Chinaccelerator Speaker Series 2

Posted April 16, 2015

Chinaccelerator Speaker Series #2:

Porter Erisman former VP International at Alibaba Q&A and screening of his movie “Crocodile In The Yangtze”

Following the success of the first installment of the Chinaccelerator Speaker Series with Uber SVP Strategy David Plouffe. Chinaccelerator is happy to announce our second talk with Porter Erisman former VP International and a screening of his movie ‘Crocodile in the Yangtze’ followed by Q&A with Porter. From 6.30-9.30 on Tuesday April 21

Address : ShanghaiTech University. Ground floor, Zhong Ke Building, 319 Yueyang Rd., Xuhui District, Shanghai, 200031

Porter Erisman

Porter first landed in China in 1994 and, after a year of Chinese language study, fell into a six-month stint as host of China Through Foreigners’ Eyes, a travel program on China Central Television.

After studying for an MBA in the United States from 1996-1998, Porter returned to China and worked at Ogilvy & Mather in Beijing, overseeing an Internet marketing group as China’s Internet began to take off. Lured by the excitement of joining an Internet startup, Porter joined Alibaba.com in April 2000, just as the company moved out of a small apartment.

From 2000-2008, Porter worked as a Vice-President at Alibaba.com and Alibaba Group, at various times leading the company’s international website operations, international marketing and corporate affairs. In 2002, Porter took a year off from Alibaba to travel around-the-world, during which time he spent two months riding a bicycle across China retracing the southern route of the Long March.

Crocodile in the Yangtze

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. The film has traveled to 20 film festivals worldwide, winning “Best Documentary” at the San Francisco United Film Festival and “Best Film on Entrepreneurship” at the Silicon Valley Film Festival. Inc. Magazine calls Crocodile in the Yangtze “Gripping…emotional…the real-life version of The Social Network!” Business Insider calls the film “Thrilling…Entertaining…Incredible!”