00:02:56 · Jackie Reses
[00:02:56] S0: How did that happen? That's a crazy group of people. It was honestly, it was one of the most fascinating experiences of my life. I went to Yahoo to be the Chief Development Officer, and once there, I was asked to join the board of Alibaba because Yahoo was the largest shareholder. They had the most contentious relationship. If you remember, there was this dynamic where Carol Bartz had been in this contentious fight with Jack Ma that was widely chronicled, and the two companies stopped talking to each other, even though Yahoo owned 40% of Alibaba. And so I came in and was asked to help clean it up. And so what did that mean? There was, like, hedge funds and activists trying to force Yahoo to sell their stock and agreements that were gonna cost Yahoo tens of billions of dollars. And so I go into this situation having never been to China, and I show up in Hangzhou, and I met Joe and Jack, and work to start to build a relationship to try to bridge these two fractured companies. I mean, this is like an unbelievable relationship and unbelievable value capture for Yahoo and Yahoo shareholders, yet to not actually have a relationship with the CEO and founders of the other company is unprecedented, let alone the scale of the dollars we were talking about at the time. And so I went to China, you know, as often as I could, multiple times in a month. I spent a lot of time with the principals there, And Joe and Jack, and Masa too, but I spent the most time with Joe, ended up to be wonderful people that I build a relationship with, and ended up doing a bunch of deals with them as a board member of Yahoo in order to continue to grow the company, take the company public, and then do transactions between Alibaba and Alipay, where Yahoo ended up yielding a lot of value back from the Alipay transaction that had been seeded through mechanisms related to the way the Chinese government operates. And so it was a pretty surreal and unprecedented learning experience, that's for sure. You were one of the only Americans ever to
00:05:27 · Molly O'Shea
[00:05:27] S1: be on the Chinese board. What was that dynamic like? So
00:05:33 · Jackie Reses
[00:05:33] S0: it is a very weird dynamic to think how unusual it is to have the experience going deep into Chinese companies. But thankfully they had a broad enough shareholder base that they understood both Eastern and Western values. And Joe in particular was someone who I regarded as like an incredible deal guy, easy partner to work with. A lot of the team there was incredible. And so he helped bridge the cultural dynamics of operating in China. There was a moment in time I remember where they asked me whether I would speak at an entrepreneurialism convention for them, where they were presenting to female entrepreneurs in China. And you're like, okay, this will be interesting. And then you realize it's like a convention center of women. It's like a stadium. And what they're talking about is that they are working to change the middle class system in China, to build entrepreneurship in China. And I'm like looking out at this stadium and I am like, oh, this is not like an ordinary course, 500 person event. This is like a gigantic deal in China. And they had this mission to just change the number of people that evolved into the middle class in China. And to do that meant elevating female entrepreneurs. And so it was like this incredible experience because the scale of China was just daunting, and the values and the conception that they're just gonna try to change an entire classism because of this concept of entrepreneurialism was something I hadn't thought about in advance of being invited to this event. Like, the company changed the country. And that is a pretty surreal dynamic. I mean, I think we're seeing that now with a lot of AI companies, fast forward fifteen years. But at the time when you think about like, what's the impact of a company like Alibaba and Alipay to the country of China, it's a pretty surreal experience to be a part of. And so as a board member, I loved every minute of it. I mean, there were a lot of times that weren't so happy and lots of discussions, particularly around taking the company public. But for the most part, it was a very well run company, well governed company, which I think a lot of Americans just have this belief that a Chinese company wouldn't be well governed. It was an exceptionally well run company. And so you watched excellence at its best, at a scale that is pretty unprecedented.
00:08:08 · Jackie Reses
And so that was a really fun experience to be a part of. And between Jack and Joe and then Masa as another shareholder, there was certainly a lot of entertainment in any given meeting amongst that crowd of people. I can't even imagine. It was pretty crazy. And to this day, I still think the best sushi meal I ever had was at Masa's office in Tokyo and quite the scene. But there were many dinners with Jack in particular that I'll recall where I think like, Oh my God, I'm never gonna be in this circumstance again. This is pretty surreal in what this environment is like. But they were very kind. I used to bring my kids to China with me. My kids were young at the time. And so I brought them to China and they would hang out in a conference room during board meetings, which I thought was really weird, but really cool and fun. And I have photos of them at Alibaba board meetings along the side and conference rooms. And if anyone ever goes to Alibaba, the one thing that they do that I have tried to take for myself is that they photograph everything. And so all along the walls of their office in Hangzhou are photos of meetings that they've had. Oh my God. And when you look back over the history of a company and you see all these meetings, and at the time, none of them feel very special, but when you look back over a retrospective photographs and you're like, ah, I remember that meeting when we had so and so here, or, oh, we cut that BD deal and we did the following, we got this license. And you go back and you look at that history and think, oh my God, if I could just capture that for my own company, for my own kids, my company, my friends. Like there are so many dynamics of that, which I think there's a lesson that we all should capture about getting these moments, both special and non, so that you can capture like a photographic history of your life in a really cool way. And so if you go out with me, I'm a little bit annoying because I'll always try to capture photos
00:10:19 · Molly O'Shea
[00:10:19] S1: bring the every paparazzi with you?
00:10:20 · Jackie Reses
[00:10:20] S0: Well, bring myself as paparazzi or people, and I'm always the person organizing a group shot. As unprofessional as it is, I kind of enjoy the moment. Are there personalities like how they're described online? Like what are the, what is it actually like working with each of them? So Jack Ma is an incredible visionary, and he is very big picture and thinks conceptually about concepts like, I wanna change what middle class looks like in China. Well, that's a pretty bold vision, and that includes moving a few 100,000,000 people into and out of poverty into middle class. And he just has a point of view about what he'd like to see achieved. Joe Tsai is truly wonderful. He's more of a common figure now in The United States with sports teams that he and his wife Clara own, and his support over even high school and college sports. And so he's a really nice, wonderful, smart human being. And then Masa, I did a bunch of deals where Masa and I were the two independents on the board. And we would end up doing a lot of work, which means that I would do the work with Masa's legal team. And Masa would come in and like, Yes, it shall be blessed. And I was like, Okay, my deal has now been blessed by Masa. That was kind of a fascinating experience to work side by side with him because he wants to also only think about very big picture issues. And so when we were tasked with things that had very execution oriented milestones that had to be achieved in order to get the IPO done, in order to do deals between Pay and Alibaba. Masa would almost just assume that everyone else would do it, and he would take the big picture concepts of it and just decide whether he was comfortable with it or not. And so it's almost the opposite of the way I work. I can't even fathom operating like that, where you're like, I shall bless this. It was quite fascinating to see. Because that was such a unique experience, I don't think anybody can say they've had that experience. What are the biggest lessons that you learned? Jack in particular, I think is a great example of where you have a dream with execution and a good team, you can go do it. And that dream can be company related, or it could be population related. He had a dream. He didn't have the background, but he got a great group of partners who became his management committee, and he went and just executed the hell out of it.