Jack Ma's speech, Alibaba

We are glad to have Jefferson Chen, a 1st year Stanford GSB, write for us this time since I could not attend the speech myself.

Here are the highlights:
Speech by Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba
Feb 28, 2009 @ Stanford

· A company’s balance sheet can only be fixed when it dies (i.e. there are ongoing ups and downs in a company’s history. The same for an individual life)

· Disasters always come the moment you start to sense success

· Chinese should use the Chinese way – imported ideas from the west might not work as well as you think (The world is changing – reversing positioning of China and the US in the past decade)

· MBA case studies never work in reality – HBS did a case study on Alibaba years ago but the company could barely recognize themselves in the case

· The purpose of this trip by the entire Alibaba management team is mainly “internal team building”

o Think, learn, innovate

o Visit Ebay, Google, MSFT, Starbucks, Yahoo etc

o Looking for partners (making more sense for these big corps in the down turn – “back to basics”)

o Recruiting from Silicon Valley (looking to add 5,000 new positions in 2009, current employee base is 12,000) – best time to compete for the best talents

· #1 priority for a company is NOT its shareholders, but its “CUSTOMERS”

· #2 priority for a company is its Employees; shareholder is only #3

· Most companies only focus on #s, not the vision or its customers and employees, hence they fail

· He personally thinks 2008 was the worst year and best year for Alibaba

o Sensed the financial crisis very early

o Did a lot of internal restructuring (downsize certain functions, preserve cash, etc) to better position in the downturn

o Hence now in a superior position vs. competitors

o Think 2009 will the best year for Alibaba

o Believe the darkest period has passed (Aug-Sept 2008), but the most difficult period has not (probably the next 3-5 years)

· Wants to write a book on “How NOT to be big”

· Current users on Alibaba:

o 30 mm Chinese SMEs and 70 mm int’l SMEs

o 100mm+ users on taobao.com

· Taobao.com

o Overtakes Walmart global total volume in 10 years

o DESIGN FOR CONSUMERS

· Alibaba is a global company – just happen to be started by Chinese

· “Forget” about your competitors, JUST focus on your CUSTOMERS

· Be yourself, be comfortable yourself

· Group do not control anything at subs

o Subs fully run by their own CEOs

o No KPI on subs performance

o Group ONLY provides support, not overhead

· Work happily, live seriously