Editor’s Note: Porter Erisman was one of Alibaba’s first western employees and helped spearhead its international expansion. He has documented his experiences in the book “Alibaba’s World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business”. The views expressed are those of the author alone.
When I was born in 1970, my parents could have never imagined their son would grow up to work for a Chinese company. At the time, China was closed to the world, mired in the depths of Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Capitalists were punished and sent to the countryside. Would-be entrepreneurs could be thrown in jail just for opening a small shop.
But at the age of 30, I found myself working inside a Chinese company, Alibaba, which to my astonishment rose to become the world’s largest e-commerce company.
From 2000 to 2008 I worked as a vice-president at Alibaba Group in a variety of roles. I saw the company grow from a schoolteacher’s apartment into China’s first global Internet giant, battling and beating eBay in China along the way.
The experience taught me a lot about both business and life, which I recount in my book, Alibaba’s World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business.
My last chapter, “Alibaba and the Forty Lessons,” sums up the many ways in which the experience challenged my assumptions about both business and life. I’ve distilled these lessons into the list below from my Alibaba experience. It is worth mentioning that I am not an employee or consultant to Alibaba and do not have any stock options in the company, however, I continue to invest in Alibaba, eBay and Amazon independently.
Innovation is alive and well in China
There seems to be a running narrative about tech entrepreneurs in China: the Chinese are great imitators but not great innovators.
I’ve even heard it said that Alibaba is simply a copy of eBay or Amazon. But that’s like saying Steve Jobs copied the idea for the iPhone from Alexander Graham Bell.
Alibaba’s ecosystem in many ways bears no resemblance to its U.S. counterparts and is creating entirely new ways of doing business for China’s entrepreneurs.
Alibaba is not alone in its innovative spirit. China’s rapidly changing and dynamic market leads to a more nimble breed of entrepreneur which I found moves even more quickly than their Silicon Valley counterparts.
While it is true that some sectors in China’s economy are led by imitators, China’s Internet boom has given rise to an entirely new generation of entrepreneurs that in my view are just as creative and innovative as their western counterparts.
How China’s e-commerce ecosystem leapfrogged the West’s
In the past, people observed that China’s consumers were leapfrogging from devices such as a landline telephone straight to a mobile phone without having to build out the costly infrastructure of telephone poles and landlines.
Alibaba’s experience has shown that entire economic systems can leapfrog ahead, especially in developing countries. Whereas the U.S. and Western Europe spent the last several hundred years developing a retail infrastructure, China’s commercial infrastructure was able to leapfrog directly online without the retailers first building out an extensive offline retail infrastructure.
“Be as fast as a rabbit and patient as a turtle”
This was a favorite quote of Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, and over time it made sense to me.
Entrepreneurs need to move quickly, especially in a fast-paced environment like China. But they also need to maintain a long-term view, such as Jack Ma’s goal of creating a company that lasts 102 years.
Find opportunity in crisis
When SARS hit China in 2003, it threatened Alibaba’s very survival. When an Alibaba colleague was diagnosed with SARS, 500 employees at company headquarters were sent into quarantine and forced to work remotely from home to operate the company.
But from this danger emerged an opportunity. Alibaba wasn’t the only company that had difficulty doing business face to face during that period. Our customers did too. We created a number of educational programs to teach small businesses how to do business online in the SARS era and our website traffic hit new levels.
Build a team, not an ‘all-star’ cast
When I joined Alibaba in 2000, the company was assembling a team of managers with amazing resumes that looked great on paper - but didn’t work well together.
Soon the company was adrift and heading dangerously close to bankruptcy. When this “dream team” was laid off, management reverted to the original founders, most of whom had little or no business experience.
Although there were no all-stars among this team, they worked well together as a tightly-knit group, achieving more together than someone might have predicted from their resumes.
Dream big, really big
Yes, it’s a cliché that sounds almost corny or naïve. But watching as Alibaba grow from a David into a Goliath, I came to realize that the greatest limitations we have are the ones we impose on ourselves.
Porter Erisman worked as a Vice-President at Alibaba.com and Alibaba Group from 2000-2008. The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author alone.
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