Alibaba and Jack Ma: Beyond E-commerce and China—Implications for Silicon Valley

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, by Duncan Clark, is the story of an entrepreneur whose remarkable charisma, ambition, and unrelenting determination helped build a company that surprised the world.

In just a decade and a half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, built Alibaba into one of the world’s largest companies, rivaling Walmart and Amazon. 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, Ma is an icon for China’s booming private sector and the gatekeeper to hundreds of millions of middle-class consumers.

Alibaba is a story of East vs. West. How did an upstart company in China take on the giants of Silicon Valley, ultimately joining their ranks to become one of the world’s most successful Internet businesses? Alibaba is also a story of North vs. South. As Beijing government leaders attempt to wean the country off the old economic model of manufacturing and exports, do entrepreneurs far from the northern seat of government power, like Jack Ma, hold the keys to a consumer-led future in new frontiers, from finance to entertainment and beyond?

Marguerite Gong Hancock, executive director of the Exponential Center, the Museum’s new center for entrepreneurship and innovation and co-founder and former director of China 2.0 at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, hosted Jack Ma twice as a keynote speaker in the Valley. Marguerite will engage in a dynamic conversation with Duncan Clark on Jack Ma and Alibaba, the leader and the company that symbolize China’s current economic transformation. 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. Please join us.

“Anybody who thinks the Chinese just copy or steal technology from the West should read this book and think again. Jack Ma is part Bill Gates, part Steve Jobs, part Larry Page, part Sergei Brin, and part Mark Zuckerberg all rolled into one.”

—Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP

“...This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the present China and the heartbeat of a great entrepreneur.”

—Tim Draper, Founder of Draper Associates, DFJ, and Draper University

“Useful, business-minded reporting on an unconventional corporate magnate, containing both corporate and human-interest perspectives.”

—Kirkus