Free Alibaba's World by Porter Erisman Page A

the world. But a melancholy set in as I realized I was leaving the Alibaba dream behind. And a part of me felt I was abandoning my colleagues at a time when they needed
my support. I couldn’t help but wonder, after my travels were done, would Alibaba still be around?

LOCK UP
    A S WE ENTERED 2003, the year of the sheep didn’t come in quietly. Colorful fireworks lit up the Hangzhou skies, while the constant rat-a-tat-tat of exploding firecrackers
echoed throughout my apartment complex. With my round-the-world dream finally fulfilled, I was focused and determined to dive back into Alibaba with a renewed sense of commitment. I’d enjoyed
my travels and seen the world but was looking forward to enjoying the camaraderie of a start-up again. As opposed to when I first joined Alibaba, money was not a significant motivation the second
time around and I agreed to come back for half my previous salary. Working as one of only two Westerners in a Chinese environment would be a great way to improve my Chinese-language skills, I
figured.
    After the celebrations in the street had died down, Alibaba organized an all-company gathering at a hotel to kick off the new year. I was curious to see how Alibaba had changed since I’d
left. When I arrived at the hotel, I was pleasantly surprised to hear cheers and the thumping of dance music emanating from the conference room and to see so many new faces streaming in.The mood was 180 degrees from where it had been a year earlier. Just a few months before, the company had finally become profitable, and tonight was the night to
celebrate.
    Joining in the frenzy was Savio Kwan, cheering and chanting along with the staff, most of whom were 20 years his junior. Seeing the turnaround in company morale and performance, it was
immediately clear how wrong I’d been in my first impressions of Savio’s management style. I’d come full circle to appreciate that Savio was exactly the COO that Alibaba had
needed. Savio hadn’t provided a rigid backbone for the company. Instead, he had provided an exoskeleton—outer constraints that helped keep the company from growing out of control. His
emphasis on codifying Alibaba’s values proved to be the critical formula that allowed the company to grow larger while maintaining its start-up spirit and strong team culture. It was exactly
what our young company needed to allow new leaders to emerge from the pack.
    One such leader was Liqi, my new boss and the head of international operations. With the room full and the music pumping, Liqi jumped on stage, grabbed a microphone, and invited everyone to
start dancing. We swarmed the stage, jumping up and down as balloons bounced and flags waved, chanting and cheering in the euphoria of knowing that Alibaba was finally on the upswing. After a cold,
dark Internet winter, spring had arrived.
    On my first day back in the office, I sat down with Liqi to discuss the year’s strategy. He was short, pudgy, and wore huge black-rimmed glasses, which made him look a bit like a Chinese
member of Run-DMC. He had a deep, raspy voice and a sharp, slightly dirty, sense of humor that kept the staff doubled overduring meetings. But behind all that, Liqi was
incredibly tough. In contrast to Jack’s open, consensus-building style, Liqi’s focused on action and results, the only things that mattered to him. Style points meant nothing.
    Whereas Jack’s life experiences had made him equally comfortable among Chinese and foreigners, Liqi’s relationship with foreigners was complicated. Like a lot of Chinese, he seemed
to simultaneously admire and resent Americans. Of course some of the resentment was justified. He once described to me how he’d gone to a top Guangzhou university in the 1980s but
wasn’t allowed to enter the five-star Garden Hotel there because he was a local Chinese. Foreigners, on the other hand, could wander in and out of the hotel freely—policy at the time
when China was just opening up and it was