[Read by George Newbern]
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 larger than
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