How did Jack Ma become one of the most successful entrepreneurs of all time? What made him leave his job and set out on his own to launch an e-commerce company that would revolutionize the way we shop online? This blog post will answer those questions by detailing Jack Ma’s childhood, his time spent learning English, and how Alibaba came to be the success it is today. To get started, read on to learn more about Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s inspiring life story.
The road to e-commerce dominance was long and full of obstacles for Jack Ma. He started Alibaba as an out-of-the-box business idea, stuck it out through some extremely tough years, faced numerous challenges, and grew the company into an international force to be reckoned with that made him one of the richest men in China and beyond. Here’s how he did it, starting with his own Alibaba founder biography.
Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba, one of the largest e-commerce sites in the world. You may not know much about him or his company, so let’s dive into his background and see how he started this company to begin with and then grew it into one of the most valuable companies in the world.
This Alibaba biography will give you insight into how he turned this business from an idea into a worldwide phenomenon that has changed the way people do business all over the world.
Table of Contents
The Early Years
The Alibaba founder’s life began humbly enough. In 1964, he was born in Hangzhou and grew up under difficult circumstances—his mother struggled to raise him and his brother by herself after their father left them. Still, he excelled at school, consistently finishing first in his class. As a teenager, he got a job as a messenger for a local Chinese Communist Party newspaper because of his proficiency in English.
He eventually became a reporter himself, but soon decided that journalism wasn’t for him. He wanted to start his own business instead. So he did just that: He quit his job in 1994 and founded Alibaba with $60,000 from friends and family (he had initially tried to sell fake branded cigarettes online).
Alibaba quickly took off, and Ma realized early on that success would require more than simply being a good businessman. His company also needed strong relationships with customers—something Alibaba is known for today. To build those relationships, he frequently met with buyers face-to-face; in fact, Alibaba still requires its managers to spend time traveling around China meeting customers every year.
By 2001, Alibaba had grown into one of China’s largest Internet companies, it went public two years later and has since become one of Asia’s most valuable businesses. Today it’s worth about $200 billion more than Amazon or eBay and generates billions in revenue each year through its marketplace platform Taobao and other services like Alipay and Tmall.
Starting Small and Reaching Big
Jack Ma, Alibaba’s founder and executive chairman, started out in his bedroom. Literally. In his one-bedroom apartment in Hangzhou, China, he started Alibaba with a few friends. There was no room for desks or chairs—they literally sat on their beds—but it didn’t stop them from making a difference online in China.
From there, Alibaba took off like wildfire; today, it’s worth $248 billion. Even more impressive is that Alibaba has done all of that without ever taking outside investment. The company has never raised debt or equity financing to fund its operations (Alibaba is currently valued at $248 billion).
Instead, Alibaba has grown by reinvesting profits back into its business and buying back shares of stock when they trade at attractive prices. That kind of growth is almost unheard of these days, but Alibaba has been able to grow so quickly because it found a way to create value for customers and partners while also creating value for itself.
That’s what great businesses do. They don’t just chase after growth for growth’s sake—they figure out how to create value where none existed before. And Alibaba did just that when it created e-commerce platforms in China that were unlike anything else available at the time.
Trying New Things
While working for a small startup in China, Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, got his first big break by offering his boss what he could afford at that time: a $50 line of credit. He’d need to pay it back within three months if his business wasn’t going well.
Needless to say, Ma’s gamble worked and he continued taking risks throughout his career by branching out and starting Alibaba during one of China’s most economically volatile times—after studying English in college. But hey, there’s no better way to learn than by failing! Today, Alibaba is valued at over $200 billion (yes, with a b) and employs more than 20,000 people around the world.
The rest is history… but also future as Alibaba has recently announced its intention to expand into space exploration as well. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even have plans to sell off some real estate on Mars or something… right? I mean we all know Mars will be our next major settlement location once Earth becomes too polluted and overcrowded (it’s not like any other countries are clamoring for us).
Well, maybe not so much but who knows?! Only about 2% of people live on Mars today. What if that number doubled? That would still only be 4%. And then doubled again! That’s 8% of people living on Mars! Then 16%, 32%, 64%, 128%, 256%, 512%, 1024%… until finally half of everyone was living on Mars. It wouldn’t take long before everyone lived there permanently. Except for those who were born after half of everyone moved to Mars.
Those poor guys would never get to go to Mars because their parents decided to stay behind instead, and those kids would grow up thinking how amazing it must be to live in space because their parents talked about it all the time when they were growing up, but now that they’re adults themselves and think about moving there themselves, their parents tell them no because their own parents told them no when they asked them whether or not they could move somewhere else too.
Nurturing Success
Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who turned a failed venture into China’s largest e-commerce company in just over a decade, has some advice for startups on how to handle success: Don’t be arrogant. Stay focused. There will be new opportunities.
The 47-year-old entrepreneur is speaking from experience. Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which he co-founded and still leads as executive chairman, started out as a business-to-business marketplace connecting Chinese manufacturers with foreign buyers.
Now it operates online marketplaces that connect consumers to businesses around the world. It also owns payment service Alipay and cloud computing business AliCloud, among other units. The Hangzhou, China-based company went public in 2014 and its market value now tops $200 billion (roughly Rs. 13 lakh crores).
Ma recently spoke with Bloomberg News about his early days at Alibaba, his ambitions for future growth, and why he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Edited excerpts follow.
The following is a transcript of an interview conducted by Joe Weisenthal on Nov.
Keeping Up with Changing Times
Founded in 1999, Alibaba has become one of China’s most powerful companies. It had a market capitalization of $230 billion as of March 2015 and more than 300 million online buyers. Alibaba’s success is thanks to founder Jack Ma, who began his career as an English teacher and made his way into Chinese entrepreneurship by starting a translation company in Beijing.
He started Alibaba with 17 friends out of an Hangzhou apartment in 1999—but he’s been through plenty since then. From facing off against eBay to becoming China’s richest man, here are 10 ways that a tech pioneer turned his small business into one of the world’s most lucrative sites for buying and selling. Jack Ma was born on September 10, 1964, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.
His parents were school teachers; his father taught physics and math while his mother taught English. In 1987, after graduating from high school, Ma decided to attend college at China’s top institution for higher education: Peking University.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in English language studies and spent several years teaching English before moving to Shanghai. There, he founded Alibaba Group, which eventually became one of China’s largest e-commerce businesses.
Despite its immense popularity in China, Alibaba has struggled to expand outside its home country due to heavy competition from Amazon and eBay Inc., among others. But if there’s anything we’ve learned about Jack Ma so far it’s that nothing keeps him down for long!
Understanding One’s Own Limits
Whether or not you believe in destiny, it’s difficult to deny that Jack Ma had a knack for making smart business decisions and an innate sense of his own limits. During Alibaba’s early days, he made sure to partner with seasoned mentors who could help him grow.
If you aren’t sure whether your current passion is right for you, find someone who knows more about it than you do—you might be surprised by how quickly you learn when someone else teaches you. If your passion does turn out to be worthwhile, don’t be afraid to ask for help; it doesn’t mean you’re weak or incapable if someone can teach you something new. Acknowledging what you don’t know (and asking others to fill in those gaps) will make you stronger as a leader.
Reviewing Alibaba’s Past: It was easy for people around Jack Ma to forget that he wasn’t always at Alibaba—it seemed like he was there from day one. In reality, though, Alibaba began as a small startup helmed by young founders looking to shake up China’s retail industry.
The company took time to build momentum and didn’t truly come into its own until later on in its life cycle. If you have big plans for your business, remember that success doesn’t happen overnight; you need to be patient and trust your team members if you want things to go well. Alibaba is just one example of how taking it slow can pay off in spades down the road.
Reviewing Alibaba’s Present: When Jack Ma started Alibaba, he had no idea what would become of it or whether it would even succeed. He knew his idea could work but also understood that any number of things could go wrong along the way. As soon as Alibaba got off the ground, however, it became clear that his hunch was right—and all those years of preparation were worth it when everything finally came together.
