Alibaba’s World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company Is Changing the Face of Global Business
About this audiobook
In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history—bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest e-commerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over ten years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's and handling the bulk of e-commerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?
In Alibaba's World, author Porter Erisman, one of Alibaba's first Western employees and its head of international marketing from 2000 to 2008, shows how Jack Ma, a Chinese schoolteacher who twice failed his college entrance exams, rose from obscurity to found Alibaba and lead it from struggling startup to the world's most dominant e-commerce player. He shares stories of weathering the dotcom crash, facing down eBay and Google, negotiating with the unpredictable Chinese government, and enduring the misguided advice of foreign experts, all to build the behemoth that's poised to sweep the ecommerce world today. And he analyzes Alibaba's role as a harbinger of the new global business landscape—with its focus on the East rather than the West, emerging markets over developed ones, and the nimble entrepreneur over the industry titan. As we face this near future, the story of Alibaba—and its inevitable descendants—is both essential and instructive.
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About the author
Porter Erisman worked for Ogilvy & Mather in Beijing prior to joining Alibaba.com. From 2000–2008, he worked as a vice president at Alibaba.com and Alibaba Group, at various times leading the company’s international website operations, international marketing, and corporate affairs as one of the company’s first American employees. He is the writer and director of Crocodile in the Yangtze, a documentary about the rise of Alibaba and its famous founder Jack Ma.
George Newbern has appeared in Father of the Bride, Father of the Bride II, Evening Star, Adventures in Babysitting, and many other films. On television, he has had roles on Scandal, Friends, Nip/Tuck, Hot in Cleveland, CSI, and more. He is also known for providing the voice of Superman in Justice League and for narrating audiobooks.
