picture and glued to my office calendar. We have mostly high tech people make big in the bay area, Jack is using his people skill to beat the tech entrepreneurs, he took away the excuses from literature major seem to not disfavored in our tech oriented economy..

The book is just an endless list of various Chinese companies and their founders' names. So boring that finishing it has been a real torture. The man is a horrible storryteller. I regret the money invested. The only messages of the book are: 1) The Chinese market is very special and you need to be a Chinese to understand it. 2) The government is even worse than anywhere else in controlling your fate. 3) Americans failed in China because of their arrogance. 4) Jack Ma is a good hearted chap.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this book was listed in the Financial Times as one of its best business books of 2016. Unfortunately, the only possible merit it has is being the only book available about Alibaba. The writing is quite atrocious. It reads like the work of someone barely into their teens writing for a school newspaper.

Fascinating view of China opening up to the internet and the global economy. Mr.Clark's writing is easy to read and has that personal touch

Very interesting story, but it reads like a second draft instead of a polished book.

In Alibaba, Clark winds back the hands of time and gives you a front row seat to the frame-by-frame unfolding of one of Asia’s supernovas, the namesake of the book. Lyrically infused with verbatim quotes from alternative technology icons of our day, Clark’s narrative weaves together eye-catching headlines and Chinese mythology in sepia vignettes, so authentic that the “Jack Magic” in the scene palpably streams forth from the pages of the book.

Telling the story of the founder, Jack Ma, illustrating Ma’s philosophy and praxeology, the “Jack Magic”, and illuminating the role it played in Alibaba’s runaway success is where Clark shines. Clark’s discussion of the business environment, competitor strategies, and the later maturity of the internet industry indicates a lack of knowledge and insight, with various actors coming across as dry and two-dimensional. It feels tedious to read.

While the narration leaves much to be wanted in several departments, the story itself inspires, and the zeitgeist of a few key moments are well preserved. As a Stanford graduate student and Silicon Valley resident, I found a window into an entirely different world - a different dogma - of entrepreneurship; refreshing in a scene where a multitude of playbooks and listicles have converged a set of what seemed to be immutable rules.

As an MBA, I love stories about business. Alas, this isn't one of them. I left this book half-read, back in a Chicago hotel room. There's just not much substance here. I did take away from this book that Alibaba's business model is more like Ebay's (no inventory, vendors do all the shipping and back-office work, etc.), but, that's about it. The author has been close to Jack Ma for many years, and, his adulation for his subject shows too much.

Great book, explains how he has built a multi billion dollar company from scratch, and his successes and failures.
Highly recommended for others

The SARS outbreak of 2002 convinced China that Jack Ma’s Alibaba and other online delivery enterprises could provide invaluable services during a crisis, especially where quarantines are involved (pg. 259). Jack’s online companies exploded from there forward making Jack Ma China’s richest person and Alibaba the king of online shopping and payments. Jack, named Yun Ma at birth, came from a working-class family in Hangzhou. He was a zealous young student of English, engaging with outsiders who traveled to his city specifically so he could practice English. An Australian family befriended him and provided him his first opportunities to travel outside China taking advantage of relationships in a way any extroverted, passionate businessman would.

One might say that Jack Ma is an open book with Duncan Clark adding context and personal insight to what Jack has always mentioned at any of his dozens of public speaking engagements and business pep talks. Jack Ma grew his business in Hangzhou instead of Hong Kong, Beijing or Shanghai. He hired from outside the commercial centers, eschewed classic business models, himself receiving education from what he describes as a third rate university institution. Jack’s pattern of expression is to downplay his personal intelligence, taking jabs at conventional business models. In reality, Jack was the “ultimate pragmatist” (pg. 264) and his business strategies, admittedly a collection of more positive errors than negative trials, were successful due to persistence, personal relationships and a keen reading of cultural nuances.

Companies such as google and eBay struggled to navigate through communist-dominated economic regulations and refused to compromise their open information models. China’s Communists Party “informationization” strategies covet the control they have over all things media and communication. Duncan admits that some online business models that rely on trust between private vendors and buyers simply did not go over well in a milieu that lacked social capital (pg. 150). Jack Ma jumped on to China’s online boom early, read the needs of the market and translated the cultural perceptions into tailored online platforms. Something as simple as developing a flashy webpage more acclimated to China’s appetite rather than a “clean” western website model was one of a hundred tweaks that led to Alibaba’s success. Companies like eBay made too many cultural and managerial errors (pg. 170-2).

Jack was not educated in a top university but he had a passion for English, foreign connections and dynamic business models that required a lot of personal time investment. He courted government officials and at times even catered to their demands but his outspoken character and public engagements give him at least the appearance of having broken from the Chinese communist stranglehold or at least the local model of strict mercantilism.

After stepping down as CEO from Alibaba in 2019, Jack has launched into his next phase of philanthropy. Jack began visiting Africa three years ago and initially vowed that he would visit three countries every year until he had inspired youth in all 55 countries to embrace their entrepreneurial dreams. Jack has been to at least South Africa, Botswana, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Rwanda. He draws massive crowds and selfie lineups and has launched a number of tech initiatives. Jack explains that Africa is like China twenty years ago; on the brink of an online explosion but without the infrastructure requirements to support. “No investment location is without problems,” Jack would answer to his critics.

Is Jack Ma another “parachute” investor or optimistic but naïve newcomer to the African political and economic environment, as Howard French recently argued in a 2019 article? What can only a few million dollars do for a continent with an infrastructure deficit in the hundreds of billions? Deborah Brautigam has argued (The Dragon’s Gift) that Chinese models of development in Africa tended to pay wages on par with the local market unlike western NGOs who naturally paid higher wages to subsidize a quality of living that westerners were accustomed to. Higher wages meant that the local government’s best and brightest could be “poached” to work for foreign institutions. Alibaba succeeded by hiring lower-cost local Hangzhou youth and as his company thrived, his rivals never feared that Alibaba would poach their Hong Kong and Shanghai talent (pg. 142). Could the same concept still work in Africa?

The question still stands, how can passionate youth encourage their governments to plan and execute infrastructure upgrades that benefit the nation? In 1980, individual African countries were richer than China. Fast forward twenty more years where China had surpassed every African country and Jack claims China launched its internet boom. Every set of twenty years brings a new promise of prosperity but without a plan and governments to execute that plan, corruption and mismanagement devours the potential.

Now in 2020, Jack might say that Africa (and the rest of the world) is learning how important communication networks are to business, trade, research, transportation, delivery and sustaining basic needs. And to counter the Covid-19 damage, Jack Ma is deepening his assistance to African countries. There is promise all over Africa to include incredible political advances in Ethiopia, Ghana, Angola, Malawi and Senegal along with economic booms in Rwanda, Nigeria, Kenya as well as the mainstays of South Africa. It’s nice that Jack is rallying the youth to develop their countries. Covid-19, G5 debates, great power competition, supply chain analysis, energy sector dependency all laid against the unique personality of Jack Ma is certainly an interesting study. We all know that global threats compel us to better multilateral cooperation. When the dust has settled, despite the massive economic damage that will inevitably ensue, African countries will have had a million more good lessons to apply to their infrastructure models. Will they put the lessons into practice?