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Comment by renewiltord

4 years ago

Have you listened to Jack Ma talk? He sounds like some kind of total moron in the panel discussion with Elon Musk. I know, you're thinking "It's not his first language. That's what it is" but go watch it yourself¹. The ideas he expresses seem completely unformed and make it look like he's not operating at a particularly high level.

But Alibaba is real. It's a real company doing real things and delivering real value. It's a giant success.

Now I'm not saying Nikola will be (maybe those shorts for 2022 are pretty cheap) but people speak like complete idiots and still run successful companies that they start.

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3lUEnMaiAU

Here's a highlight: https://youtu.be/f3lUEnMaiAU?t=789

13 comments

renewiltord

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meowface  4 years ago

Yeah, if a CEO/director being a chronic bullshit artist always meant a company was fraudulent, I'm not sure how many legitimate companies we'd have left.

paxys  4 years ago

The only difference between Jack Ma and Elon in that interview is that Elon's bullshit sounds smart to us and Jack's doesn't. Every CEO's real job is to pander to their audience and hype up the company. That might mean repeating "HTML5 AI Encryption Blockchain" over and over again to roomfuls of investors and shareholders.

  • chrischen  4 years ago

    Yea the takeaway I had was that both of them were spewing some pretty stupid stuff, though Jack Ma's sounded more like propaganda.

fossuser  4 years ago

Yeah, after that talk I was pretty skeptical Jack Ma was anything more than just a CCP figurehead or maybe friends with someone in the government?

He comes across as a complete idiot.

Maybe you don't need to be that smart to run a company like Alibaba, but I find that hard to believe - I suspect government protection and party favoritism plays a part.

outworlder  4 years ago

When they are just a figurehead for a government-backed enterprise, they can be complete morons.

When you are the head of a revolutionary startup that's competing technologically with existing companies, you can't afford to be one.

  • rrrrrrrrrrrryan  4 years ago

    Richard Branson would've been a much better example. He's massively dyslexic, can barely read, and openly admits that he didn't understand the difference between "net" and "gross" for the first couple decades of running his companies.

    He was however a massively charismatic individual and an extremely good judge of character, so he was able to use these traits to sweet talk investors and hire people he knew he could trust to get the job done.

  • krapp  4 years ago

    >When you are the head of a revolutionary startup that's competing technologically with existing companies, you can't afford to be one.

    Of course you can, you hire people to understand those things for you and make them work. Do you think the bulk of innovation, design and execution comes from the CEO's own head? Not even Elon Musk is that integral to his companies or their output.

  • vkou  4 years ago

    Extraordinary claims (That AliBaba was successful solely because the government of China is apparently pouring billions of dollars into it, making it literally impossible for it to do anything but succeed) require extraordinary evidence.

    Their financials are public - please point out the line items that the CCP is bankrolling. And while you're at it, explain why it seems to be so altruistic as to be funneling national funds into a publicly traded company.

    (I won't even ask for an explanation of why large US tech companies are, in your assessment, not backed by the government.)

    There's a world of difference between "You need to be in the good graces of the government to operate", and "The government is operating you." Contrary to popular misconception, e-commerce, like most business in China is not a command economy, operated from some underground Poltibureau bunker, all for the glory of the sickle, the hammer, and the star.

    • fakedang  4 years ago

      Uh, check the history of BABA for one? Alibaba was heavily funded by the provincial investment fund of Hangzhou, a CCP entity, in the 90s. As Alibaba grew, the CCP's holdings, and its hold, on BABA only grew further.

      Jack Ma is pretty much the useful idiot for the CCP, for most of the history of Alibaba.

      EDIT:- to answer your question to the other commenter, take a look at Amazon. Amazon was largely loss-making for most of the history of the shopping portal, and is largely fueled by associated services such as AWS and prime. Considering Alibaba's less than admirable position in those sectors, it's hard to fathom how Baba managed to remain profitable still, without extensive government support.

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