Alibaba IPO fuels startup boom to rival Silicon Valley

Last month, Alibaba Group Holding Ltd's Jack Ma invited 1,600 former employees to its home turf in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. The company's $25 billion initial public offering had made many of them wealthy and he urged them to start businesses that would be meaningful in the long term.

"He knew a lot of us got rich and wanted to tell us not to waste our money," said Sun Shuihua, who worked at Alibaba for a decade. "He told us to treat our wealth responsibly."

Sun, 36, has already started. She is spending 5 million yuan ($804,000) to set up an online retail business, becoming part of a generation of Alibaba workers who have made their fortunes and are now putting the money into startups.