Here’s a pretty cool seminal photo of Yahoo co-founder and former CEO Jerry Yang and Alibaba Group CEO Jack Ma, taken at one of their significant meetings in the U.S. in 2005.
When Jack Met Jerry (Photo)
Perhaps the most lucrative stroll of all time.
HYSTA
It happened during a long walk that the pair took at HYSTA’s executive summit in Pebble Beach, Calif. in early May of 2005, where they began discussions that eventually led to Yahoo’s $1 billion investment in the Chinese e-commerce company. HYSTA is the Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association, which focuses on networking and idea exchange between Chinese tech execs in Silicon Valley and mainland China.
After a disastrous attempt to do business in China on its own, a team of Yahoo execs — including Yang, Sue Decker, Toby Coppel, Dan Rosensweig, then-CEO Terry Semel and many others — made that investment in Alibaba in August of that year to buy a 40 percent stake, which has become perhaps the best deal that the Silicon Valley Internet giant ever made.
On Friday, of course, Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange in the biggest tech IPO of all time, raising close to $22 billion.
Yahoo grabbed a huge cash windfall in the transaction, selling half its stake, but still holds 16 percent of the company, which is worth many billions more.
Nice trade.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
