Jack Ma – biography, photo, personal life, news, net worth, Alibaba 2020

Early years and childhood

Ma Yun's biography is a journey from failure to great success. It begins in 1964 with his birth into a family of poor musicians.

Studying was difficult: tests at school and college exams had to be taken several times, but he did not enter Harvard. Thanks to his perseverance, he graduated from the Pedagogical University in 1988. This made it possible to get a teaching position with a meager salary of $12-15. He liked his work, so he was soon recognized as the best teacher at the university.

Attempts to get other positions constantly ended in failure. Other candidates who were interviewed at the same time were satisfied by employers, but he was constantly rejected. Jack later said that they did not like his appearance and short stature. His dream was to create his own business.

As a child, Ma set a goal for himself to learn to speak English. To achieve this, he made great efforts: he communicated with foreigners, listened to the radio, and worked as a guide for tourists visiting Hangzhou. They named him Jack to make it easier to address him. This name remained with him for the rest of his life. Communication with foreigners allowed me to broaden my horizons and learn more about other countries. Friendship with a family from Australia and a trip to visit them completely changed his thinking. Knowledge of English allowed him to start his first business - to open the Haibo translation agency.

Childhood and youth

Ma Yun was born in 1964 in Hangzhou into a family of poor musicians. Parents could not give their son start-up capital. And the guy appeared at the wrong time - during the Cultural Revolution, inspired by Mao Zedong. The party opposition and the intelligentsia fell under the steamroller of “revolutionary” repressions. In the case of Ma Yun's family, everyone was disgraced: his grandparents - members of the Nationalist Party - and his parents.

Businessman Jack Ma

After Richard Nixon's visit to Yun's hometown, Huangzhou became a tourist mecca. Ma saw this as a way to earn pocket money and learn English for free. The teenager went to the hotel early in the morning, where he offered foreigners free and mutually beneficial excursions. Tourists called Ma Yun “Jack” for ease of reference. The name “stuck”, and since then the Chinese has become Jack Ma.

But while success in learning English was evident, Jack’s studies did not work out. As the Chinese entrepreneur admitted to American journalist Charlie Rose, he failed tests twice in elementary school and three times in middle school. Twice Ma “fell asleep” in college exams, and when he graduated, he received refusals from all employers.

Jack Ma as a child

In 1988, after graduating from a local pedagogical university, Jack was hired as a teacher with a monthly salary of $12-15. But Jack did not lose heart: he applied for admission to Harvard University 10 times and was rejected the same number of times. Having received the 10th refusal, Jack said that the time would come when he would be invited to teach at Harvard.

In the early 1990s, Jack Ma went in search of a lucrative job, but knocked on all doors in vain. Even the KFC restaurant chain rejected Ma, and he was the only one out of 24 applicants who was not hired even as an assistant manager. Jack is sure that the management was intimidated by the applicant’s short stature and unpresentable appearance.

How Jack Ma built his career

To achieve his goal, Jack shows enviable persistence. His whole life determines the necessary rules for success in business. Ma surrounds himself with people who are just as driven as he is. When discussing issues, he chooses a solution that does not seem very clear. If everything is clear to the majority, then the niche will be occupied. He began his ascent to success with the first company he founded.

First business

It took 3 years to achieve a positive effect in the Haibo company. Currently, it is the largest translation company in Hangzhou.

While visiting the United States as part of a delegation in 1995, Jack saw the Internet for the first time. Then he learned that there was no information about China there. Advertising about Haibo allowed him to receive orders from other countries.

Returning home, Yun told his friends about the innovation he had seen in America. Soon he created the Yellow Pages website to post information about Chinese organizations. China Telecom tried to compete with it, but to no avail. After some time, negotiations took place about the possibility of their merger. Jack received fewer seats on the board of directors of the new company and left the merged organization.

Ma spent some time creating websites for the Chinese government.

Interesting from BBQcash: Jack met Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo!, with whom he later collaborated.

Creation of Alibaba

Leaving the government structure prompted the creation of Alibaba Group. The idea behind this idea was that Chinese goods are much cheaper than brands and can be sold online. To solve this project, investments are needed. Jack developed a business plan and went to Silicon Valley, but did not receive the necessary funds there.

Then Ma returned home and turned to his friends for help. He managed to raise money, and for this, each sponsor received a share in the new company. It was called Alibaba to help open up wealth to small firms.

The path to success was long. At first there were only losses. Receiving investments from some banks in the amount of $25,000,000 also did not help. The press showed interest and opened an office in the USA, but the result did not change. Then Ma took a new approach: he raised additional funds from sellers, held a roadshow, and connected sellers from China with buyers from the United States. This allowed 2002 to end without losses.

Interesting from BBQcash: in 2007, Alibaba Group was accused of profiting from animal products. To reassure the public, a ban on shark meat products was introduced.

Subsequently, Alibaba made major purchases and absorbed some organizations: Intime, Lianhua and Suning stores, part of Sun Art Retail. Made investments in other countries. In 2020, Alibaba invested in Rent the Runway, founded by female students. They suffered losses, but did not abandon their business. Now the website they created provides the opportunity to rent both evening wear and everyday items.

Creation of Taobao

Jack understood that e-business was a great way to make money. He created Taobao, a trading platform (an intermediary between consumers via the C2C system). Essentially, it's like an active eBay. They became competitors, but the new site gained its audience because... targeted Chinese consumers who were allowed to avoid paying commissions on transactions for a while. To fight Taobao, eBay prepared a response - it bought EachNet, which added a large market share (85%).

Jack didn’t stop either and launched the Alipay payment system. The government did not prevent this, although electronic payments were prohibited in China. This protected users' money and provided tools (messenger) to simplify contract negotiations.

Taobao won the competition in 2006. It is aimed at Chinese consumers and has been constantly improved, which has attracted new customers to it. eBay, a global presence, was preoccupied with internal problems. She offered to make a deal with Taobao, but this was not profitable for Ma, so he refused to merge. We entered into an agreement with Yahoo!, which allowed us to implement many projects and compete with other giants. Later it turned out that this decision was not the best - after a change in leadership, the union was broken. No commission was charged to users for another 3 years - this marked a victory over eBay.

Creation of new services

Ma does not rest on her successes. He created new services:

• Advertising Alimam: to provide support to companies.
• T-Mall (originally Taobao-Mall): selling products from famous brands (B2C). Companies that can provide the necessary documents are allowed. Large companies become participants: Adidas, Gap and Meizu. In 2020, there are already more than 70 thousand traders of various global brands.
• Alipay: an intermediary between sellers and buyers. Widely used in China.
• Aliexpress: selling Chinese goods to other countries. More than 20% of users are Russian.

In addition, Jack was involved in other areas:

• Placed shares on the New York stock exchange, which brought in $25 billion in investments.
• Expanded his audience by purchasing the South China Morning Post. There is no paid information in it.
• Participated in other media, acquiring shares in the monthly popular science magazine "Harvard Business Review", in Blog.Huxiu, in the online publication of CBN - China Business Network, etc.
• He created his own film company, Alibaba Pictures.
• He has written books that are published in large quantities and are in demand. Bestseller “Never Give Up. History of AliExpress."
• Gave lectures at universities. Speaking to students, he advised how to build a career. Videos of his reports were posted on Instagram.

Talented entrepreneur Jack Ma: interesting facts

The Alibaba Group founder's competitors and partners consider him crazy and a genius at the same time. Proof of this is interesting facts from his biography:

1. In order to encourage his employees to work and generate new ideas, Jack forced them to stand on their heads, inspiring him by example.
2. At a corporate party celebrating Alibaba's 10th anniversary, Ma performed in front of the crowd dressed as a punk rocker.
3. The billionaire is not known for his craving for luxury: the most expensive thing he purchased for himself was a personal plane, and only because of frequent flights. He doesn’t have expensive cars, yachts, or watches.
4. Ma is not well versed in computer technology or programming code; his only personal gadget, an iPhone, was given to him by his wife;
5. Jack Ma devotes his free time to meditation and Chinese taijiquan gymnastics.

As a punk rocker. Source: Posta Magazine website

Jack Ma is actively involved in charitable activities: he independently funds projects to protect the environment. In addition, 0.3% of Alibaba Group's profits are donated annually to protect sharks from finning.

"The world doesn't care what you say, it cares what you do"

Fighting competitors and scandals

Any successful business is not without struggle. The success of one leads to the collapse and failure of the other. Jack has rivals whose goal is to destroy him:

• Yahoo!: from allies at first becomes an active enemy.
• Many entrepreneurs: very tenacious - Robin Li (creator of Baidu). Jack's sites only use internal search engines and block others.
• Tencent, Baidu and Wanda Group: formed an alliance and invested heavily in creating a new platform to destroy Alibaba Group. Unsuccessfully.

The fight against opponents was active, but Ma noticed the innovations they used: the innovation of Tencent, the development of WeChat.

Successful companies always attract people who want to make money. In 2011, a scandal broke out with Alibaba Group. Company managers created fake companies to receive money from customers, but without supplying products. 2.3 thousand of them were created, and the damage caused amounted to $2,000,000. For a large company, this is not much; the most damage was done to the reputation. All those responsible were fired and even more than that. This is necessary to restore lost trust.

Quotes and advice

When you start a business, it means you give up a steady income, sick days, and annual bonuses.

If you don't know everything about your competitors, or you underestimate them, or you don't see them as a threat, then you will definitely lose.

Gather your team with a common goal. It is impossible to succeed if all that unites your team is you. If every employee works not for you, but for a common goal, you will be able to use the maximum potential of your colleagues.

Get yourself a replacement. Reduce your team’s dependence on you - instill in your subordinates the skills that you have, teach them what you know. Over time, you will be able to shift a significant part of your responsibilities to the team and move on to other projects.

Work with those whose professional skills are higher than yours. If you constantly have to give advice to experts, then you hired the wrong people. The employee should be much more qualified than you in his field.

Your attitude is more important than ability. Whether it is a difficult time or a favorable one, a leader must always remain calm, confident and purposeful.

Don't mix business and politics. Capital is a keg of gunpowder, and politics is a lit match. If you try to combine one with the other, the consequences will be quite predictable.

Work with those who suit you. When hiring an employee, pay attention not only to his qualifications. Professionalism and excellent characteristics of a specialist do not at all mean that you will work with him. Hire those with whom you feel comfortable, and you can train them into the specialists you need.

While devoting time to work, do not forget to enjoy life. Remember, your life is not all about work and more work, and then premature death from a heart attack at work. If you spend your whole life working, you will regret it, but it will be too late.

There is nothing worse than giving up your ambitions. By abandoning unfinished business, you are not only admitting defeat - you are abandoning yourself.

Views, quotes, thoughts

Ma, expressing his views on the future, says that:

• the basis of progress will not be production, but services;
• countries need to unite to solve problems;
• information technologies will be replaced by others based on a new philosophy;
• People, thanks to their feelings, have advantages over machines.

Jack invests his money in creating charitable foundations or takes part in existing ones:

• development of medicine, education;
• Protection of Nature;
• environmental conservation;
• programs to improve water and air.

Every success or failure brings its own lessons. Jack is always willing to share his knowledge and believes that it will be useful to others.

They turn into popular expressions and are widely circulated in the press. Here are some of Ma's findings and quotes:

• Working in the civil service: no need to mix business and politics. An attempt to combine them can lead to unpredictable consequences.
• Starting a Business: Starting a business comes with big challenges. There is no constant income of money, no sick leave, or any bonuses.
• Selection of employees: the company should be a team, and not consist of one person. All employees need to strive for success, fully use their knowledge to achieve maximum results.
• Luck in IPO: If the amount raised is not very large, then it can be satisfying. It is enough to have 1 million dollars. As soon as there is more, you need to constantly think about how to use it so as not to lose it. “When you get a billion, know that it’s not your money. This is the expressed trust of society.”
• Alibaba Group's Achieved Success: Founding a big business takes away privacy and creates difficulties. “So I decided that in my next life, if I get the chance, I will never take on a business like this. I want to be myself, I want to enjoy life.”
• Fighting competitors: you cannot help but think about them, consider them weaker than yourself, you must always monitor their successes. If you don't do this, you will definitely lose.
• Rest: You need to work and leave time to enjoy life. If you don't do this, you can die early. “If you spend your whole life working, you will regret it, but it will be too late.”
• Striving for success: you cannot give up your goal or quit what you have started. To retreat from it means to admit defeat, to betray yourself.

How to become a billionaire

Jack Ma was born on September 10, 1964 in Shenzhou County, adjacent to Hangzhou. His birth name was Ma Yun, but he would soon go by “Jack.” His parents were little-known musicians.

From time to time, information appears in the media that Ma Yun’s parents fell into disgrace, because it was the time of the so-called Cultural Revolution. However, there is no supporting information about this.

There were two more children in the family - an older brother and a younger sister.

Ma Yun was not the only child in the family

At the age of 12, Ma Yun became interested in the English language, but instead of poring over textbooks, he chose the path of practice. For several years in a row, the teenager went to the nearest hotel, where he communicated with tourists, gradually improving his skills in a non-native language. Later, he began conducting excursions for tourist groups, honing his knowledge.

It was then that the nickname “Jack” stuck to him. Foreigners generally often called the Chinese in their own way to make it easier to remember the name. Ma Yun did not resist this and later began to use a new name.

Education was not easy for Jack. He did poorly at school, retaking exams more than once. He did not particularly shine in the exact sciences. It is known that he entered the Hangzhou Pedagogical Institute only on the third try. And yet he really wanted to become an English teacher, so the guy went ahead. After graduating from college in 1988, he began looking for work. However, misfortune after misfortune awaited him here. No one wanted to employ Jack Ma; even the KFC fast food chain denied him a job.

Jack himself explained his own failures by his appearance, because by the standards of his native country he was a very unattractive person.

He finally managed to get a job teaching English at a local university. His earnings were no more than $15 a month. In 1995, Jack Ma attempted to create his own business related to the English language. He founded a translation agency, which slightly improved his financial situation. Also in 1995, Jack came to the USA for the first time. One version says that he was a member of one of the Chinese commercial delegations. According to another version, it was an official government delegation on trade issues.

It was in the States that the future billionaire became acquainted with the Internet. He was especially impressed by the ability to purchase goods online, which has already become the norm in the United States.

Jack couldn't forget what he saw. He was inspired by the idea of ​​​​creating an Internet business in his country, and later made a number of attempts in this direction. But due to pressure from monopolists in his field, he more than once had to give in to competitors.

After visiting the USA, Jack Ma realized that the future lies with the Internet

One of the projects was to create the first Chinese website, the Yellow Pages, where companies could post information about their activities. To do this, Jack and his friend even borrowed 2 thousand dollars.

However, the idea met resistance for the following reasons:

• Chinese entrepreneurs had little interest in the Internet;
• The Internet in China at that time worked poorly, that is, it was slow and intermittent.

There is information that in the late 1990s, even before the launch of Alibaba, the entrepreneur, together with his programmers, worked for the government: he developed and launched websites for them. From 1998 to 1999, Ma worked at the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation of the People's Republic of China. In 1999, four years after his first attempts to organize an Internet business, Jack Ma was able to find investors for his next idea. This project will be named Alibaba.

The name of the company did not appear just like that. It has a reference to Arabian fairy tales, namely to the character Alibaba, who is well known throughout the world. Alibaba is a positive hero, and the phrase “Sim-sim, open up” can be interpreted as a symbol of future wealth.

Jack Ma's brainchild, Alibaba, became the first truly successful project in his life.
The Alibaba trading platform allowed other businessmen to post goods on their resource, and buyers could purchase them directly.

By October 1999, the company received investments in the amount of:

• $5 million from Goldman Sachs;
• $20 million from SoftBank.

Alibaba employs more than 45 thousand people. Today it is estimated at $230 billion. However, Jack Ma and his team did not stop there. Over time, Alibaba began to work in other directions. This was the beginning of the Alibaba Group, whose main goal was to provide users with a comprehensive set of services within one platform.

As a result, the following resources appeared:

• Taobao.com is an online goods retail market in which any individuals and companies can participate;
• AliExpress.com - global online store;
• Alipay is an electronic payment platform;
• Alibaba Pictures is a film company;
• 1688.com - a platform for wholesale transactions;
• Alibaba Cloud-Computing - cloud storage;
• T-mail.com - sale of products from famous brands.

Alipay was created to make business easier, since before that there were no reliable payment systems in China. True, Jack Ma did not immediately receive approval from banking structures.

Jack Ma developed Alipay - a payment system for purchases

In 2003, the online auction Taobao launched. The project charged zero commission from sellers and became a direct competitor to eBay.

Taobao was a direct competitor to the American eBay

Five years later, eBay had to leave China altogether, because Taobao had conquered this segment. At first, eBay management offered to buy the business from Jack Ma, but the Chinese billionaire did not agree to this.

eBay is a shark in the ocean, and I am a crocodile in the Yangtze. I don't stand a chance in the ocean, but they don't stand a chance in the river.

Jack Ma

https://russiahousenews.info/outline-sketch/jack-ma-ebay-alibaba-taobao

Instead, Ma enlisted the help of Yahoo founder Jerry Yang. He invested $1 billion in Alibaba. In November 2012, Alibaba's revenue exceeded 1 trillion yuan.

Jack Ma is on friendly terms with Jerry Yang, founder of Yahoo

Paradoxically, Jack Ma associates Alibaba's success with three negative factors: lack of money, technology and action plan. He stated that limited resources made his team more effective, especially modest investments, because they had to be used extremely rationally. It is worth mentioning the AliExpress trading platform. It is popular all over the world (including in Russia).

AliExpress is one of the most famous trading platforms in the world

This is explained by the following factors:

• a huge selection of products of all kinds, from cheap jewelry and trinkets to expensive electronics;
• fairly low prices, which become even more tempting if there are coupons;
• a completely adequate buyer protection system (the seller will receive money only after the buyer confirms receipt of the goods of the declared quality).

The disadvantages are as follows:

• there are counterfeit or defective goods;
• coupons are gradually becoming less generous, and Alibaba Group is diligently increasing the account counter by giving coupons to those who have just registered;
• unpredictable delivery times (the record for the author of these lines is 9 days, the anti-record is 4 months);
• It is not possible to pay for purchases through the Paypal payment system.

In 2013, Jack Ma left his post as CEO, but remained chairman of the board of directors of Alibaba Group. He decided that he was no longer young enough to manage a fast-growing business. At that time he was 48 years old. Jack Ma plans to finally leave all positions in 2020.

Rules for success from Jack Ma

Interesting facts about the businessman:

• his idol is Forrest Gump (the next viewing of the film of the same name reminds Ma that one must always remain oneself);
• he tried ten times to enter Harvard, but in the end the entrepreneur abandoned the idea;
• Ma is a multifaceted personality (he is interested in martial arts and even musical performances).

Chinese billionaire practices martial arts

Thus, the annual celebration of the company's founding day is accompanied by various types of entertainment. In 2014, at an anniversary concert in honor of Alibaba’s fifteenth anniversary, the billionaire performed one of Elton John’s hits, while his head was adorned with a mohawk. This incident was not an isolated one; Jack Ma loves to surprise the public.

Character traits that led Jack Ma to success:

• perseverance (from childhood I invested all my strength in achieving what I wanted);
• a philosophical attitude towards refusals, which contributed to his “hardening”;
• self-confidence (did not expect help from others, relied only on oneself).

Below are a few statements from a businessman that demonstrate the degree of responsibility he feels during his activities.

If you have a million dollars, it's your money. When you reach twenty million, problems begin: you worry about inflation, you think about which securities to invest in, etc., it’s a complete headache. When you have a billion, know that it is not your money. This is the expressed trust of society.

Jack Ma

https://24smi.org

I don't have power like the president. And there is no personal life. So I decided that in my next life, if given the chance, I would never take up a business like this. I want to be myself, I want to enjoy life.

Jack Ma

https://24smi.org

Rules for success from Jack Ma:

• look not only forward, but also to the sides;
• have a clear idea of ​​the idea;
• work quickly;
• look beyond the circumstances;
• focus on your goal;
• be brave;
• unite the team around one goal;
• be replaceable for the benefit of the project;
• hire those who are better than you;
• Don't underestimate your competitors.

Jack Ma advises having a clear idea of ​​your project in order to achieve success in your chosen field.
Jack Ma's views on the future:

• the engine of progress will be the service industry, not manufacturing;
• one country is not able to solve all problems, so that the world does not become more cruel, it is important to work together and unite;
• there will be a change from IT (information) technologies to DT technologies ("big data" technologies): we are not talking about improving technology, but about a new, different philosophy;
• there is no point in being afraid of new technologies and machines, people have a competitive advantage: heart, soul and faith;
• Three indicators will be important for the world of the future: IQ - intelligence quotient for successful implementation;
• EQ - emotional intelligence quotient;
• LQ is the love quotient for understanding the world.

Video: Jack Ma - ideas that change the world

Personal life

He met his wife Ma while studying at the university. She bore him two children. His wife always supports him both when creating his first company and now. Jack is a loving father. When talking to children about school, he doesn't encourage them to become leaders, but he doesn't want to see them fall behind either. It's better to be in the middle. He is sure that a creative personality is formed if there is free time for this.

Jack has a passion for philanthropy and wants to retire at age 54. His dream is an activity that can help connect countries and communities that do not understand each other.

In 2020, he became a member of the Chinese Communist Party, where he was recommended for his services to the country.

Biography

early years

Born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China, into a family of musicians. At an early age, he decided to learn English and regularly rode his bicycle to a nearby hotel, where he spoke with foreigners. To improve his conversational skills, he acted as a free city guide for tourists[6].

Failed the college entrance exam twice. In 1988, he graduated from the Hangzhou Pedagogical Institute, where he studied English[7]. Later he was hired there as a teacher, earning $12-15 a month. In the early 1990s, he tried for a long time to get a job anywhere and subsequently noted that he could not get a job “even as an assistant manager at a restaurant in the Kentucky Fried Chicken chain.”[6]

Career

In 1995, he went as a translator as part of a trade delegation to Seattle, where one of his friends showed him the World Wide Web. Since trying to find anything about China through the Yahoo! showed that the necessary information was completely missing, Ma, who had previously been completely unfamiliar with computers, decided to open his own Internet company and, with the help of his wife and friend, collected the necessary starting capital of two thousand dollars[8]. Ma called the website company "Chinese Yellow Pages." He later recalled: “The day we connected to the Internet, I invited my friends over. We waited three hours for half the page to load. While waiting, we drank, watched TV, and played cards. But I was so proud. I proved (to my guests) that the Internet exists.”[9]. Due to the extremely tight financial situation, the company's office was located in Ma's apartment. Three years later, the company's revenue amounted to 5 million yuan (about 800 thousand dollars).

From 1998 to 1999, he headed the China International Electronic Commerce Center, which was one of the divisions of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. In 1999, he left the civil service and, with 17 friends, founded the Alibaba Group, conceived as a trading platform for small and medium-sized enterprises[10]. It took 60 thousand dollars to found the company[5]. The name was chosen due to its ease of pronunciation in any language and its common association with the tale of treasure[6].

Between October 1999 and January 2000, Alibaba received venture capital investments totaling $25 million, but continued to incur losses. The losing streak ended after the company developed a system to help Chinese exporters find customers in the United States. In 2002, the company's profit amounted to one dollar, after which it began to grow at a high rate[6].

In the period 2003-2005, he founded the companies Taobao (the Chinese equivalent of eBay), Alipay and Ali Mama. After the great success of Taobao (in 2006, eBay was forced to close its Chinese division due to unprofitability [11]) and the subsequent rise in Taobao shares, eBay offered Ma to buy this business from him, but he refused because he wanted to maintain control over the company. Instead, Ma enlisted the help of Yahoo founder Jerry Yang, who invested $1 billion in Alibaba. In November 2012, Alibaba's revenue exceeded 1 trillion yuan[12].

In 2013, he left the post of president of the company, but remained chairman of the board of directors[8].

In September 2014, it was announced that Alibaba was preparing to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange[13]. The company's official press release stated that it planned to raise $1 billion, but the actual investment significantly exceeded these expectations: Alibaba raised $25 billion, becoming the most successful IPO in history[14][15].

Views

He is an active fighter for nature conservation. In 2009, Alibaba banned the sale of shark fin products on all of its commercial platforms[16]. In 2010, after resigning as president of Alibaba, Ma became chairman of the China Conservation Council.[17] At the same time, Alibaba announced that Alibaba would contribute 0.3% of annual revenue to various environmental programs, in particular to programs to improve water and air quality[18].

Personal life

In the late 1980s, he married fellow student Zhang Wei. The marriage produced two children: son Ma Yuankong and daughter Ma Yuanbao[19].

Jack Ma's main achievements

Ma's business results have been noticed and he has received the following awards:

• noted at various times in the list of 10, 30, 50, 100 influential people;
• recognized as businessman of the year;
• received the Decade Award;
• awarded the Asian Philanthropy Hero Medal;
• featured on the cover of Forbes;
• recognized as China's largest philanthropist.

Alibaba's results can be considered an achievement:

• control over 80% of trade;
• payment for 60% of all purchases;
• development of 6 trading websites;
• owning a Weibo package (a Chinese hybrid of Facebook) with 156.5 million users.

The richest Chinese man

In 1999, Jack and his 17 friends decided to create a website that allowed product manufacturers to sell directly to wholesale and retail customers. Jack's decision to leave government service and reopen his business was called reckless. The salary was high, but the dream of creating his own business empire beckoned him.

Jack Ma created his own corporation Alibaba

As Jack himself says, he came up with the name for his business much earlier than his dreams took on real shape. Alibaba Group was supposed to become a platform for conducting trading activities, and the daring project was named after a fairy-tale cave with treasures, access to which was given only to those who were lucky enough to know the password.

A year later, $25 million was invested in the project, but Jack was not satisfied with the amount of profit. Some sources say that the initial profit of one of the most daring and successful business projects was only $1, which simply cannot be true, because if this were so, investors would hardly invest.

Jack Ma's 5 life-changing tips From 2003 to 2006, the businessman also developed Alibaba Group's subsidiaries - Alipay, Taobao and Ali Mama. The owners of eBay offered Jack fantastic sums to buy Taobao from him, which had literally collapsed the shares of their product, but he refused, and Yahoo creator Jerry Yang invested $1 billion in his enterprise.

At the end of 2006, eBay was forced to leave the Chinese market, and according to information published in the annual Forbes report, the fortune of the former English teacher was $30 billion. A few years later, Jack resigned as head of his company, while retaining the position of chairman of the board of directors.

Jack Ma regularly appears on the cover of Forbes

In 2014, Ma decided to list Alibaba Group shares on the New York Stock Exchange, which did not meet with the understanding of other board members, but the profit, which exceeded 25 billion instead of the planned one billion, marked an unconditional victory for Jack Ma and his daring ideas.

Career

Jack Ma dreamed of having his own business and created a translation agency. The project brought only losses for a long time, but Ma continued to develop it and, in the end, managed to achieve its first successes. Today his company is the largest company in the country providing translation services.

In the 1990s, the network boom began in China. The first Internet exchanges and sites providing various services began to appear. At the same time, Jack Ma visited America as a translator, where the global network was already quite developed. Having returned home, the aspiring businessman thought about creating an online directory containing information about the main Chinese companies and organizations. This is how the Internet page Chine Page appeared. At first the site was not very popular, but after a couple of years it began to generate good income. Jack Ma's projects have attracted interest from the Chinese government. In the late 1990s, he took a good post in the Ministry of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.

However, Ma wanted to create her own business, and not be part of a ready-made structure. His departure from the ministry was also facilitated by his acquaintance with the creator of Yahoo! — Jerry Yang. Ma increasingly thought about creating a global trading network that would make it possible to buy Chinese goods from anywhere in the world.

In 1999, Ma and 17 of his friends decided to create Alibaba, a trading platform for small and medium-sized Chinese manufacturers. The project turned out to be surprisingly successful. Very quickly, Jack Ma managed to raise $25 million in investments, and soon he was the first Chinese entrepreneur to appear on the cover of Forbes magazine. Within a few years, the new company completely ousted eBay from the local market.

Despite his overwhelming success, Jack Ma has repeatedly admitted that sometimes he misses the times when he was poor and when he did not have such responsibility on his shoulders. In 2013, Ma left his post as president of the company and became chairman of the board of directors. At the same time, he continues to generate new ideas and develop his business. For example, in the near future, under the auspices of Alibaba, Jack Ma plans to create one of the first commercial banks in China.

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