![]() ![]() "He's seen virtually every angle of the business." Wu's happens to be "Dongxie." The character, which translates into "Eastern Heretic," is one of the world's five greatest martial artists, known for a love of music.Īpart from tech expertise, "he also has a strong business acumen," Brian Wong, a former Alibaba executive who worked with Wu, told Bloomberg Television. Many staffers adopt an internal alias inspired by characters from Louis Cha's kung-fu classics - an obsession of Ma's. 4 - ahead of such luminaries as Chinese e-commerce czar Trudy Dai (11), according to employees. Till today, Wu bears the honorific of Employee No. After Alibaba debuted in New York in 2014 in what was then the world's biggest initial public offering, he served as Ma's special assistant for four years, until the tech mogul conferred the chairmanship on Zhang. Later, Wu spearheaded the creation of Taobao's ad platform, Alimama, which let merchants buy prominent placement and rapidly became Alibaba's cash cow in the early years. a move that shareholders Yahoo and SoftBank protested vehemently at the time as the loss of a key asset. ![]() The technology grew so valuable that Ma in 2011 spun it off to create the underpinnings of Ant Group Co. In 2004, he designed Alipay - the online payments service modeled on PayPal that went on to help wean China off cash. He's the chief architect of Alibaba's flagship products - ranging from the Ebay-style Taobao marketplace to its namesake wholesale site. "Wu should be able to step into his new role without any tumult, but he's also a more reserved sort of exec compared to the legendary Ma."Īs Alibaba grew, so too did Wu's role at the e-commerce behemoth. "Eddie Wu is a well-regarded insider with proven deal skills, which is probably what Baba needs at this point," said Brock Silvers, Chief Investment Officer of private equity firm Kaiyuan Capital. He followed his mentor to Beijing when Ma did a stint at the commerce ministry, and then tagged along when Ma left to create Alibaba at his lakeside apartment in Hangzhou - before Ma's right-hand man Joseph Tsai (now appointed chairman) had even met the entrepreneur. Wu stuck with his mentor despite a string of now-infamous rejections by bureaucrats - a loyalty that may now be coming full circle. "This guy is humorous, very charismatic in the way he speaks," Wu said of his first impressions of his future boss. In 1996, Wu joined Ma's very first venture, China Yellow Pages, after stumbling across a job listing on a local newspaper, the computer-science major said in the Tsinghua University interview. "If you start a business only to make money, after you've made some money, you get lost pretty fast," he was quoted as saying.Īffectionately nicknamed "Wu Ma" - or "Mother Wu" - for his ability to counsel and rally people, Wu was impressed by the then young and idealistic Ma, who envisioned digitalizing China's fast-growing private sector by building web pages for small business owners. In an accompanying 2016 interview with Tsinghua University, he said he took his daughter to a Lionel Messi home game to instill in her the value of persistence and focus. But his personality occasionally shines through.Īmong the few online photos of Wu was one of him in an FC Barcelona jersey, giving two thumbs-ups in the midst of a packed Camp Nou stadium. Scant clues exist on the internet as to his thinking: scattered interviews he's given over the decades typically contain mostly anodyne comments about tech advances. Both could be key to energizing a company that hasn't grown by double-digits since late 2021, after Beijing's crackdown kneecapped its key businesses. Many analysts pointed out his scientific credentials, while others focused on his ability to draw in much-needed capital. Investors last week struggled to parse the impact Wu could make on the $220 billion company and that six-way restructuring. And its six arms are now in fund-raising and spinoff mode - classic deal-maker territory. That's important because Alibaba's internet supremacy has come under fire in recent years in arenas as varied as AI, cloud services and video entertainment. Wu appears to straddle two disparate worlds, as a veteran coder who today leads a 10 billion yuan ($1.4 billion) VC firm with a portfolio encompassing such bleeding-edge fields as autonomous driving and Internet of Things. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |