Chapter 32 Corporate Writing: Can It Be Without Backroom Deals?

The book "Alibaba: No Difficult Business in the World" was finished, and at the same time, a debate about how much the author received from the company began as usual. A local newspaper speculated that if the author had not received money from Alibaba, the book would have sold 100,000 copies—because according to the editor who thought he knew Alibaba very well, Alibaba had a total of 100,000 copies. Thousands of paying members.What he meant was obvious. Except for the paid members who were given to the company after buying by Alibaba, there will not be any one who is really interested in Alibaba from normal channels, such as Xinhua Bookstore, to buy this book. It is possible to buy a copy and read it carefully at home.

This is obviously a continuous speculation.Because in most cases, people always doubt the motives of the author of a company history: why should you be interested in a company if it is not for money?Does it have anything to do with you? So here, I have to admit, I'm that dumbass.I admit that I did not receive a single penny from Alibaba, and I was very excited during the writing process of this book. After writing a chapter, I distributed it around my circle of friends, and let them read this book with some pride. It's so interesting; not only that, but after I finished writing the book, I told a friend that even if a single copy of this book can't be sold, I think it's worth it.

In addition to these, what I can tell you is that when Mr. Wu Xiaobo of Blue Lion and I first met with Alibaba's middle and high-level executives to discuss the writing of this book, I clearly saw the eyes of the company's executives. suspicion.This suspicion means, Zheng Zuoshi, can this guy understand our company? Let me now talk about me, a financial reporter from Nanfengchuang, after writing the first biography about Liu Yongxing, who once appeared in the position of the richest man in China (unfortunately, I did not receive that book from the company money), why come to write such a book against the skeptical attitude of Alibaba.

I'm a financial reporter, and I'm interested in good companies, and Alibaba really piqued my interest, and the skepticism of Alibaba's executives piqued my interest even more.Oh, there are still companies in the world that I can't understand?Well, I see this as a challenge, let's play around. That's all. What kind of company is Alibaba?At the last moment of writing "Alibaba: No Difficult Business in the World", Alibaba and Yahoo, the greatest company in the Internet industry, announced a strategic cooperation. At this time, a large number of media are asking this question.

There is another question hidden behind this question, and that question is: Ma Yun, is this guy worthy of Yang Zhiyuan's cooperation with him?Ha, it seems that Jack Ma has encountered the same problem as me. But in my opinion at this time, the cooperation between Jack Ma and his Alibaba, Jerry Yang and Yahoo is basically an inevitable thing.At the first meeting with Alibaba, their executives hinted that something big would happen to Alibaba. "The magnitude of this matter will surpass Lenovo's acquisition of IBM," they said.By the later stage of writing the book, that is, at the end of July, I had already guessed the answer.In other words, after writing the book "Alibaba: No Difficult Business in the World", I am not surprised that Alibaba can cooperate with a company of Yahoo's magnitude, although the company's current revenue is only A mere RMB 1.5 billion is even far smaller than most of China's first-class private companies.

Now let's get back to that question: what kind of company is Alibaba? In fact, it was this question that decided that Jerry Yang could let Yahoo cooperate with it, that Masayoshi Son could join Jack Ma in the bathroom and decide to invest $82 million in it, that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett wanted to invite Jack Ma to a private party in the United States for communication, and decided that people like Wu Jiong, the inventor of the Yahoo search engine, and Cai Chongxin, an investment banker with an annual salary of millions, could come to receive a salary of 500 yuan from this company.

Of course, this also determines Alibaba's skeptical gaze when I want to write this book. What kind of company is Alibaba? It is undeniably an e-commerce company.As a company founded in 1999, it is a very advanced thing to focus on e-commerce. According to the classification of the Internet industry in the United States, e-commerce is the second-generation Internet industry, and China is different from the United States. The means and the number of Internet users are far behind the United States. Business activities such as Alibaba are undoubtedly building a building on the desert. If the foundation is not solid, it is very easy to fall down.But they did. Now Alibaba’s revenue is growing at a rate of more than 50% every year, and it is quite possible that this rate will accelerate in the future, because from now on, the entire e-commerce environment in China will begin to change. At the same time, Alibaba has undoubtedly occupied the most favorable position in the field of e-commerce.

At the same time it is a fairly purely Chinese company.Although Alibaba has introduced a large amount of foreign capital, including the initial investment of US$5 million from Goldman Sachs, the investment of more than US$100 million by Softbank from Masayoshi Son, and the US$1 billion from Jerry Yang’s Yahoo, after all these investments, Jack Ma and Alibaba's local team still maintain a relative controlling stake, occupying two seats on the board of directors.In addition, more importantly, whether it is Alibaba or the newly merged Yahoo China, Jack Ma and his entrepreneurial team still maintain absolute leadership of the company, and the origin of these leaders is because they are a thorough local team , although the appearance of this team seems to be highly Westernized from the perspective of the operating system, Ma Yun said: "We absorb the wisdom of all these modern Western corporate systems from the East, which is highly Chinese." Therefore, he can also do the same. Describing his competition with eBay, the world's largest Internet e-commerce company: "They are sharks in the sea, and we are crocodiles in the Yangtze River."

A company with thorough eastern wisdom and western operation is scary.Because Chinese civilization has gone through five thousand years, it has absorbed the advantages of civilizations that have appeared in the world.And Ma Yun said: "Our experience in running a company comes from the wisdom of the most ordinary old ladies in the streets and alleys." I don't know how far Alibaba can go, but I do know that as far as the current development is concerned, it has indeed entered the ranks of China's first-class companies, maybe even further, although its revenue is only fifteen 100 million.

Maybe that's because it's a purely Chinese company. In addition, if you can imagine a little bit, the Alibaba team made an oath on the Great Wall at the beginning of their entrepreneurial journey to "be a great company in the world founded by Chinese people".And they are in the field of e-commerce in the most popular Internet industry in the world, and at the same time in the most active country in the world - Zhejiang, the most active province in China, with the best investors Sun Zhengyi and Yang Zhiyuan, with The best values ​​- Alibaba's values ​​come from General Electric.Of course, they still have the most ambitious dream, to make Alibaba's website a "merchant's website".

So what else do they need? The venue for the launch of the book "Alibaba: No Difficult Business in the World" is quite luxurious, and it was chosen in the Great Hall of the People in Zhejiang Province. This caused another misunderstanding in the outside world, because neither the Blue Lion nor the author could choose such a place to launch a book.Then there can only be one investor, and that is Alibaba. But unfortunately, this is another illusion. That's right, this venue was indeed rented by Alibaba, and what they rented was the largest conference hall in the Great Hall of the People in Zhejiang Province, but the purpose of renting it was to hold one of their important conferences - the Internet Business Conference.The reason why the launch ceremony of this book is chosen here is because the participants of Alibaba's online business conference are all important customers of the book, and the fundamental reason for the launch is to directly target customers. It should be said that the launch ceremony of the book has achieved ideal results-nearly a thousand books have been sold.The achievement of this achievement undoubtedly has a lot to do with the participants - Alibaba's customer e-commerce companies. And these online merchants are the future of Alibaba. Whose world will the future business world belong to?This may not be a good question because there are countless answers.But in Alibaba's view, the leaders of the business world in the future should have a common feature, that is, they are all users of a business network system.And Alibaba, if it develops smoothly according to Ma Yun, it will happen to be the provider of this business network system. Judging from the current situation, Jack Ma and Alibaba under his leadership are working hard to become such a provider.At least for now, Alibaba has mastered several major tools that they believe should become the business network in the future.In the future world, merchants will conduct cross-border trade through the Internet - now they have a template for Chinese suppliers; future merchants will be very small individuals - now they have Taobao; future merchants will pay through the Internet ——Now they have established Alipay; in the future, merchants need an online database that can search for the integrity files of counterparties—now they have established Chengxintong; in the future, merchants need a network system to manage customers—they proposed "WORK AT ALIBABA" concept, and has launched the instant messaging tool "Tradelink", or consumers may purchase products through the Internet in the future - they have already taken the most possible way "Yahoo search engine" in their hands. So if you want to say what kind of company is Alibaba?I can only give a rough idea, and maybe Ma Yun, Sun Zhengyi and Yang Zhiyuan can only give a rough idea. We can only say that this kind of uncertainty is the most attractive part of Alibaba.The company's business, products, personnel, and scale have not been finalized. Under such circumstances, its revenue has reached 1.5 billion, so you can have enough room for its future. To imagine, to ponder.This is a company where financial journalists are really challenged, and of course, I can proudly say that I took that challenge and accomplished what I was supposed to accomplish. So, they don't need to pay me for my writing.