MBA Connect Story: Dare to Dream Big
Morden Chen (Full-time, Class of 2008)
General Manager, Mobile Monetization, UC Ads,
Alibaba Group
Today in Hong Kong, tomorrow in Beijing, the day after returning to Singapore where he is based before going on to Indonesia, Morden Chen is hard to catch these days. Having started his new job with Alibaba Group three months ago, he is busy fulfilling his dream of working for one of the largest tech companies and covering huge potential markets as the company goes international.
One of the secrets of his success lies in the fact that he chose his goal early and has kept his eyes on the prize all this time. “During my university studies, I already felt that the Internet could change lives and took some relevant courses,” says Morden, who started out as a foreign languages and literature graduate and today he is Alibaba Group’s General Manager, Mobile Monetization, UC Ads.
His first major job was Senior Product Manager of PChome Skype at Taiwan’s PChome Online, which was just launching Skype in the local market. His responsibility was expanding the number of Skype users. “I could see that the overall market in this industry was not big enough in Taiwan, and if I wanted to achieve my dream, China was the right place for me,” Morden says.
As so many students before him, he saw doing a Hong Kong MBA as a good introduction to exploring the China market. Clearly acknowledging his outstanding talent and valuable experiences, he received five offers, three from Hong Kong and two from Mainland China. After thorough consideration, he chose CUHK MBA, as it offered a strong program in marketing, has the longest history in Hong Kong and a large body of alumni as well as a mentorship program. He was further enticed by a scholarship.
He started his MBA in 2006 focusing on marketing, supplemented with China business and finance subjects, which all aimed at supporting his product marketing role in his future career. His biggest success was winning the Booz Allen Hamilton Social Venture Challenge with a team of three other master’s degree students of the university. He was the only MBA student in the team and therefore the most acquainted with drawing up business plans, working out logistics, costs and marketing for a social venture that was not only a social project but also a profit-making plan.
They made a business proposal to leverage the availability of non-working mothers during the morning to prepare great breakfasts to office workers and deliver them in Hong Kong’s business districts, such as Central and Tsim Sha Tsui. They intended to solve two problems: the health issue of office workers who may not have breakfast or just have sweet buns, and work opportunity and income for stay-home mothers.
“It was a very interesting competition. Some venture capitalists found me afterwards, and expressed interest in investing, but unfortunately every member of the team had got job offers in different cities,” he says.
Morden took on the role of President of the MBA Student Association, which provided him with a unique leadership experience. “I learned a lot about how to manage people without having any authority, such as a job title or support from a boss,” he says half-jokingly.
His exchange program also widened his skills with an amazing experience. He went to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), The Anderson School of Management, which is one of very few places teaching entertainment marketing.
“It teaches how to do forecasting for box-office success of a film. They have a formula to see what the box office will be like by putting different actors together. You pick some actors, put the data into the computer and see the expected box-office result,” he says.
He suggests that students participating in exchange programs should not only understand the culture and make friends, but take every opportunity to learn more about careers in the countries and how to get a job.
CUHK MBA’s support for students is constantly evolving with every new experience, according to Morden. “You will learn how to pitch and use the right tone and vocabulary at a presentation. The MBA is like a catalyst for developing creativity and innovation. You learn from your classmates. We had 18 nationalities and shared insights specific to our countries and our jobs.”
While doing his MBA, he also took on part-time jobs with Hewlett-Packard (HP) Company and Wharf T&T Limited (now known as WTT HK Limited) doing research on market-entry strategies. Working for the latter showed him that it was not easy for long-established companies to change from the old ways of approaching business to an entrepreneurial mind-set and adopt new concepts.
Upon graduation, he worked with an array of technology “greats” before getting his prized position with Alibaba. His career took him to Beijing, as originally planned. After a summer internship at Google, where he conducted market research for a market-entry plan for Google Taiwan and Hong Kong, and he joined Microsoft for three years as Product Marketing Manager, Office Unmanaged. As Senior Manager of Baidu, he led a team to drive Baidu’s marketing activities of its consumer products and web services.
He spent two years with Miaozhen Systems as Director of Product Marketing, focusing on ad tracking, ad serving and ad exchange, and three years with Cheetah Mobile, which has 634 million monthly active users. As General Manager, Worldwide Ad Sales, traveling among Beijing, Singapore and Taipei, he was overseeing a team of more than 50 staff, which he grew from scratch, and eight offices worldwide.
Alibaba’s UC Ads now covers about 450 million active users through their UC browser, 100 million through UC news and 250 million through nine apps and grows the business by first targeting Southeast Asia and the emerging markets.
“I am leading the whole Alibaba mobile internet group’s overseas monetization. Advertising internationally is new to them. At Cheetah Mobile I established this business,” Morden explains. “Advertising business monetization in the APAC is my interest, lots of cool things are happening in the emerging markets. The role and the business they want to run attract me. I’m very happy.”