Thread by @JoshuaTai0427

Have you ever wonder why Jack Ma, founder of $BABA picked Daniel Zhang, a person who did not co-founded $BABA, was not trained by $BABA, to become Jack Ma's successor and act as $BABA's CEO and chairman? Here is a thread on Daniel's amazing story with $BABA

Let's get started👇👇

Daniel graduated from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics and first started working at Arthur Andersen and PWC. Later Daniel joined SNDA, the biggest gaming company in China and became their CFO.

In 2007, Daniel was recruited to $BABA given his financial expertise and success with SNDA. When Jack asked Daniel why did you want to join $BABA, Daniel without hesitation said, I already did a 3 billion USD company, now I want to do a 30 billion one.

Within $BABA, there are two main focuses during the 2000s, Taobao (C2C) and Taobao mall (B2C). Taobao was highly successful in the 2000s, but Taobao Mall was on the brink of failure.

During 2009, Taobao mall was a messed, as many key employees left Taobao mall and Taobao mall continue to deteriorate. Daniel, believing that B2C is a big part of the future of E-commerce, promoted himself to Jack, and became the leader of Taobao mall.

During Daniel's lead, Daniel implemented one of the greatest strategy in Chinese e-commerce history; the creation of double 11, (AKA single's day shopping festival).

The original intent of double 11 was simple, at that time, everyone knows about Taobao (c2c), but not many people knows about Taobao Mall (b2c). Therefore, Daniel believes that Taobao Mall needs to have a designated shopping festival to gain traction.

Never did Daniel know, Double 11 later became the most influential shopping festival in recent Chinese history. During double 11 in 2020, Tmall has achieved a GMV of a whopping 498.2 billion RMN, more than 10000x increase from its initial launch 11 years ago.

However, during Daniel's lead, it was not all good and no bad. In 2011, Daniel aimed to increase the quality of stores on Taobao Mall, and he decided to raise service fee of Taobao Mall stores by 1-10x.

This created the 'October incident', where thousands of Taobao Mall stores complained fiercely and even launched malicious attack bigger Taobao Mall's stores and $BABA. Despite the fierce complains, Daniel had a firm stance and refuse to lower the fees.

A week after the October incident started, the Chinese government even intervened, asking Taobao Mall to reach an agreement with the stores as matters were getting out of hand.

Later on, it was Jack Ma who came out to rescue the scene and helped Taobao Mall strike an agreement with the stores on Taobao Mall, concluding the October incident.

Daniel has later said that the week of October incident was the darkest week of his life. However, it was also this incident that Jack Ma sees the strong persistent within Daniel, who was determined to implement the 'right policy' for $BABA, albeit in an incorrect manner.

After the incident, Daniel became more business savy and realised that Taobao Mall is not only a company, but a corporate that must be responsible to the public.

Under the lead of Daniel, Taobao Mall continued its steady growth, and has became one of the biggest profit generating machine for $BABA. Taobao Mall was later rebranded to the famous Tmall that all Chinese know now.

Because of the success of Tmall, Daniel was also promoted as the COO of $BABA and one out of 28 partners of the $BABA group.

Interestingly, Daniel was not the 1st option of being Jack's successor. During Jack's first retirement in 2013, Jack appointed Jonathan Lu as the CEO of $BABA. However, after 2 years, Jonathan did not bring $BABA to new heights and was failing some of $BABA's business.

Jack later replaced Jonathan with Daniel as $BABA's CEO and passed his position of the Chairman to Daniel in 2019. The rest is history.

From observing Daniel and listening to numerous of his interviews, a couple of things really jumped out to me. Daniel is a really hard working person, as he regularly lodges 18 hours work days!

Daniel also have very sharpe business instinct. When no one sees the future of B2C e-commerce, he saw a gold mine instead. Daniel's double 11 and the decision to improve quality of Tmall stores are also later proven to be massive contributors to $BABA's success.

Daniel's co-workers have commented that Daniel is the only guy that can go through meetings all day and still have a very sharpe mind at the end of the day. The group of smart people in $BABA all recognises the greatness and sharpness of Daniel.

Daniel is also a very humble person. He never thought about becoming $BABA's CEO. During Daniel's interview, he rarely talks about his own ambition, but always say, us and $BABA instead, showing his clear drive to push $BABA into new heights.

Daniel is also a family person. Because Daniel's family is located in Shanghai, and $BABA's headquarters was in Hangzhou, Daniel always freed out his weekends to travel back to Shanghai to spend time with his family.

In many ways, Daniel is not your typical star CEO with an outgoing and 'impressive' personality. However, in many ways, Daniel was the perfect successor of Jack Ma. He is humble, caring, hard working, sharp, and determine to accomplish great ambition of $BABA.

This comment by Jack Ma best amplify how great Daniel truly is:
'I am not afraid of the sky nor am I afraid of the sea, the only thing that i fear is that a CFO becomes a CEO'.

Daniel, started as a CFO, later became $BABA's CEO (how ironic is that to Jack lol), really testify his leadership and Jack's recognition on Daniel. All $BABA investors, you are taken in great hands with Daniel leading the way.

Thank you for reading this thread. I hope you have learnt a thing or two about Daniel, the CEO and Chairman of $BABA. If you like this thread, please considering retweeting it or liking it! It really helps me out a lot.

Please also follow me @Joshuatai0427, where I am aiming to release more $BABA threads like this breaking down the entire $BABA business in the coming days and weeks. I hope you all have a great day and I really appreciate your support!

@Couch_Investor @FinanceGhost @BuyandHoldd @Krevix @carlosotermin you may be interested in this thread!😄