alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma and the Creation of the World's Biggest Online Marketplace
Jack Ma had the odds stacked against him from an early age: Born shortly after the Cultural Revolution in China, a time of great social tension for all, his family was ostracized for having sided with counterrevolutionary forces. His growth was stunted, he had a lot of trouble in school, was stubborn and undisciplined; and being quite rebellious, he got into a lot of fights, but he usually lost because of his small size. He failed the college entrance examination twice and was nearly condemned to a lifelong profession of low-paying service work. Despite all this, Ma went on to create one of the largest online business-to-business marketplaces in the world in a country that has some of the most restrictive laws regarding Internet freedom. From an initial investment of $60,000 in 1999, Alibaba.com has surpassed eBay in China as the largest Web site on which to buy and sell goods, and is now worth $26 billion. How he did it is an inspirational story of perseverance in the martial-arts tradition of creating a will through positive reinforcement. --David Siegfried