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Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built
Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built
Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built
Audiobook9 hours

Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built

Written by Duncan Clark

Narrated by Jim Meskimen

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

()

About this audiobook

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

In just a decade and half Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded and built Alibaba into one of the world’s largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age 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 advisor to Alibaba and 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 China and Silicon Valley? Can Alibaba maintain its 80% 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 further overseas, including in the U.S.?

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

Editor's Note

In the news…

Alibaba’s Jack Ma is stepping down. Find out how China’s richest man built the “Amazon of China” and revolutionized the Chinese marketplace in this biography written with an insider’s perspective by one of Alibaba’s earliest advisors. A crucial look at one of the world’s biggest leaders.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperAudio
Release dateApr 12, 2016
ISBN9780062456953
Author

Duncan Clark

Duncan Clark, a former Morgan Stanley investment banker and fluent Mandarin speaker, has lived and worked in China for more than twenty years. He heads a team of more than one hundred at BDA China, the investment advisory firm he founded in Beijing in 1994. An expert on China’s Internet sector, Clark is a former visiting scholar at Stanford University, where he welcomed Jack Ma on stage as a keynote speaker, along with the leaders of other leading China Internet firms including Baidu, Sina, and Tencent.

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Reviews for Alibaba

Rating: 4.342560539792387 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

289 ratings22 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This book reveals a China perspective that helps to believe in a better world. I really recommend it.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A very well written book. It's a peek into the early Internet through the eyes of an early stage Chinese entrepreneur. definitely fascinating.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I think its not really related to his business. Its more like third person story

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I loved Jack Ma and his story , inspired.Thank You Author and who made this audio book ,god bless You.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    :) interesting. Towards chapter 9 onwards gets a little repetitive.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Would have been a lot better if the reader actually tried to learn pronunciation of the Chinese words and names

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Good introduction but already needs a new edition or sequel to update the story. We need a lot more in English about what’s happening in China.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Well done read, it got my curiosity fired up. I learnt how an indestructible team spirit kept the group, how persistence and faith that the internet would change everything made Jack who he is today.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Great book, great account of how ordinary Jack founded this great organization and his temperament to make it one of the best business venture ever....I like it
  • Rating: 1 out of 5 stars
    1/5
    I was expecting more simple and mainly about his life rather than the business side.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great illustration of Jack Ma's business life and how he managed to succeed despite many obstacles and failures. A good read for every entrepreneur that will learn a thing or two when embarking on their own journey of creating businesses and companies. I liked when he said: I wish I never took the company public.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Good book for inside affairs of bussinesses of the company
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It was... interesting. It reads like an economic case study. Lots of facts about the Chinese marketplace and different business units of Alibaba and its subsidiaries. However, it seems unfocused when it comes to the origin story of the company and Jack Ma's mentality toward business.
    If you're looking for a well-narrated case study on one company's strategy, this is for you. If you are looking for a backstory to how Alibaba rose in prominence, this is a sub-par narrative.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Good book.. Very inspirational story ......... Must read book for all
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent summary of how Jack Ma began his company. A great source of inspiration for any Entrepreneur worldwide.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    It's good to know more about Chinese businesses as it looks abscure from the occident point of view, and specially Ma who is known more and more and compared to the big whales like Besoz. But I just found the book not focused, at least for me to follow the story
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great presentation

    Most recommended for all........

    Quite an insight into the company
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Most People put of Alibaba as a Story, It’s not just a Story, It’s a Strategy

  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great overview of the story of Alibaba, Jack Ma and China really growing into power. And the internet revolution taking hold in China.

    Recommend reading if interested in any of the three above-mentioned categories.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Before starting it, I thought that, again, I am going to get into the life of another visionary wizard tech entrepreneur. Instead it portrayed a man, Jack Ma, full of flaws, who persisted along his career, regardless of the many challenges he faced.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Enjoyable and insightful. I honestly didn't enjoy the first two chapters, but after that, as the book starts telling the tale of Jack Ma growing up and creating this massive global business, I learnt so much and enjoyed it till the end.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    A full account of Jack Ma's rise to the internet mogul that ALibaba has made him.The book was well-written but lacked humpor. I found it tough reading.