Lesson 44. Alibaba

I have just finished reading Alibaba: The house that Jack Ma built by Duncan Clark.
This is a brilliant book in the way the author presents the journey of Alibaba from Jack's small apartment to a billion dollar company, many of us have heard of Alibaba recently during the IPO but this book reminds us that success is as a result of hard work, perseverance, sacrifices and most of all loving what you are doing or  learning to do.  We see the influence that Jack Ma has established to move the company forward with the Jack Magic effect, something similar to Steve Jobs reality distortion field effect.

One thing that I really loved was the clear outline of the growth of internet companies in mainland China, and a key lesson can be learned on how big tech companies in China have been able to replicate similar services and technology offerings of major players in the industry  by tailoring this to Chinese market,
eg
Google- Baidu
eBay- Eachnet
Amazon-JD.com/Alibaba
YouTube- Yoku

This strategy can also be replicated in other markets as well where these players are yet to be dominant.

We also get to see the effect of regulation on companies and how the Chinese government has a great influence on the success of foreign companies which lead to the failure of key players in the Chinese market companies like Google, Yahoo, eBay, Amazon etc. Entering the Chinese market is difficult with the regulations and restrictions brought about by the great firewall of China.

And finally, I would love to see Alibaba expansion to the United states for the mega battle between Amazon and Alibaba, who will come out on top Jack Ma or Jeff Bezos, well my bet is on Jeff Bezos. For a company to survive it needs the famous Day 1 strategy, I have tried to compare both companies using this baseline and Amazon comes on top every time.  This would be a good battle, let's, "Tao"