Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built pdfdrive com

Chapter Seven: Backers: Goldman and SoftBank
1
. Ted and I took turns writing the “Beijing Byte” column about tech
developments in China, taking over from Kristie Lu Stout, who is now an
anchor at CNN International in Hong Kong.
2
. The initial wave of foreign employees included a number of young
China adventurers. One of the earliest, employee number forty, was David
Oliver, who grew up on a farm on the South Island of New Zealand and had
been working in China for a few years. After he saw Jack give a speech in
Singapore in March 1999, David was so impressed that he flew to
Hangzhou, and by September he had started working for Alibaba. He joined
the company at a very low salary by Hong Kong standards—$20,000 a year
—so low that he was later unable to afford to exercise his healthy allocation
of options, priced at a mere five cents. Belgian Jan Van der Ven joined the
company after building a number of trade websites in Shenzhen before
moving to the factory town of Dongguan, Guangdong. Another early
recruit, number fifty-two, was Brian Wong. Originally from Palo Alto,
California, Brian is now a vice president in the chairman’s office,
constantly at Jack’s side on his frequent trips overseas. Alibaba then added
a tier of MBAs including Todd Daum and Sanjay Varma. Alibaba organizes
occasional gatherings of the earliest employees, issuing hats displaying the
order of precedence of joining. (Jack is #001.)
3
. Jack’s wife, Cathy, played an instrumental role in the international
operations of the company for a number of years. Annie Xu, a UC Berkeley
grad from Shanghai, has worked as general manager for Alibaba in the
United States since May 2000. Abir Oreibi oversaw the company’s
European business for eight years from 2000.
4
. “Pre-money.”
5
. Involving a “participated preferred feature.”
6
. She was a member of the bank’s principal investment area (PIA) team
launched in Asia by Henry Cornell. In addition to large investments in
China such as in Ping An Insurance in 1994, after the bank had made some
successful tech investments in Silicon Valley, Shirley was involved in
placing small bets on tech companies in Asia, too. Shirley was named
managing director at the bank the following year, at age thirty-two.
7
. Investing in a company called ChinaRen.com, founded by three Stanford
returnees. ChinaRen was later acquired by Sohu.

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8
. In 2015 he became the comanager of Joe Tsai’s multibillion-dollar
family investment office.
9
. Adding to the company’s existing Taiwan and Hong Kong sites.
10
. Here at the company’s tenth anniversary.
11
. At Alibaba, Aliren (literally “Alibaba People”) are employees who have
stayed with the company for over three years.
12
. Initially alibaba.com.cn, in 2010 becoming 1688.com.
13
. Asia Business Conference.
14
. In a 2003 interview with Zhejiang Satellite TV, he said, “Ten years ago I
applied for Harvard twice and was rejected. I always wanted to go to
Harvard and talk to the people there. . . . Until today I don’t care too much
about the academic qualifications from elite universities around the world. I
think Hangzhou Teachers College is pretty good.”
15
. Originally from Shanghai, Wu had studied computer science in the United
States and joined Yahoo early, in 1996.
Chapter Eight: Burst and Back to China
1
. One of them was Edward Zeng (Zeng Qiang), the founder of a chain of
Internet cafés. PR savvy, attracting a visit from First Lady Hillary Clinton,
Zeng claimed to have built the “leading e-commerce enabling service in
China.”
2
. Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo has also described the Internet
as “God’s present to China. It is the best tool for the Chinese people in their
project to cast off slavery and strive for freedom.”
3
. The “CCF” (China-China-Foreign) structure was set up to allow foreign
investment into the new SOE telecom operator China Unicom. But Wu
considered it a threat to his authority and declared the $1.4 billion of
foreign investment illegal.
4
. Joseph Tong (Tong Jiawei).
5
. Appropriately enough its former CEO now runs a travel-related business
in the region.
6
. It had conducted a scaled-down “backdoor” listing on the Nasdaq in
April 2000.
7
. Kwan had worked for fifteen years at GE Medical Systems.
Chapter Nine: Born Again: Taobao and the Humiliation of eBay
1
. The event would be the first in a series of annual conferences Alibaba
still holds to this day, which they refer to as the “AliFest.” Jin Yong was the

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first of a parade of VIPs that has since included President Bill Clinton,
Kobe Bryant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, numerous CEOs, celebrities, and a
parade of Nobel and Pulitzer prize winners.
2
. A move that for a few days appeared to imperil the VIE structure: Wang
lost his job in Sina’s offshore-listed company but retained key licenses in
China, then agreed to relinquish control of those, too.
3
. Dangdang, run by Peggy Yu and her husband, Li Guoqing, was backed
by VC investors including SoftBank. Joyo’s CEO was Diane Wang, but the
company was a spin-off from the software maker Kingsoft, which was
engineered by Lei Jun, famous today as the founder and CEO of the high-
profile Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi.
4
. Neither Dangdang nor Joyo would become the Amazon of China, but
Joyo would at least become Amazon in China. In 2004, Joyo was acquired
by Amazon for $75 million.
5
. Known in Chinese as