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In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history - bigger than Google, Facebook and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest e-commerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over ten years, while building a customer base more than twice the size of Amazon's, and handling the bulk of e-commerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?In Alibaba's World, author Porter Erisman, one of Alibaba's first Western employees and its head of international marketing from 2000 to 2008, shows how Jack Ma, a Chinese schoolteacher who twice failed his college entrance exams, rose from obscurity to found Alibaba and lead it from struggling startup to the world's most dominant e-commerce player.



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Porter Erisman

Porter Erisman worked as a vice president at Alibaba Group from 2000-2008, joining the company just as it moved out of founder Jack Ma's apartment. He is the writer and director of Crocodile in the Yangtze: The Alibaba Story, an award-winning documentary about the rise of Alibaba and its famous founder. Erisman is also the bestselling author of Alibaba's World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business. Most recently, he is the author of Six Billion Shoppers: the Companies Winning the Global E-Commerce Boom. An expert on e-commerce in emerging markets, he has consulted to e-commerce companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America and has spoken at high-profile industry events in more than thirty countries.



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