Earlier quoted context omitted.
Correct, he is/was backed by a different faction. Most startups of that era are.
Which faction? I am curious.
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Alibaba breaks itself up in six
211–220 of 321 posts
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#212Isn't seven the most powerfully magic number? Wouldn't it be better, make Alibaba stronger...to split the soul into seven pieces?
8 is a much luckier number and is associated with fortune/wealth. I think 7 is mainly a western thing. although the rule of threes seems to be a universal constant. Just something about it.
It is a Harry Potter quote/reference.
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
One doesn't need to be clueless in order to lose a power struggle. He might have been betrayed, he might have overestimated the resources he could fully count on, he might have simply been backing a faction in the party that ended up losing. Xi Jinping went as far as kicking out of the public congress a previous president, which was unprecedented; who knows what else he's capable of.
But that’s the problem - the risk of losing a power struggle in a democracy with rule of law, separation of powers, an independent court system, and regular elections is vastly different from the risks of losing a power struggle in the CCP, which controls all branches of government, law enforcement, and the military and is accountable to no one. The former has a limited downside, the latter unlimited. Whatever the Ce…
I always figured that's why high-level power struggles were so constant and severely fought in totalitarian regimes.
If the downside is unlimited then you do whatever it takes to win, always.
And if there isn't currently a struggle then you prepare for the next one, constantly.
Or in other words, you only spend a small portion of your total ability and time on the job, because you have to constantly expend effort on protecting your back.
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which faction? I am curious.
From what I’ve both read and experienced on a brief trip to Shanghai, it seems there are two main factions - the Beijing faction and Shanghai faction. The latter is more capitalist and chill, the former more authoritarian. It’s probably more complicated though, with multiple sub factions around different leaders in the CCP. Maybe someone with deeper knowledge can elaborate.
There's https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuanpai and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_clique. And of course a third one - Xi organized his own clan.
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#215> The company’s artificial-intelligence and cloud-computing operations will form a separate unit, led by Daniel Zhang, the current group chief executive.
So it looks like Jack Ma's joke about AI meaning "Alibaba Intelligence" is coming to fruition.
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's an interesting question (whether Apple's monopolistic behavior has produced any good), but entirely orthogonal to the underlying question, whether Apple is behaving monopolistically (they are).
Apple has a monopoly on Apple products, and even though there are plenty of non-Apple products to buy, they are behaving like a monopoly?
yes, they are engaging in monopolistic behavior, which as mentioned above, does not require them to pass any particular threshold for being a monopoly
society has decided that some behaviors are in and of themselves bad, whether or not said threshold of yours is surpassed (for example monopolistic behaviors)
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Twitter purchase really just shows how rich and apathetic Elon Musk is. A Ferrari is a difficult to impossible purchase for almost all of us, but rappers buy them for no reason and then trash them all the time. Twitter is that on a much larger scale, and Musk is treating it the same way because he doesn’t care. You don’t build the first successful auto startup in 70 years and revitalize the space industry by bein…
Both SpaceX and Tesla nearly went bankrupt multiple times, we could just as easily be talking about an Elon Musk who had every advantage (government contracts, huge tax breaks and a fantastically wealthy family) and still failed. Maybe this is a case of fortune favoring the bold and I admire his perseverance/grit/marketing ability a lot. I've never heard him explain anything technical in any interview he's ever given…
He's really good at selling an image, which is what pushed Tesla ahead of other car makers. His whole 'Tony Stark' image is basically cat nip to tech bros and made Tesla cool and desirable.
I think you are spot on. There are dozens of 'Elon Musks' out there we don't notice or talk about because they didn't win. Someone was going to win in the space, the government was heavily incentivizing electric car purchases. Musk was the best salesmen and here we are. That doesn't make him a tactical genius.
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#218A missed opportunity to break it up into 40
42 is even better
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#219The media and HN seem to be seeing this as a AT&T style breakup, which is not. It is starting with an Alphabet style restructuring, which sounds big in theory but nothing big might happen in practice. The biggest unit (Taobao/Tmall) will be fully owned by Alibaba and would not seek any external investment (Taobao/Tmall is responsible for >70% of their profits). The new Unit CEOs were not even invited to speak at the…
Also the reason the stock jumped on the news is the company is potentially worth more this way, by breaking out higher margin / faster growth units from the big retail business. A lot of Amazon investors would love to see the same with AWS. It sounds silly since nothing really changes, but it has to do with the way investors calculate the value of public companies.
a basket of options is more valuable than an option on a basket
https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/decisions-decisions-or-why...
Re: Alibaba breaks itself up in six
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always do wonder about the reverence shown to billionaires around here, given the quite frankly ludicrous purchase of Twitter ($44bn!!!) and what has happened afterwards I really am not convinced they aren’t just as able as the rest of us.
Americans tend to equate wealth with ability and set aside luck, everyone is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Musk certainly used to have decent business accuumin - he hit it big several times, that’s not just luck. From all accounts he’s a half decent engineer too, which is rare in many CEO levels. However his behaviour over the last 3 years has been very surprising. He seems to be less interested in the tech…
> he hit it big several times, that’s not just luck.
The odds of any given entrepreneur getting lucky several times in a row is very small.
Given a large enough entrepreneurs, the odds of one of them getting lucky several times in a row gets very large. We just don't see all the ones who tried and failed, or succeeded once or twice and fizzled out.
I don't doubt that Musk has some skills and appropriate personality traits as well, but luck is likely the dominating factor.