First of all, this is not an autobiography, which I was initially quite disappointed about. Nonetheless, the author is close to the inner circles of Alibaba, having been an advisor to the group in its infancy stages. Hence, the reader still does manage to get a pretty good understanding of how Jack Ma built up the current day Alibaba empire.
There are quite a few cool things in the Alibaba story. It managed to overcome eBay's initial dominance of the Chinese consumer-to-consumer market, eventually kicking them out of China altogether. That said, it is apparently very difficult for foreign companies to successfully navigate the Chinese market, and from the book, eBay also significantly contributed to its own downfall through a series of blunders due to its arrogance.
Overall I felt the book is clear and well written. The writer does a great job in describing the 'iron triangle' which reinforces Alibaba's success. There are also many players and sub-plots to tell about (which could end up confusing) but these are also led into very nicely.
The Alibaba story also shows that the model of plowing money into startups does work, since Alibaba and Taobao are all profitable businesses now.
There is also the controversy of how Alipay was divested from the Alibaba group, into a company directly owned by Jack Ma. In this respect, I came to appreciate having a neutral point of view from the writer, instead of reading from an autobiography.
Overall, a great read. My conclusion is that to succeed in business, one needs a lot of tenacity, hard work and grit, but also a huge dose of luck as well.
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