Hacker Cinema
Crocodile in the Yangtze
2012 · Film · documentary · 77 min
Directed by Porter Erisman
Crocodile in the Yangtze follows China's first Internet entrepreneur and former English teacher, Jack Ma, as he battles US giant eBay on the way to building China's first global Internet company, Alibaba Group. An independent memoir written, directed and produced by an American who worked in Ma's company for eight years, Crocodile in the Yangtze captures the emotional ups and downs of life in a Chinese Internet startup at a time when the Internet brought China face-to-face with the West. Crocodile in the Yangtze draws on 200 hours of archival footage filmed by over 35 sources between 1995 and 2009. The film presents a strikingly candid portrait of Ma and his company, told from the point of view of an “American fly on a Chinese wall” who witnessed the successes and the mistakes Alibaba encountered as it grew from a small apartment into a global company employing 16,000 staff.
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Episode Synopsis: Porter Erisman, the author of “Alibaba’s World” and filmmaker of “Crocodile in the Yangtze”, joined us to offer an insider’s perspective to the early days of Alibaba, now the largest ecommerce company in the world. We discussed the interesting period of his tenure in Alibaba from the company taking the funding from Yahoo! to the challenge of Ebay in China. He also gave us the up close and personal view of Jack Ma, the co-founder of Alibaba and offered some interesting lessons which he shared with aspiring entrepreneurs out there in the world. We also catch a glimpse in Porter’s next project and also whether he is still in touch with his former colleagues in Alibaba, particularly with Jack Ma. Lastly, Porter gives us a preview of his next project after “Alibaba’s world”.