At Alibaba, the Founder Is Squarely in Charge

This is one thing I love about Asia, when it comes to business. (There are many things not to love, but I'll avoid those for now.) People act instead of playing the emasculating permission-seeking games you see around here.

In North America-- and it's worst in the supposedly "entrepreneurial" VC-funded ecosystem-- business people have this effete need to manicure their reputations, which means they'll never go all-in on one strategy or business. The "This is right, I'm fucking doing it" impulse is not something you see in the U.S. where "failure" means "$350k/year EIR gig" [0]. In that situation, people are more inclined to play nice and let themselves lose.

[0] There are, of course, plenty of actually poor people in the U.S. for whom failure means something worse than $350k/year EIR gig-- in fact, that's probably 99.5% of Americans-- but the U.S. class system is pretty smooth-running at this point and keeps those actually poor people away from decisions that matter. For people who actually get to make business decisions in the U.S., failure has no real consequences. Conversely, if there's any chance that you might have a real stake in winning or something to lose in failure, the U.S. class system is pretty good at making sure you don't get any real power.

On the other hand, if you grew up in a place where failure has actual painful consequences (beyond mild embarrassment) you're more likely to play to win, rather than asking "How will this affect my reputation and my buddies?" and settle for a draw.

In the U.S., people play permission-seeking games because their goals aren't to win in business, but to get on the boards of prestigious non-profits and get their children into prep schools (which means that "just fucking do it" business moves are too risky; you might compete too hard against someone on the board of something important, like the museum where the deans of various prep schools are also on the board). In Asia, they play to win (like Ma) because they're only a generation or two removed from having no other choice.

I tend to have more respect for people who act swiftly out of a sense of self-preservation than I do for U.S.-style social climbers who decline to act boldly because they're afraid it'll keep their kids out of MBA school.