Season 3, Episode 5: Alibaba

We continue our China Tech series with perhaps the most incredible entrepreneurial journey in history: Alibaba and its indefatigable founder, Jack Ma. How did an unknown 30 year-old English teacher from a second tier Chinese city build the world’s 7th largest company by market cap (and the largest in China) in just 20 short years? This is one story you don’t want to miss. Sponsors: Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25 Vanta: https://vanta.com/acquired More Acquired! Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes Join the Slack Subscribe to ACQ2 Merch Store ! © Copyright 2015-2025 ACQ, LLC Links: Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma Built Jack Ma’s famous speech in the Hangzhou apartment Jack Ma on not competing with Amazon Carve Outs: Ben: Mike Maples on the Origins podcast David: Romance of the Three Kingdoms