It’s become part of popular folklore among industry folks that Jack Ma came up with the name Alibaba while sitting in a San Francisco shop. In the popular Arabian Nights story that most children have grown up with, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is the story of a poor woodcutter who stumbles upon a secret password that unlocks a cave in the mountains with unending treasure. Ma’s Alibaba too has is a similar way unlocked the doors to the potential of small and middle business around the world.
As kids, we have grown up listening to stories of how hard work and determination always paid off, in the end, stories that left us in awe and a. The story of Jack Ma and the life of a man who took China’s internet market by storm and impacted the world economy is one such inspiring story.
Not so long ago in China, a little boy once firmly believed that everything was possible. Growing up was not easy for him, he had to face many disappointments and closed door, more than he could keep a count of. But he refused to cave in or give up. His failures only made him more resolute to succeed and to persist.
That little boy grew up to be none other than Jack Ma, the man who founded the biggest e-commerce site in China, Alibaba, and went on to become the richest man in China. In March 2016, this leading Chinese e-commerce company boasted of a net income of 71.46 billion Chinese Yuan. Jack Ma’s incredible story of earning $12 a month to becoming a multi-billionaire is nothing short of the ultimate rags to riches story which he has credited to nothing but hard work and no turn of luck. His mantra for success in his own words: “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.”
Like many legends before him, Jack Ma refused to be told no. And like his fictional idol, Forest Gump, he ran like hell towards his own finish line no matter the challenges thrown at him. From a very young age, Ma realised his failures and weaknesses, and learned to keep working on them until one day, they became his prize-points.
Jack Ma today is the founder of the ecommerce giant Alibaba and is a stakeholder at Alipay, it's sister company which is an e-payment portal. He is now officially the richest man in China with an estimated net worth of $25 Billion, on the back of the world record $150 Billion IPO filing of his company. Given all of this, Jack Ma only holds a 7.8 per cent stake in Alibaba and a 46 per cent stake in Alipay. Alibaba and Jack Ma, although are not household names out of China, it is little surprising that Alibaba is worth more than Facebook, and processes goods more than eBay and Amazon combined!
The Backstory Born Ma Yun aka Jack Ma, in China’s south-eastern Hangzhou, Jack had a humble beginning. Born to parents who were traditional musician-storytellers, the family didn’t even make enough to be considered sufficient with an elder brother and a younger sister.
Jack was barely eight years old when American President Richard Nixon visited Hangzhou in 1972 which soon had an impact on tourism in his hometown. This strangely even benefitted Jack who tried to make the most of such an opportunity and learned English. This paid off as he would spend his early mornings riding his bike to a nearby park and give foreign tourists English tours for free. This is how he acquired the very English name Jack as one of the foreign girls who found it hard to pronounce his Chinese name called him Jack.
After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in English, Jack worked as an English teacher at Hangzhou Dianzi University at only $12 a month.
In his early childhood, Jack Ma Failed in his Primary School examinations, not once, but twice! He Failed Thrice during his Middle School exams. When applying to universities after his High school, Jack failed the entrance exams thrice, before finally joining Hangzhou Normal University. He even applied and wrote to Harvard University ten times– and got rejected each time.
That was not all. During and after his Bachelor’s degree Jack tried and failed to get a job at many places. After spending three years to get into a University, Jack failed to land a job after applying to them 30 times! “When KFC came to China, 24 people went for the job. Twenty-three people were accepted. I was the only guy who wasn’t.” Jack Ma is on record talking about his early failures. He also one of the five applicants for a job in the Police force to be rejected after being told, “You’re no good.”
As an entrepreneur too, Jack failed in his first two ventures. But that was not to stop him from dreaming bigger.
On all his rejections in his early life, Jack has a very philosophical take: “Well, I think we have to get used to it. We’re not that good.” Overcoming the pain of rejections and treating rejections as another opportunity to learn and to grow is what Jack Ma learned early and never forgot.
Jack was never disheartened despite what life repeatedly served him. It was in 1995 during a trip to the US for a project related to the building of highways that Jack Ma ran into something that would soon define his life. He was introduced to computers and the Internet. Computers were very rare in China because of the high costs and people had not heard of Internet and e-mails. The first word that Jack searched on the net was Beer and results from many countries popped up but there was none from his country China. He then looked for China and not a single result showed up. It was then that he decided that it was time China and its people woke up to the marvel of the Internet.
He came back to China he managed to persuade 17 of his friends to invest and join him in his new e-commerce startup which he called Alibaba. He launched his company from his apartment. Having not a single penny from any outside investor, Alibaba went on to raise $20 million from SoftBank and another $5 million from Goldman Sachs in 1999. Building trust among the people of China that an online system of payment and package transfers is safe was the biggest challenge Jack Ma and Alibaba faced, a challenge that Jack will always cherish.
Jack was only 31 when he started Alibaba. He had never written a single line of coding or had ever sold anything to anyone. Yet he went on to run one of the biggest e-commerce networks in the world. The company grew rapidly as it found its footprint across the world, swiftly moving out of its China shell. Today Alibaba is only second to Walmart in terms of sales per year. Alibaba has become the e-commerce giant that Jack Ma had always dreamt it would be. The Jack Ma story is nothing short of a folk tale something like a modern version of the popular English fairytale Jack and the Beanstalk whose moral is that fortune always favours the bold.