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disaster. I focused plenty of time on
developing a great marketing strategy but not enough time on winning the confidence and support of my local colleagues. Eight months later I left the company because I had failed to fit in with
management. In a Chinese company, I’d learned, the informal structure was just as important as the organizational chart. And before you could focus on strategy, it was important to get to
know your teammates.
    “Okay, it sounds like the situation might be a bit frustrating right now,” I said, “but at some point I’d like to get to Hangzhou to get to know the team a
bit.”
    “I don’t think that’s really the priority right now,” he said. “But if you have a business reason to go up there, then it would make sense.”
    Later that week David Oliver gave me a heads-up that Jack was coming to Hong Kong. “Porter, now that you’re running Alibaba’s PR, I should let you know that there’s a big
event arranged for Jack later this week here in Hong Kong. It should be huge, with a lot of media.”
    I was new to the Hong Kong Internet scene and curious to see how it compared to Beijing’s. When I arrived at the event, the difference struck me immediately.
Beijing’s Internet industry had been built from the ground up by entrepreneurs from humble backgrounds with little business experience. Unlike the state-owned enterprises that dominated the
rest of the Chinese economy, the Internet industry was a meritocracy, where good ideas, hard work, and innovation meant much more than having the right contacts. (Especially since it was so new
that you hardly knew who the right contacts were.)
    However, Hong Kong’s “new economy” seemed to be dominated by the sons and daughters of a handful of established tycoons. As I walked around the room exchanging cards, people
chatted less about their company’s vision or business models and more about which tycoon was backing it or how much money they’d just raised. With cocktails flowing and people dressed
in expensive suits and party dresses, it felt more like a movie premiere than a gathering of tech start-ups.
    Nevertheless Jack Ma’s first speaking event in Hong Kong had attracted a huge audience. In a city where money talks, Alibaba’s having raised $25 million from leading investors was
enough to bring out the Internet industry in full force. Dressed more casually than most of the other partygoers, Jack arrived and slowly worked his way through the crowd, set apart by his
diminutive figure and elfin features. After being introduced by the event’s organizer, Jack took the stage:
    It is exciting to be here in Hong Kong because we are growing our international office here a lot and putting together a really great management team. Hong Kong is great
     because thereare so many professional managers. And almost all my co-founders back in Hangzhou have no business experience. So I told my founders that they
     shouldn’t expect to be the senior managers in the company. We need to find those experts who have real business experience to take the company to the next level. You see, I was trained
     as an English teacher. So I know nothing about running a company. And after four years I will resign as CEO and hand over the company to a new generation of managers.
    It seemed a mature point of view—he recognized his limitations and those of his cofounders and knew when to pass the baton. Jack continued: “So what is Alibaba? I remember I gave a
talk in Singapore, and the topic was e-commerce in Asia. And I looked around the panel, and all of the speakers were from the USA. And I thought that Asia is Asia and America is America. Asia has
its own way of doing e-commerce. So our goal with Alibaba is to be the top business-to-business [B2B] marketplace in the world. We will combine Asian wisdom and Western operations.”
    The crowd clapped, both inspired and entertained. People were starting to warm up to Jack.
    “Business-to-business