The richest Chinese man. Biography of Jack Ma. Jack Ma: success story Jack Ma founder

Perhaps now the most famous Chinese in the world, who has already left the now rarely filmed Jackie Chan far behind and is approaching Comrade Xi in terms of recognition. To finally gain a foothold in our consciousness, last year he starred in a kungfu film as a Tai Chi master. Jackie Ma created the world's largest e-commerce company with a market capitalization of approximately $231 billion. On September 8, 2018, he announced that he was retiring and would now focus on teaching and philanthropy.

early years

Ma Yun was born as Jackie Ma on October 15, 1964, into a poor family of musicians in Hangzhou in southeastern China. He has an older brother and a younger sister. He was not a very good student, failing several times in elementary and high school exams and college entrance exams.

Ma's childhood occurred at a time when the United States began to cooperate with China. In 1972, US President Richard Nixon visited his hometown. The country began to open up, many foreigners began to come, and the boy at the age of 12 decided to learn English. For the next eight years, Ma would ride his bicycle almost every day to the city's central hotel to offer his services as a free guide to foreign tourists. For him, the main goal was to practice English with native speakers. One of the tourists he befriended and called him Jackie Ma.

After graduating from school, he wanted to continue his education, because for a Chinese from a poor family this is the only way to arrange his destiny. He failed the college exams twice and only the third time, after hard preparation, he was able to pass the exams and enter the pedagogical university in his hometown, where he studied English.

First job

After graduating from the institute in 1988, Jackie Ma sent out his resume to 30 different companies that had vacancies and was rejected everywhere. At that time, he had not yet decided what he wanted to become, so he responded to all more or less suitable positions, even seriously considering the possibility of becoming a police officer. One of the jobs he applied for was an assistant manager position at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. Of the 24 candidates, 23 were accepted, and only Ma was rejected.

As a result, he got a job as a teacher at his native university, however, the salary turned out to be very small - 12-15 dollars a month. He turned out to be a talented teacher and loved his job. In many of his interviews, Jackie Ma said that someday he would return to teaching.

Introduction to the Internet

The year 1995 became significant in the biography of Jackie Ma - he became acquainted with the Internet during a trip to the United States as a translator serving a Chinese trade delegation. The first Yahoo search he made was the word "beer." He was very surprised that there was not a single Chinese manufacturer in the search results. Other attempts to find anything from China were also unsuccessful. And then Ma was determined to found an Internet company.

He was completely unfamiliar with either computers or programming, yet his wife and friends believed in him and raised start-up capital of $2,000. They started Chinese Yellow Pages, a website development company. He later recalled that he and his friends waited three hours for half the page to load. During this time we managed to drink, watch TV and play cards. But he was still proud because he proved that the Internet exists. Due to its extremely tight financial situation, the company's office was located in the apartment of its founder, Jack Ma. Three years later, the company’s turnover was already 5 million yuan (about 800 thousand dollars).

Opening of Alibaba

After working for a year at a government-owned company developing e-commerce in 1999, he left government service to go into business. 17 friends and just good acquaintances gathered in his apartment, whom he was able to convince to invest money in a new project of an online trading platform called Alibaba. The site made it possible for manufacturers and suppliers to post their offers of goods that those interested could buy directly. In total, it was necessary to raise 60 thousand dollars.

According to corporate history, Jack Ma came up with the name in a coffee shop in San Francisco. He used an analogy: in an Arabian fairy tale, a magic phrase helps open the way to treasure, so the company was supposed to become an entrance to the global market for small and medium-sized businesses.

First dollar earned

To develop the business it was necessary to attract financing. By October 1999, the company received venture investments of $5 million from the American bank Goldman Sachs and $20 million from the Japanese telecommunications company Softbank, which invests in high-tech projects. Jackie came to Softbank to ask for $5 million, but after 5 minutes of presentation, the owner of the Japanese company Masayoshi Son stopped him and said: “I’ll give you $20 million.”

The company continued to be unprofitable until it developed a system that allowed American customers to buy Chinese goods on the site. In 2002, Alibaba's profit was only one dollar. On the day the company made its first profit, Jackie distributed cans of streamer to all employees and threw a party.

A stunning success

In the early 2000s, after the success of the Taobao service, which managed to oust its American counterpart eBay from the Chinese market, and the subsequent rise in shares, Ma refused to sell this resource. He managed to negotiate with Jerry Yang, one of the founders of Yahoo, to invest in Alibaba in exchange for 40% of the company's shares. Yahoo earned $10 billion from the deal after its IPO.

Having achieved impressive success, Jackie Ma decided to remain in the company only as chairman of the board of directors, resigning as director in 2013. In 2014, Alibaba conducted its initial public offering, which became the largest in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. The company planned to raise $1 billion for a 13% stake, but collected $25 billion. On this occasion, a grand celebration was organized at the headquarters in Hangzhou

Personal life

He met his future wife Zhang Ying while he was studying at university. They got married in the late 80s, right after he graduated. For some time, the couple were engaged in teaching activities together. And when Jackie decided to go into business, his wife fully supported him. She says that she immediately appreciated her husband’s unbending character. Jackie Ma's success story has a significant contribution from Zhang Ying, who greatly motivated him to succeed.

The couple has two children - son Ma Yuankong and daughter Ma Yuanbao. The son is already studying at the University of California at Berkeley, where his father was a history student. Until 2002, his wife worked as a top manager at Alibaba, until Jackie Ma asked her to completely switch to raising children.

He loves to meditate and practice tai chi, and is always accompanied by a trainer when traveling. Ma reads a lot and writes stories about kung fu, and sometimes plays poker.

“I don’t understand anything about technology.” Jack Ma, with his $7 billion fortune, can afford to flaunt his flaws. He is a major player in China's technology industry, the Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos of the East. 15 years ago, Ma created the Alibaba marketplace, connecting China's small and medium-sized businesses with international buyers.

Alibaba's IPO could become one of the largest in the world over the past decade - the Chinese giant's valuation ranges from $140 to $200 billion. H&F selected seven facts that reveal the secrets of Jack Ma's success.

In a couple of days his fortune will grow to $10 billion

Despite his leadership status and the post of Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma owns only 7% of the company's shares. But this is enough to estimate his fortune at at least $10 billion after the IPO. The initial public offering will take place this week in the United States.

Last year, sales of Alibaba's B2B platform and online auction site Taobao totaled more than $170 billion, more than Amazon and eBay combined. Alibaba Group controls 80% of the Chinese e-commerce market, delivers almost 60% of trade parcels in the country and generates 2% of GDP.

Surprisingly, such dominance is not the limit for development. Only half of Chinese people have access to the Internet, and by 2020 the Chinese e-commerce market will surpass the markets of the United States, Britain, Germany, France and Japan combined. In the near future, Alibaba could become the first e-commerce company to handle $1 trillion in purchases annually (51% revenue growth last year alone). That's why investors value it on par with Amazon. However, Ma’s path to such an achievement can hardly be called simple.

He overcame a painful defeat

by Xinhua

Jack Ma is a self-made man who achieved success through perseverance: on the way to his position, he overcame more than one defeat. His childhood occurred during the Cultural Revolution in China; the family of the future entrepreneur suffered persecution, since his parents were musicians - persecuted by the intelligentsia. As a teenager, Ma regularly visited a hotel in provincial Hangzhou, where he made friends with tourists and learned English, which had fascinated him since childhood. After several unsuccessful attempts to obtain a higher education, Ma became an English teacher at a local university and worked for $12 a month for several years.

The trade and export boom in China in the early 1990s allowed him to launch his own translation agency. So in 1995, on work matters, he came to the United States and learned about the existence of the Internet. The novelty became Ma’s second hobby: upon returning to China, he founded China Pages, an analogue of the Yellow Pages.

The first Chinese Internet company turned out to be of no use to anyone - neither users nor the government, which the entrepreneur wanted to convince of the promise of the Internet - and soon closed. Ahead of his time, Ma had to return to government service, and for the next four years he worked at the Ministry of Overseas Trade and Economic Cooperation.

He came up with a global product

That all changed in 1999, when Ma had a chance meeting with the co-founder of Yahoo! Jerry Yang. Immediately after this, Ma founded Alibaba with 17 friends in his native Hangzhou. “Our brains are as good as American ones, so we dare to compete with them. If we are a good team and know what we want to do, then each of us will be able to defeat a dozen rivals,” in his first speech the entrepreneur clearly hinted at global business plans.

Instead of copying Western counterparts, Ma came up with his own business scheme: Alibaba was supposed to help small and medium-sized companies from China find buyers. It worked, and by the following summer, Ma had raised $25 million from investors and was the first Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of Forbes. True, the company will break even only in 2002.

He won in a hopeless situation

Asia Society flickr

Alibaba would not be where it is today without beating eBay in its home market. In 2003, the largest online auction site on the planet invested $150 million in the development of its Chinese business - by the end of the year, eBay dominated the market for transactions between ordinary users with a share of 85%. Just at this moment, Alibaba decided not to stop at companies and also launched its Taobao auction. “Ebay is a shark in the ocean, and Taobao is a crocodile in the Yangtze. If we fight in the ocean, we will lose; if we fight in the river, we will win,” Ma said before the start of the project. The entrepreneur used his own intuition and knowledge of the traditions and tastes of the local audience: the site provided a much more lively and personalized approach to e-commerce, and Taobao was to remain a free platform for sellers for three years.

This allowed us to gradually lure users from eBay to Taobao. In the turning point of 2005, the position of the sites became equal, and the American company was ready to invest in a competitor, but Ma preferred a different offer. He sold 40% of Alibaba to Yahoo! for a staggering $1 billion, and used the proceeds to further develop the business (in 2012, Alibaba will buy back some of the shares, but, despite all the innovations of Marissa Mayer, Yahoo!’s capitalization is still determined by its share in the Chinese company - it accounts for $37 billion of almost $40 billion). By the end of 2006, the Chinese David had defeated the American Goliath: eBay's share had fallen below 10% and the local branch was closed.

He's a startup guy

Jack Ma turns 50 this year, but what he does is more of a funky business than, say, Mark Zuckerberg's style. “The Internet is like a glass of beer: it tastes better if it’s foamy,” Ma likes to say. In his opinion, in the Internet business, bubbles should appear and burst all the time, which allow us to filter out high-quality and viable ideas. At the same time, Ma himself is not afraid to admit his own mistakes and incompetence.

“A big part of his success is that he behaves like a teacher,” Alibaba Vice President Joe Tsai said of his boss in an interview with Forbes. Ma pays constant attention to the development of his subordinates and is not afraid to hire people who are superior to him in some way: “Your subordinate should have better technical skills than you. If it's not, you hired the wrong person."

Ma believes that a businessman should be apolitical - the result of mixing politics and business is explosive

The Alibaba founder hates bureaucratic delays and equally criticizes Eastern and Western corporate culture. The first places too much emphasis on managers, the second on regulation and rules. The company now has 24,000 employees, and to avoid future difficulties with management, Ma took a radical step ahead of the long-awaited IPO. A year ago, he left the post of CEO of Alibaba, remaining on the board of directors, and divided the entire company into 25 departments that live according to the rules of a startup. Ma believes that all employees need to be involved in important decisions.

In addition, like Facebook, the company does not skimp on investments in new projects: last year, Alibaba paid almost $600 million for an 18% stake in the social network Weibo, and this month in the urban transportation startup Lyft. This strategy should ensure rapid development for Ma’s brainchild: in the home market, Alibaba is facing fierce competition with another Chinese technology giant, Tencent, whose assets include the super popular WeChat messenger.

He is the enemy of lazy people and self-centered people

World Economic Forum

Fun fact: Jack Ma's main motivator for a long time was his demanding wife Zhang Ying. Ma’s hard work and paradoxical modesty, even to the point of non-covetousness, seem to be perhaps the main qualities of the entrepreneur: thus, the first seventeen Alibaba employees, who were mainly students of Ma himself, received shares in the company, although they did not apply for it.

“Don't think about money; Don't worry about how to make money, Ma advises. - I constantly remind myself that we were born not to work, but to enjoy life. We are here to make the lives of others better.”

At the same time, the founder of Alibaba still believes that only business is important, and the main responsibility of a person should be the desire to be more responsible and hardworking than others. The capabilities of an individual are of secondary importance - the attitude and attitude to business are much more important: “30% of people will never trust you. So don't let your colleagues and employees work for you. Instead, let them work towards a common goal.”

Ma believes that a businessman should be apolitical - the result of mixing politics and business is explosive. Despite the sophisticated destruction of eBay's business in China, he did not view them as enemies: “Competition is like a game of chess. If you lose, you can start another round. A true businessman has no enemies.”

Ma's work credo is gentleness and love of work. “Today is harsh and painful, tomorrow will be even worse, but the day after tomorrow will be wonderful.”

He's actually going to change the world

After leaving the position of CEO, Ma did not leave management - the implementation of Alibaba’s global development strategy, divided into three stages, is in his hands. Until 2015, e-commerce will remain the core of the company's business. Over the next three years, Alibaba's priority will be the financial sector: the company already issues loans to small merchants, has its own payment system Alipay and, as an experiment, is going to create one of the first private banks in China.

These innovations are needed for the third step. By 2020, Alibaba's business should be based on cloud technologies and big data analysis - an area in which the Chinese company is still lagging behind. Jack Ma believes that combining efforts in three areas will radically change the very understanding of e-commerce, and therefore the life and consumer habits of all humanity.

However, when thinking about the global market, the entrepreneur does not forget about his homeland: with the help of the Internet, Ma is going to not only create new jobs and push economic development, but also make China a more open and transparent country.

A site observer studied the biography of Chinese entrepreneur Jack Ma, who had difficulty passing school and university exams, failed many interviews, but eventually created the Alibaba Group company and became one of the richest people in the world.

The Early Years of Jack Ma. University teacher

Ma Yun, later known as Jack Ma, was born in Hangzhou in 1964. His parents were modest musicians and, it would seem, the boy did not have much prospects. Sometimes there is information that the parents were also political dissidents, but this is not officially confirmed. Besides Ma, there were two more children in the family: his older brother and younger sister.

Already at an early age, Yun was purposeful and unlike other children. At the age of 12, the future entrepreneur decided that he needed to learn English well, and chose not the easiest, but extraordinary and effective way to do this. Every morning for eight years, Yun rode his bicycle to a hotel 40 minutes from his home to interact with foreigners. Weather and other circumstances did not affect his plans. At the same time, he listened to radio programs in English and did everything to quickly achieve his goal.

Having improved his English, Ma began giving free excursions to tourist groups. By the way, it was one of the tourists who called the guide Jack, and this name stuck with the entrepreneur for the rest of his life. Thanks to communication with foreigners, the young man gained a broader understanding of the world.

In 1979, 15-year-old Ma met an Australian family visiting China. He played Frisbee with the children for several days, and after they left, they began to correspond. In 1985, the Australians invited Ma to visit, and the trip changed his views. According to the entrepreneur, he was taught that China was the richest and happiest country, but once abroad, he realized that everything was not as he had imagined, and this changed his thinking.

Things weren't going well with the future entrepreneur's studies. Ma himself said that he passed the main test in elementary school only on the third try. It took him four tries to pass his high school exams. On top of that, Ma was not popular with his classmates: they constantly mocked him, and this ended in fights. Despite his small stature and fragile physique, the teenager could stand up for himself and defeated even seemingly superior opponents.

Upon entering the university, Ma Yun passed the mathematics exam with 1 out of 120 possible points, but this did not change his plans. The young man continued to try and, on the third try, finally enrolled to study as an English teacher. He graduated from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988. Ma himself says that this educational institution was considered the worst in his city. After completing his studies, he went to work at this university, for which he received about $12 a month. He enjoyed teaching and quickly became one of the best employees at the university.

Ma had long dreamed of creating his own business and even told his classmates that someday he would have breakfast in one country and dinner in another. In addition, soon after graduating from university, Ma got married, and his teaching salary was not enough to support his family.

In 1992, the future entrepreneur began to look for a better job. The attempts ended in much the same way as school exams: Ma went through all sorts of interviews, but was rejected everywhere. He was not hired even at KFC - and this despite the fact that the other 23 candidates passed the interview. In 2001, Jack Ma reported that he had been rejected from Harvard 10 times (at what point in his life he tried to get there is unclear).

In general, looking at the young entrepreneur, hardly anyone would believe that in front of him was a future billionaire and one of the richest people in Asia. Ma looked more like a loser without much prospects.

To provide for his family, Ma decided to create a small business in which he used his main skill - knowledge of the English language. He organized a translation agency and began to earn a little money.

Jack Ma's first business. Working for the government

Success began in 1995, and Jack’s knowledge of English helped him: he was included in the delegation of one of the Chinese companies that went to the United States. According to another version, it was an official government delegation on trade issues.

In any case, in the USA, Ma became acquainted with the Internet and realized how far China is from it. According to the most popular version, he typed the word “beer” into a search engine, but did not find any Chinese brands in the search results. The next attempt was the word “China”, but it was also unsuccessful. So Ma realized that there was simply no Chinese Internet and his country was still separated from the rest of the world. This was a great opportunity to change something, but Ma knew nothing about the Internet or programming.

According to the widespread version, Ma, having returned to his homeland, was so obsessed with the new idea that he gathered his friends and set out to show them what the Internet was. Loading one page took about three hours, but the goal was achieved: what Yun talked about so much turned out to be true.

Proving the existence of Ma’s Internet turned out to be much easier than starting an Internet business in his country. According to some sources, the creator of Alibaba Group conceived his first project while still in the USA. Borrowing the then astronomical sum of $2,000, he created the China Pages website, a directory that collected Chinese organizations.

There was nothing like this on the nascent Internet in China at that time, but the success of Ma’s first undertaking is assessed differently. Some sources note success, because the entrepreneur was able to repay the debt, and revenue reached $800 thousand. Others, on the contrary, are inclined to believe that the project developed slowly and did not bring much success.

It should be noted that in 1995, Elon Musk’s first project was launched - and these were the same “yellow pages”. But Musk worked in the USA, and therefore ultimately sold the company for $307 million and earned about $20 million.

Every time I prepare articles about successful people and entrepreneurs, I never cease to be amazed at how different people are and how everyone’s path to success is unique.

Many, I think, know the Internet resource Alibaba.com. But not many people know who is behind this Internet empire.

Meet - Jack Ma.

This entrepreneur became the richest man in China. And today we are talking about him.

How did Alibaba Jack Ma become the richest man in China?

Internet entrepreneur Jack Ma, an English teacher, founded his company Alibaba about 15 years ago in his tiny apartment in Hangzhou, China. Ma recently became one of the richest men in China, possibly in world history.

Jack's company's market capitalization is $ 231 000 000 000 , its retail and wholesale network is almost as valuable as Wal-Mart and already more than Amazon and eBay combined.

And this is just the beginning.

Alibaba plans to expand its presence in America and Europe. Alibaba already invested about $1 billion to businesses based in the USA.

Every aspiring entrepreneur and business leader must learn how a Chinese English teacher turned $ 60 000 into enormous wealth and the most valuable Internet company in the world, Alibaba.

This will undoubtedly be studied in business schools for generations to come.

He had a vision and he had to make it happen.

Ma saw the great promise of the Internet in bridging distances across vast China early on. So he and his wife recruited 17 more friends and joined forces, collecting $ 60 000 to start a company.

This formed the basis of the company's dynamic partnership structure and unique corporate culture designed to promote collaboration, reduce bureaucracy and encourage long-term growth.

Stand on the shoulders of giants, but learn from your mistakes.

Amazon, eBay And Alibaba are commercial Internet companies, but the similarities between these e-commerce giants end there.

Alibaba does not actually take inventory or sell products.

Alibaba is an intermediary who collects annual fees and commissions from large merchants and makes money from small merchants through its advertising.

This led the company to one of the most developing and profitable business models in the world.

What does the company name mean?

Less than you think. Apple. Facebook. Google. Microsoft. Starbucks. Whole Foods.

What could the word of these world brands originally mean?

What did they have in common?

Absolutely nothing. Some are simply made-up words, frequently occurring words or phrases. Even fruits.

Jack Ma is no exception.

He was sitting in a coffee shop one day San Francisco when he came up with the name of his project. The story of Ali Baba (from a fairy tale), who heard the secret password of the 40 thieves - "Open Sesame"— with the help of which I was able to unlock access to untold riches.

It was a response to his vision to unlock the potential of the Internet for China's SMEs.

Jack Ma realized his dream and became the owner of countless treasures.

How Jack Ma Injected a Crazy Management Style into His Information Empire

Information giant Alibaba and its leader Jack Ma have blended the best of Western and Chinese technology, culture and management to create the world's largest e-commerce company.

The company raised more than $20 billion in investment through an IPO in September 2014, giving Alibaba a market capitalization of $240 billion. This also made Jack Ma the richest person in China, one of the richest people in the world, with a net worth of more than $18 billion.

Jack Ma's 4 Management Styles

Below are Ma's four elements of management style, which entrepreneurs and small business owners can follow to build their empire.

1. Be like Forrest Gump.

Jack Ma warms to the naive innocence with which the character Forrest Gump approached life. Ma can spend hours watching this movie over and over again. Like his hero, Ma never allowed himself to give up, even when he was earning $15 a month as an English teacher.

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P.S. Quote from Jack Ma (about competitors)

A true entrepreneur has no enemies. Once you understand this, no one can stop you. Jack Ma

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