- Leading expert on e-commerce and the Internet in China and emerging markets
- Former Vice-President at Alibaba Group (2000-2008) as the company grew from an apartment into the world’s largest e-commerce company
- Entrepreneur, e-commerce consultant and director of award-winning documentary film, Crocodile in the Yangtze: the Alibaba Story
- Leading expert on e-commerce and the Internet in China and emerging markets
- Former Vice-President at Alibaba Group (2000-2008) as the company grew from an apartment into the world’s largest e-commerce company
- Entrepreneur, e-commerce consultant and director of award-winning documentary film, Crocodile in the Yangtze: the Alibaba Story
Porter ERISMAN is an entrepreneur, e-commerce consultant and award-winning filmmaker with more than 20 years of experience in China.
From 2000-2008, Erisman served as Vice-President at Alibaba Group as the company grew from founder Jack Ma’s apartment into the world’s largest e-commerce company. Based in China, Erisman at various times headed Alibaba’s international marketing, website operations and corporate affairs.
After leaving Alibaba, Erisman produced and directed Crocodile in the Yangtze, an independent documentary film about his experience inside the company. The film screened at twenty film festivals worldwide garnering several awards including “Best Documentary” at the San Francisco United Film Festival and “Best Film on Entrepreneurship” at the Silicon Valley Film Festival. From 2012 to 2014, Erisman traveled with the film to sixty screenings on six continents before selling the film to Bloomberg Television, which broadcast Crocodile in the Yangtze throughout the fall of 2014.
Erisman has spoken at conferences around the world and has been featured in leading media including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Bloomberg, NPR and the BBC. He is also the author of Alibaba’s World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company is Changing the Face of Global Business (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
Since leaving Alibaba, Erisman has remained involved in startups in developing countries by consulting to e-commerce companies in India, Nigeria, China and Vietnam.
Erisman received a B.A. in Political Science from Stanford University and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He speaks Mandarin Chinese, which he studied from 1994-1995 at the Beijing Language University.
In his speech, Porter gave us a great insight into the e-commerce boom in emerging markets, the future of e-commerce and how we as a company can take advantage of it. He also gave us a great overview of the fast development of Alibaba and how to do successful business with similar companies in these markets. The speech was engaging, the content was really relevant to our company and we received excellent feedback from our attendees who are now feeling motivated to go into the next year!”