YouSaid · the spoken record

Joe Tsai

lines on the record: 34
first: 2018-07-21
most recent: 2018-07-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I think Alibaba is good for innovation and good for entrepreneurs because the space that we're in, e-commerce, A pretty good business, so there's always new competition. Five years ago, there's company A, now there's company B. You're investing a lot of them. So I think there's always going to be entrepreneurs that see the opportunity and say, Alibaba is doing it this way.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Joe, As investoring Alibaba, then I also wish Xiaomi Xiaongsu. Some of our companies compete against you. Some of our companies collaborate with you. So I get a lot of questions in the US, like, is Alibaba good for the startup system in China since Alibaba is so strong and it's everywhere and is investing all these companies? And then secondly, if Alibaba is so strong in China, does that encourage startups in China to expand beyond China and go for the rest of the world? What do you see and how do you answer when people ask you what's Alabama's impact on the startup system in China?”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First, I think you have to make sure that your technology systems and also people can scale. I think we're kind of spoiled in a China market with 800 million internet users and everything that you do, you're assuming that it's going to be tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people that is going to be using your product. I think for a company that's in this market, first of all, There's plenty of scale in this market as well. You know, I think a lot of companies in the United States are also looking at overseas markets, including China. So my advice is don't listen to politicians that criticize China. Look at the Chinese market as an opportunity. And there are a lot of partners, potential partners, companies ourselves included could be your partners to explore the China market together.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe an Amazon Echo, maybe By the way, our TMAL Genie, which is a similar product, is the best selling. Personal assistant in China today.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think you could be buying not just from your cell phone, you could buy from your refrigerator. If you run out of milk and you push a button on your refrigerator and the smart refrigerator makes the order. So there could be a lot of scenarios where different devices are, the device is going to get smarter. The device is not your phone, but it's going to be something else.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're looking at 5G, the proliferation of 5G as a catalyst for an Internet of Things strategy. With the ability of devices at the edge to To run data and have computing that's done locally, that's going to slightly be different from a cloud business, but that's something that's very exciting from our standpoint. And you can think of scenarios where a lot of compute can happen locally and consumers will benefit from that. So that's going to be a very important catalyst for e-commerce business or gaming business or a lot of other types of businesses and these devices will proliferate.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And no, look, first of all, I think in a similar business as ours, sort of this cross-border consumer business, we're very positive about that business. And because having one foot in China serving global consumers for Alibaba is an advantage because we're close to the merchants, we're close to the factories, we're close to the sellers. I think this business is bound to have competition because other people can see opportunities and our view of competition is that makes us better. We have to keep asking ourselves, are we serving consumers better? Are we falling behind? And it's just like in sports, you have to play against good teams in order to get better. So we welcome that competition and we follow the company and hope to have a chance to talk to them at some point. But at this point, we're not doing anything to conversations.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, of course I follow that business. And every time I watch a Lakers game, they sponsor the jersey. Wish. And so I'm like, so it was work. It was worth”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Little bit of Apple, a lot of Show Me phones, but how often do you buy a phone? I mean, it's going to be once every six months or 12 months?”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is no longer just a payment tool. It's your portal to access other services that require payment, like buying movie tickets, buying train tickets, buying gold fund for investments, India gold is a very important asset to own. So with all these use cases, you're creating engagement. You're creating high-level engagement. That's why we're involved in a grocery company because grocery is almost daily. It's something that is highly engaging. So we want to enter through high frequency use cases and build an e-commerce business on top of that. I think some of the other e-commerce players go into the market and they focus on electronics. Lots of GMV, lots of volume today is selling Samsung phones and Huawei phones and”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, if you look at India, it's very, very early. We're in the first inning, right? Total industry GMV for e-commerce this year is going to be less than $20 billion. China is close to $1 trillion today. So very, very early, early days. We want to take a very patient approach. In fact, Amazon is doing a very good job educating consumers about the benefits of buying online and good service. They provide a very good service in India. Our strategy is to look at high frequency use cases. So online payment. Today PTM, we have an investment in PTM, which is the largest mobile payment company in India. The app”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Those are attracted absolutely young population, mobile population, and also another thing that people kind of overlook is whether the country has a strong manufacturing base. Alibaba has been successful in China. Well, there are a lot of consumers, but the flip side of the coin is that the merchants can easily find sources of product that they can buy, they could source. And because China is a large manufacturing base. So in countries where they don't produce a lot of things themselves, you have to import that's a different kind of organization of your merchant base because you have to provide the sourcing opportunities for them. Those are some of the factors that we look at when we grow into a new market.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's sort of two areas, two things that we think about. Number one, what we are good at, can we be helpful in a new market? So we're good at developing emerging markets. Our experience in China over the last 19 years growing an e-commerce marketplace from basically zero to something that's really large, what does that experience tell us about helping a company in Indonesia or India for that matter? That's one area. The other is to look at the demographics, whether the country has young population, how mobile is the population. When you look at most of the Southeast Asian countries, they're basically leapfrogging nobody uses computers. Everybody's accessing the internet on a mobile phone. So you look at all those things.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Let's talk for a bit about your global MA strategy. We've talked about the US and I can harp on it for another hour, but that would be a little boring. So how do you think about where you're going to buy, where you're going to invest, and the types of businesses, whether they're consumer-facing or other? Wave us out for us.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have not entertained those conversations. I think the U.S. market, when you're serving U.S. consumers, is a very different market from China”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most retailers in the US or in China are not organized that way. And there has to be a lot of willingness and true resolving commitment to making those changes to make it work.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. I think the model has to be you have your own operated stores, but then you take the standard operating procedure and the technology and you license it to other people. But the key thing is the licensee, whoever licenses your technology, is willing to make the change and not just say, oh, now I've got this great technology, then everything will work out. Change is like, for example, organizational structure. How do you manage an online presence with an app? Who runs the app and who runs the store, you know, every store has a store manager. And you have to make sure that the people that are running your online operation and your offline business, their interests are perfectly aligned. And most retailers are not organized that way. So there has to be.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How tempting is it to what? If you feel you're ahead in a space, and this is just one example, how tempting is it to license that technology or export that excellence in a certain category, whether it's another mature market like the US or an emerging market?”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We are profitable. Our grocery stores, if you combine the online and offline P&L, they're profitable. So including the delivery, it could be run on a profitable basis. The reason it's profitable is number one, it has scale. And with scale, you can actually map out delivery routes in a much more efficient way. If the store only gets 15 orders a day, then each trip is”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's not coming to the store. Just simply you're sitting at home or you're in your office and you could schedule it and say, I want this item to be delivered to my home because I'm cooking dinner at 6 o'clock. But right now I'm in my office. So there's a lot of flexibility and we want to give the consumers a total experience, whether they're online or in store.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Order and have something delivered to them. And one of the most important things about having store based operation for an e-commerce company is that those store locations are also fulfillment spots. I mean, it's not a secret to say that if the inventory is closer to the consumer, the logistics, the delivery is faster. So it's very, very important, I think you think about the Amazon scenario, there's over 400 stores, whole food stores. If people are ordering groceries online, if they could fulfill and deliver from those whole food stores, that's a much faster proposition. In our case, in the Huma case, we can deliver items within 30 minutes. In fact, that's our core value proposition. That's our promise to the consumer.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure. I think what's different is the consumer. The consumer is very, very mobile in China. We have more than 80% of our transactions that's being done on a mobile phone. So when you have a mobile device, the distinction between online and offline is kind of blurred because you could sit at home and order something online and have it delivered to you on a mobile device. Or you can carry your phone and walk into a store and use that phone as a device to learn more about the product and also pay for the item. So that's really the insight we have when we talk about new retail. The whole consumer experience has been transformed because of the mobile phone. And we want the same customer to be able to walk into a store, buy something, take it away, and then the next week they're on the phone. They're sitting at home or their office and they don't want to go into the store, but then they can”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have good relationship with the government. And I think it's no different from a company in the United States where every company here has a government relations department or a regulatory department that deals with the day-to-day interaction with the government. Sometimes regulation may not be totally consistent with making profits, but that's fine because there are constraints, there should be constraints on making profits if you're destroying social value. So I think I don't see China being anything anywhere different from the United States.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we work for our customers. Jack Ma has always said if you have to rank our constituencies by priority, you start with our customers first, employee second, and shareholders third. It's because if you're pushed, right, you have to choose among the three. You always want to serve your customers. Otherwise, you wouldn't have a business. And then you need to have the talent, the employee resources to be able to enable you to serve those customers. If those first two things work out, then the shareholders will be taken care of. So we never think about ourselves as only serving our shareholders. We have a lot of constituencies. Government is important because they regulate us. They create the environment in which we operate. So we have to have”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In America that want to stop China from doing that. So that's kind of an unfathomable what we're wondering why that's the case. And I think Senator Warner is in that camp. They want to hold China back. I still don't understand it. I would disagree with his characterization of Chinese companies.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Over the last 30 years, China has been a manufacturing country, but it's focused on a lot of the manufacturing is low end apparels. We're assembling iPhones and making $20 per phone while Apple with all the IP and the technology makes $600 of profits on an iPhone, right? So there's a recognition by the government of China that we need to upgrade our technology, we need to upgrade our manufacturing sector, focus more on higher value add manufacturing, things like robotics, aeronautics, high-tech medical equipment, and that's part of the China 2025 manufacturing plan. There's nothing wrong with the country wanting to upgrade its own manufacturing sector, go higher tech, be more innovative. But then from the Chinese perspective, what we're seeing is there are a lot of people”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm sure in a lot of American companies there are Republicans. There are employees who belong to the Republican Party, right? So China happens to have a single party system. That's a difference in the political system, but there's nothing Communist Party per se is like a dirty word here. But in China, that's the form of government. What's happening right now is”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. We never make, I mean, I'm responsible for MA of our company, and I just want to reiterate, we will never make an investment or acquisition purely for EPS or IRR financial reasons. It's always with a very strong strategic lens that we look at these things.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we have not tried to do a big MA transaction in the United States. We're making investments. We're trying to partner with entrepreneurs here and invest in minority equity stakes in companies here. We're looking for innovative people. We're looking for people that are highly entrepreneurial. We're looking for people who want our help in expanding their markets into China.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More than 90% of the revenue is coming from China. So the trade flow is going from the US, if you're sitting in China, you're importing stuff into China from all over the world, including the United States. And that's always been our business model.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing is, four years ago when we went public, there was no trade war, there's not even a threat of trade war. And we talked about helping small business, helping American companies to sell them to China. So that's been very, very consistent. And that's very much driven by business. If you look at our mission to make it easy to do business anywhere implied in that mission is we want to help small businesses. That's how Alibaba was founded. We were founded as a marketplace for small businesses to actually, for Chinese companies to sell overseas. So that's pretty much very much in our DNA to help the small business. So the opportunity today is that there are a lot of consumers in China. We're basically a consumer-facing company over 500 million active consumers on our platform buying things. But most of those consumers...”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Consumers, and we're in the process of upgrading the economy so that the economy is going from export-driven to consumption driven. Your average consumer now cares about buying better food, healthier products, and things like that. So they're looking outside of China to bring in more imports. And that's a great, huge opportunity for the producers all around the world, including farmers, including small businesses in the United States, and that's what we're focused on.”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think we already got a little bit of a preview when Trump was on the campaign trail. He talked about being unpredictable. So we're seeing a lot of this on and again off again unpredictability a week ago they came out after the summit meeting to say that the trade war is on hold. But now there's tariffs on $15 billion of goods. I think we are in a way we kind of predicted the unpredictability. There's always going to be volatility, but what we're focused on is in the long term. And one thing that Alibaba's business here, what we're trying to do in the United States is to get small businesses and farmers to see how big of a market there is in China. China right now has over 300 million middle class”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, we're going to start with the really fun stuff, which is policy. Obviously, there's a ton in the news with this current administration and trade relations with China on again, off again trade war, most recent announcement around 25% tariffs proposed on $50 billion worth of goods coming out of China. There's still a lot that hasn't been decided, but you're watching this, and I'm sure you're thinking, or I'm thinking, how is this affect potentially affect your business globally? Can you give us a little insight into that?”
2018-07-21 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Alibaba exec Joe Tsai (Live at Code 2018) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT