One thing that stands out is that Alibaba has 18 founders. It is almost unheard of in the west. Jack Ma is a true legend. He has a humble background and failed college entrance exam three times before being accepted into an ordinary school (Gates and Jobs entered school without much a problem).

I remember watching this documentary made by their (American) VP of marketing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7i825QzKB8, chronicling their origins and their fight with eBay.

Worth pointing out that this blog, somewhat well followed in investment circles, claims 90% of Alibaba’s revenue, at least since the 2014 financial reports, is completely fraudulent: https://deep-throat-ipo.blogspot.com

They are doing the old Enron trick of creating hundreds of shell subsidies (over 900 at this point...many of which don’t even have a website or more than a single corporate officer / employee) to hide the debt.

He was 35, and it was peak of cycle/just before the dot com crash.