![]() ![]() While visiting Alibaba’s headquarters in Hangzhou, I felt the same “insanely great” energy of entrepreneurship as I felt in Silicon Valley. In the lobby, a flat panel TV was streaming video clips of Jack Ma speaking at various public events where his admirers, most of them in their twenties, were cheering him like a rock star. It is located on a campus of three ten-story buildings in the northeastern part of Hangzhou, about a ten-minute taxi drive from West Lake. ![]() ![]() In 2004, I visited Alibaba at its headquarters in Hangzhou. As a defensive strategy, Ma decided to launch a competing consumer-to-consumer (C2C) auction site, not to make money, but to fend off eBay from taking away Alibaba’s customers.Ī new Web site named Taobao-meaning “digging for treasure”-was launched free of charge for individuals buying and selling virtually any consumer goods, from cosmetics to electronic parts. When eBay entered the China market, Jack Ma, founder and CEO of Alibaba, was alarmed that “someday, eBay would come in our direction.” He knew too well that there was no clear distinction between small businesses and individual consumers in China. ![]()
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