Why did Alibaba's partner system subvert the previous company's equity distribution?

I believe everyone knows that when Ma Yun founded Alibaba in his early years, he was surrounded by Ali 18 arhats, who made great contributions to Ma Yun's entrepreneurial neutrality!

In 2009, Alibaba initiated the partnership system. Because the company was founded in the lakeside garden, the system is also known as the "lakeside garden partner system". The original intention is to change the simple employment mode between shareholders and management team in the past and break the hierarchical system of traditional management mode. In the words of Cai Chongxin, the former executive vice chairman of Alibaba Group, "The mechanism we finally decided is to replace the founder with a partner. In the vernacular, the company belongs to everyone, not the founder alone.

That is, this year, Ma Yun announced his retirement. Why did Ma Yun dare to choose to retire at this time? To put it bluntly, it is not because Alibaba's partner system has worked.

What is the Ali partner system?

Ali's partner status and shareholder status are not the same thing. Although Ali requires partners to hold certain shares in the company, partners must retire or quit their partners (except permanent partners) at the age of 60 when they leave Alibaba, which is different from maintaining shareholder status as long as they hold shares in the company.

The core of the partner system has nothing to do with the size of shares. Once the partners vote, you may have to give up your position in the company, that is, one person, one vote, one vote.

At that time, Alibaba decided to be a real partner system. To put it bluntly, the biggest sacrifice was the founder Ma Yun, who also became a vote.

By the way, Alibaba only has Jack Ma and Cai Chongxin as permanent partners, so I say Jack Ma has absolute rights in the end.