Alibaba

An engrossing, insider’s account of how a teacher built one of the world’s most valuable companies rivaling Walmart and Amazon and forever reshaped the global economy

In just a decade and a half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded Alibaba and built it into one of the world’s largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. In 2014, Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO was the largest global IPO in history. A Rockefeller of his time, who is courted by CEOs and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China’s booming private sector and the gatekeeper to hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers.

Duncan Clark first met Jack in 1999 in the small apartment where Jack founded Alibaba. Granted unprecedented access to a wealth of new material, including exclusive interviews, Clark draws on his own experience as an early adviser to Alibaba as well as his two decades in China chronicling the Internet’s impact on the country to create an authoritative, compelling narrative account of Alibaba’s rise.

How did Jack overcome his humble origins and early failures to achieve massive success with Alibaba How did he outsmart rival entrepreneurs from both China and Silicon Valley Can Alibaba maintain its 80 percent market share As it forges ahead into finance and entertainment, are there limits to Alibaba’s ambitions How does the Chinese government view its rise Will Alibaba expand farther overseas, including into the United States

Clark tells Alibaba’s tale in the context of China’s momentous economic and social changes, illuminating an unlikely corporate titan as never before.

About the Author

Duncan Clark was raised in the United Kingdom, the United States, and France, and has been based in Beijing since 1994, after four years as a technology investment banker with Morgan Stanley in London and Hong Kong. He first met Jack Ma in 1999, and worked as a consult with Alibaba in its early years. In 1994, he founded the leading investment advisory firm BDA China. An expert on China's Internet sector, Clark has been invited to Stanford University as a Visiting Scholar, where the co-founded the "China 2.0" research program. He lives in Beijing.