Who are the other Alibaba cofounders?
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On February 20, 1999, which was on the fifth day of the Lunar year, 18 people met on the third floor of building number 16 in a community apartment complex called Lakeside Garden in Hangzhou. The house was almost empty, with only a broken sofa on one side.
Most of the people were sitting on the floor and Jack Ma stood in the middle and talked for two hours. After this meeting, Alibaba was born.
Jack Ma led Alibaba from its humble beginnings back in 1999 in his apartment to what is now known as an e-commerce giant with a market cap of $736 billion as of February 2021. He is now notably the face of Alibaba, however, there are in fact, 17 other significant individuals that co-founded the e-commerce giant since its inception in 1999. But who are they?
Their names translated directly from Chinese characters without modification are Ma Yun, Sun Tongyu, Jin Jianhang, Cai Chongxin, Peng Lei, Zhang Ying, Wu Yongming, Sheng Bai Yifei, Lou Wensheng, Ma Changwei, Han min, Xie Shihuang, Dai Shan, Jin Yuanying, Jiang Fang, Zhou Yuehong, Shi Yufeng and Rao Tongtong.
Source: iPrice
Note: Only founders whose information is available publicly online are included.
From this infographics by iPrice, you can find several interesting insights. Among them, the co-founders were from diverse industries such as journalism, investment banking, web developers, education and many others.
Ma’s connections were established through his ex-students, ex-colleagues, mutual friends and like-minded entrepreneurs. Interestingly, there are three couples in the founding members namely: Jack Ma and Cathy Zhang, Shi Yufeng and Jin Yuanying, Toto Sun and Lucy Peng.
Amongst the 18 co-founders, there are six women who now holds top-level management roles and made billions over the years.
List of some Alibaba Founders
Here are brief details of how they met Jack Ma and their history prior to the founding of Alibaba.
Jin Jianhang
Jin Jianhang was a top performing student from Fudan Journalism School and has worked at numerous Chinese Media: Zhejiang Daily, Intl. Business Daily etc.
Jin and Ma’s first encounter happened during Jin’s interview with the entrepreneur back in his China Yellow Pages. As a business journalist, Jin has always encountered Ma and eventually build connections. During Ma’s executive jon in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Co-operation (MOFTEC) EDI Centre, now known as the Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China, he recommended Jin to become editor-in-chief.
Later when Jack Ma started Alibaba Group, Jianhang decided to come along.
Joseph Tsai
Tsai holds an undergraduate degree in Economics and East Asian studies and a law degree. Prior to meeting Ma, Tsai was an investment banker earning approximately US$700k annually.
Deeply inspired by Jack’s charisma and his idea for Alibaba, he made a daring move to give up his high-end job to join Alibaba in 1999 and earned only US$50 monthly.
Today Tsai is the Vice Executive Chairman and co-founder of Alibaba Group and ranks as its second-largest individual shareholder after Jack Ma.
Lucy Peng
Similar to Ma, Peng began her career as a teacher at the Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics. She married Sun Tongyu, in 1997.
Peng quit teaching in 1999 to join her husband as part of the 18-strong Alibaba founding team.
She was recently assigned as the CEO of Lazada following Alibaba’s investment of an additional US$2 billion into the marketplace.
Cathy Zhang
Zhang first met Ma at the Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute. Soon after graduation, they got married.
In 1999, Jack told Zhang about his plan for Alibaba and along with other partners began working towards the vision.
Zhang was in Alibaba’s management team and now dedicates her time raising a family with Ma.
Eddie Wu
Wu graduated with a Computer Science degree from the Zhejiang University of Technology in 1996 and later joined China Yellow Pages where he was acquainted with Jack Ma.
In 1997, Wu followed Ma to Beijing and assisted him by managing the MOFTEC website.
Following Ma’s footsteps, Wu joined Ma in building Alibaba Group as the first programmer in the company.
James Sheng
Sheng began learning traditional art at an early age. He turned to commercial art and started his career as a designer. He was acquainted with Jack Ma when James’ company was hired to design China Yellow Pages’ website.
Sheng joined Jack Ma’s meeting in his apartment and became one of the 18 founding members of Alibaba in 1999.
Today, Sheng is known to be the man behind Alibaba’s smile logo and is the Co-founder and Senior Vice President of the Alibaba Group.
Lou Wensheng
Lou and Ma attended the same university, Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute. Lou eventually became one of Ma’s close supporter.
Interestingly, Lou decided to join Chinese Yellow Pages after seeing a feature of the company in 1995 Oriental Horizon TV documentary.
Simon Xie
Xie obtained his degree in Financial Management from the Shenyang University of Technology and later worked for the China National Air Separation Engineering Co., Ltd. With his interest in computer, he developed his basic skills in Information Technology and managed to practice this skills for work.
In 1996, Xie had the chance to meet Ma during China Yellow Pages. Attracted by Ma’s unique aura he decided to follow Ma’s ventures.
Ma and Xie became close friends and decided to give up his high paying job in finance. He first followed Ma to Beijing to work at MOFTEC and later joined Alibaba.
Jin Yuanying
Jin was Ma’s student in Hangzhou Dianzi University and later was encouraged by Jane Jiang and Han Min to join Alibaba Group.
Zhou Yuehong
Zhou is a Java architect, he first encountered Ma as his teacher in Hangzhou Dianzi University. Through his expertise in technology, Zhou developed the core code of MVC framework - WebX, which was used mainly for Taobao early days.
Shi Yufeng
In 1999, Shi worked at Central Weather Bureau. Interestingly, he’s also good in technology which came in handy later as he joined Alibaba.
Eddie Wu, one of the Alibaba co-founders noticed Shi's presence in the internet world. At a restaurant in Beijing, Shi first met Jack Ma through Wu. Attracted by Ma's plan and passion for building Alibaba, Shi decided to join Alibaba.
The other six keep a low profile and little or no information about them is found online, one thing for sure though, they are all billionaires.
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