Chinese auction site Alibaba hosted its Annual China Entrepreneur Summit in Hangzhou, China, this weekend. CEO Jack Ma and Yahoo's Jerry Yang spoke at the "AliFest" conference, whose theme was "A World Driven by Innovation."
According to the Guardian newspaper, 10,000 businesses attended AliFest this year compared to 3,000 last year's conference (http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1869307,00.html).
Alibaba's consumer online-auction site Taobao competes fiercely with eBay. In fact, eBay has banned Alibaba's B2B site from exhibiting at its user conference in the U.S. despite the fact that PowerSellers source Chinese product from Alibaba to resell on eBay.com.
It's hard to imagine more different CEOs than eBay's New Jersey born Meg Whitman and Alibaba's Jack Ma, a scrappy English teacher-turned-entrepreneur. Where Whitman shuns the limelight, Ma uses colorful rhetoric to score public-relations points. Even before Yahoo bought a 40 percent stake in Alibaba, Ma was able to attract former U.S. President Bill Clinton to give the keynote address at last year's conference.
This year, Ma is playing "Donald Trump" on Chinese television. Along with IDG Asia President and UTStarcom's CEO, Ma is a judge in an "Apprentice"-style television show called "Win in China." Alibaba's Yahoo China sponsors the program, which is aimed at encouraging entrepreneurship and connecting business talent with capital. The winner gets $1.25 million and a 20% stake in the winning startup.
It's hard to envision eBay's CEO playing such a visible role. Whitman and Ma do share one thing in common. They have both inspired thousands of entrepreneurs get on the Internet.
Whitman, who invested in China in 2001, may wish she had taken her mother's advice to enter China earlier (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/10/18/8188091/index.htm). China is critical, and who "Wins in China" may also be who wins worldwide.
http://www.alibaba.com
