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  • Alibaba

  • The House That Jack Ma Built
  • Written by: Duncan Clark
  • Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
  • Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (148 ratings)

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Alibaba

Written by: Duncan Clark
Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
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Publisher's Summary

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. 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 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 further overseas, including in the US?

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

©2016 Duncan Clark (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

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  • Jez
  • 2020-07-13

Storytelling style not my cup of tea

Jack Ma has a fantastic story on how Alibaba was started and built. This book does have a lot of insight as to how all that happened and all the adversities that Jack and his team faced, and continue to face now. However, throughout the book, I could really tell that the author is an investment guy at heart and he does mention that at the beginning of the book. So there's tonnes of numbers flying around about company market evaluations, IPOs, acquisitions and mergers, etc. I think that made a large part of the book a boring for me.. I'm positive that many people like this sort of thing, but not me. I was looking for more life stories, lessons, and entrepreneurial values I could learn from.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

The power of Jack magic

Very interesting to witness a trait of charm and charisma a leader can possess which led to the creation of a giant ... very impressive

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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

good story from Jack Ma

Want to know more ahout how Jack set up his company. the begining is good, but the ending is too rushed.

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    5 out of 5 stars

Fantastic!

Not only do you get the history and future aspirations of Alibaba, you also get a brief history of internet companies in China as well as the US. This is a must read for all investors and people interested in business.

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