Seeing the Unseen

CHAPTER 1The Shark versus the Crocodile

eBay may be a shark in the ocean, but I am a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we lose—but if we fight in the river, we win.

—Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba Group, 2003

IN 2003, WHEN EBAY, a leading US ecommerce platform, entered China, most analysts and investors were bearish about a new ecommerce venture a young company called Alibaba had just launched: Taobao. After all, Taobao's initial investment of RMB 100 million was nothing compared to eBay's market cap of more than US$30 billion, let alone the ecommerce know-how, firm reputation, and attractiveness to good talent.

Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, was determined to push through. He said that a crocodile will beat the shark in a fight in the river.

A year later, in 2004, Taobao was ahead of eBay in most metrics in China, defying the predictions of analysts and investors. The same year, another giant shark entered the Yangtze: Amazon acquired Joyo to enter China.

Since then, Amazon itself has grown from a $15 billion company to a $1.8 trillion behemoth. However, it did not win China as it had hoped. In 2019, faced with a less than 1% market share, Amazon pulled the plug and exited China's ecommerce market. Again, the crocodile had beaten the shark.

Jack Ma is a familiar figure globally, and his speeches before the failed Ant Group IPO in 2020 were carefully studied by investors and revered by aspiring entrepreneurs across the world.

However, little is known ...