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A review by tbr_the_unconquered
Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark
4.0
“Today is brutal, tomorrow is more brutal, but the day after tomorrow is beautiful. However, the majority of people will die tomorrow night .”
Jack Ma’s quote finds resonance with any team/organization striving towards a lofty goal. There are days in your professional life when you are on the verge of throwing it all away and walking off and a lot many of us do just that. But still a few still persevere and this hard work eventually finds it’s worthy rewards. Alibaba’s rise to prominence in China is a chronicle of how hard work, perseverance, luck and a canny business acumen can take you a long way. It is also the story of the charismatic Jack Ma whose soundbites have since then made him a darling of social media. The book however focusses more on Alibaba as a company than it does on Jack Ma as an individual. While their lives are more or less intertwined, there is but precious little you can take away about Jack Ma especially from the years after he became the successful head of the entire Alibaba umbrella. The author has had a direct access to Jack and he uses it along with his own personal connections to weave a pretty good yarn.
China has been a consumer market that businesses have been keen to explore and tap into but with governmental focus being what it is, how would a business find its footing ? The struggles Jack underwent until the creation and eventual success of Taobao and Tmall is also a history of internet fuelled entrepreneurship in China. While the author does not go into too much of detail, the gradual lowering of walls in China is a factor that helped usher in a new age. A few of the internet portals rose to prominence prior to the entry of Yahoo into the mix and all this while Jack slowly kept his company going. The eventual all-trumpets-blaring arrival of eBay changed the whole outlook about Alibaba and the eventual humbling of this global major cemented Jack’s position as a tech tycoon to watch out for. All through the eBay v/s Alibaba battle, the shrewdness that Jack and his second-in-command Joe Tsai exhibit makes for great reading. The book ends with the IPO V2.0 of the firm and also ponders on some of the challenges that the road ahead might bring for Alibaba.
The material in here is just splendid. You cannot really read about the contributions of people like Jack Ma, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin/Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg et al without being truly impressed at the scale with which their businesses have grown and how they touch our lives virtually . But even with such a treasure trove of information, the book suffers from superficiality at a lot of places. For instance where the subject matter would have asked for a detailed analysis (like the business strategy at Alibaba), the author skips over with only a customary view at things. It would have been understandable if this was done for Jack Ma’s biography but considering the fact that it is biography of the company, this did not sit too well with me. Ironically I also felt that at places where brevity would have admirably done the job in conveying the message to the reader, there is quite a lot of information poured out.
It is a good read to perhaps start off in understanding Jack Magic but a deeper and more analytical view of the organization would have done wonders as a book.
Note : The rating is somewhere in the hinterlands between a 3 and a 4 star.
Jack Ma’s quote finds resonance with any team/organization striving towards a lofty goal. There are days in your professional life when you are on the verge of throwing it all away and walking off and a lot many of us do just that. But still a few still persevere and this hard work eventually finds it’s worthy rewards. Alibaba’s rise to prominence in China is a chronicle of how hard work, perseverance, luck and a canny business acumen can take you a long way. It is also the story of the charismatic Jack Ma whose soundbites have since then made him a darling of social media. The book however focusses more on Alibaba as a company than it does on Jack Ma as an individual. While their lives are more or less intertwined, there is but precious little you can take away about Jack Ma especially from the years after he became the successful head of the entire Alibaba umbrella. The author has had a direct access to Jack and he uses it along with his own personal connections to weave a pretty good yarn.
China has been a consumer market that businesses have been keen to explore and tap into but with governmental focus being what it is, how would a business find its footing ? The struggles Jack underwent until the creation and eventual success of Taobao and Tmall is also a history of internet fuelled entrepreneurship in China. While the author does not go into too much of detail, the gradual lowering of walls in China is a factor that helped usher in a new age. A few of the internet portals rose to prominence prior to the entry of Yahoo into the mix and all this while Jack slowly kept his company going. The eventual all-trumpets-blaring arrival of eBay changed the whole outlook about Alibaba and the eventual humbling of this global major cemented Jack’s position as a tech tycoon to watch out for. All through the eBay v/s Alibaba battle, the shrewdness that Jack and his second-in-command Joe Tsai exhibit makes for great reading. The book ends with the IPO V2.0 of the firm and also ponders on some of the challenges that the road ahead might bring for Alibaba.
The material in here is just splendid. You cannot really read about the contributions of people like Jack Ma, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin/Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg et al without being truly impressed at the scale with which their businesses have grown and how they touch our lives virtually . But even with such a treasure trove of information, the book suffers from superficiality at a lot of places. For instance where the subject matter would have asked for a detailed analysis (like the business strategy at Alibaba), the author skips over with only a customary view at things. It would have been understandable if this was done for Jack Ma’s biography but considering the fact that it is biography of the company, this did not sit too well with me. Ironically I also felt that at places where brevity would have admirably done the job in conveying the message to the reader, there is quite a lot of information poured out.
It is a good read to perhaps start off in understanding Jack Magic but a deeper and more analytical view of the organization would have done wonders as a book.
Note : The rating is somewhere in the hinterlands between a 3 and a 4 star.