Jack Ma (real name – Ma Yun) was born on October 15, 1964, in Hangzhou in southeastern China. In addition to him, the family had two more children – an older brother and a younger sister. Their adolescence corresponded with the withdrawal of the PRC from the West. The parents were poor.
After US President Richard Nixon ministered to Guangzhou in 1972, Ma’s hometown enhanced a traveler mecca. As a teenager, Ma often went to the city’s central hotel early in the morning and offered free tours to tourists to learn English from them. The nickname “Jack” was given to him by one of those tourists with whom he became friends.
Without money and connections, Ma had only one plan to break out into people – to obtain an education. After school, he decided to go to college but doubly failed the exams. After active education, he was eventually capable of entering the Hangzhou Pedagogical Institute. He graduated in 1988 and started looking for a job.
Beginning of his career
English instructor and Internet entrepreneur Jack Ma established Alibaba 15 years ago in his small studio in Hanju, China. As a result, Ma became the richest man in China, behind only a couple of the world’s largest corporations in profit.
With a market capitalization of $ 231 billion, the online retailer is bigger than Amazon and eBay combined and is catching up with Wal-Mart. And this is just the beginning. Alibaba plans to expand in America and Europe and has already invested about $ 1 billion in an American group of companies that includes Uber, Lyft, ShopRunner, Fanatics, Tango, and Kabam.
We each have a lot to learn from Jack Ma, who turned a dream, a group of friends, and $ 60,000 into a fortune and the world’s most affordable commercial Internet company. His portrait will hang in all business schools in the world for several more generations.
Start here, continue anywhere
Realizing the importance of the English language, young Ma rides his bike to a nearby hotel and takes foreigners around town to learn and practice the language better. His pursuit of entrepreneurship is a lot like the story of another entrepreneur from Japan. Masayoshi Son, who grew up in poverty, followed his dream to Silicon Valley, graduated from the American University of Berkeley, and founded Softbank. As director of Softbank and Sprint, Son is presently the most affluent man in Japan.
He had a vision – and he performed it
Ma recognized the prospect of doing business over the Internet from China’s huge population. He and his wife gathered 17 friends and $ 60,000 to start a company. It became the basis for dynamic partnerships and a unique corporate culture, which prioritized collaboration. Jack Ma managed to minimize bureaucracy and achieve business transparency, which became the key to the company’s prosperity.
Evolve or stop
Perhaps when Alibaba was first founded, crowdfunding already existed. But Ma took a different path. He and his friends went through hell to first raise $ 5 million, then $ 20 million from Softbank in 2000, $ 1.6 billion from Silver Lake Partners and DST Global in 2011.
Big problems lead to big opportunities
The lack of office infrastructure in China has always been an insurmountable obstacle for small businesses. Alibaba solved this problem and ended up capturing 80% of online sales nationwide.
Innovation is created by unique people who think differently
Everyone is talking about the need to change the world and make tons of money on it. But those who do it are exceptional individuals with revolutionary ideas, an unconventional vision, and a desire to do a great job. Advanced technologies are created by people who step back from reality and make their way.
Follow the lead of the biggest leaders, but learn from their mistakes
Like Amazon and eBay, Alibaba is an Internet company, but that’s where the similarities end. Alibaba does not contain manufacturing resources and does not sell products. It is an intermediary that collects annual fees and commissions from large businesses and advertising fees from small ones. The result is the largest and most profitable business model on earth.
The title is not as valuable as you believe
Apple. Facebook. Google. Microsoft. Uber. One Kings Lane. Fanatics. Starbucks. Whole Foods. What do these names and brands have in common? Nothing. Many of them are acronyms or fictitious words. Others are common words and phrases. There is even a fruit among them! What your company does for customers is important, not your name or personal brand.
Jack Ma was sitting in a San Francisco cafe when he remembered the story of how Ali Baba overheard the secret password of forty robbers “open sim-sim” and found untold riches. It was like Ma’s finding potential opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses. Now you know how he fulfilled his wish.
