Jack Ma
S.M. Byun
Godfather of China’s entrepreneurial spirit, Jack Ma is a hope of the young. He is the founder of Alibaba, the biggest e-commerce company in the world. Although Jack Ma faced hundreds of failure in his youth, he finally built up Alibaba with his clear vision, even spreading its influence globally. And further on, his vision goes beyond business, to the broad social betterment. As a businessman, Jack Ma was able to success and become ‘world’s most effective person, by his challenge spirit, clear vision.
Despite of the common thought that Jack Ma wouldn’t have faced failure a lot; he shows he had failed more than thirty times until he becomes the person as whom he is now. As a child, he said “I was not so good student.” who didn’t like to study math, but only fascinated by English (Ma). He failed a key primary school test two times, the middle school test three times, and the college entrance exam two times. Though he was rejected from several schools, he never stopped studying English. As China emerged from the trauma of Maoism and began to opening up to the world, he decided to “devote himself to learning the language” (Handley,). For nine years, he got up early every morning and rode his bike to the ‘Hangzhou Hotel’, working as a tour guide for free and befriending foreign tourists and in order to practice English. However, Porter Erisman, former Alibaba vice president, recalls, “The more than the language, Jack was learning about the culture.” (Erisman, 3). Through the conversation with many foreign visitors, Jack realized what he learned from the books in China was so different from what he was told by the foreign visitors. He started to think differently. However, this was not the end of his failure and hardships. After graduating from college, he applied to 30 different jobs and was subsequently rejected by all of them. “When I tried to be a policeman, I rejected. When I tried to be a KFC person, I rejected. When I tried to be a hotel waiter, I rejected. So, I got used to it. As entrepreneur, one of the qualities I have is that, when I’m rejected by the people, I get used to them.” (Ma). He was beset with failure and rejections, although his achievements were practically unbelievable, considering his meager and humble beginnings. Even after he started Alibaba, he suffered multiple failures. It wasn’t profitable the first three years. However, he never gave up, continued to challenge again and again. As Ma says, “If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure.” (Ma).
One of the reasons why he could be successful is his foresight. In 1995, he went to Seattle as an interpreter for a trade delegation. His friend showed him the Internet there are the first time. Erisman said, “The friend said: ‘Don’t worry, you’re not going to break it. Go ahead and touch it.’ And he started searching things on the internet and he realized the power it could have.” (Erisman). They searched the word beer on Yahoo and discovered that there was no data about China. Then, he realized the power of the Internet. He certainly thought this Internet would be greatly influence China. One step further, he understood the importance of the Internet in putting buyers and sellers together, and his obsession with helping small companies, via Taobao, Alibaba.com, a business-to-business(B2B) site for wholesalers. However, but in 1994 he started a translation business that took him to the US, where he was introduced to the internet. At the time, China’s state media were not allowed even to mention its existence. However his certain vision was to set up his own e-commerce company. He built up his own creative e-commerce company, different from already existing other a few companies. There were usually copied established business models to create “China’s Google”, “China’s Amazon” or “China’s Twitter”, but Ma started a new type of business, business-to-business ecommerce website (Allen). Alibaba Group is a Chinese e-commerce company that provides consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales service via web portals, Alibaba also provides e-payment services, shopping search engine and data centric cloud computing services.
Alibaba, it’s not a Chinese company anymore; Alibaba is spreading its influence globally. There is a short story how Jack Ma tried to make his company globally, making the name of it. Jack Ma tells during his interview, “I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name. Alibaba is easy to spell, and people everywhere associate that with “Open, Sesame,” the command that Ali Baba used to open doors to hidden treasures in One Thousand and One Nights” (Ma). He was sitting in a coffee shop at that time, so he asked a waitress whether she recognized the name, and she said yes. “Go Global” (Ma). It was his motto. In order to spread his company through the world, his most powerful reason how he could do that was by believing the equality and transparency. What Jack Ma does that is different from the other company leaders is that he focuses more on gender diversity, such as inclusion which is one of the world’s greatest challenge. Actually, Lillian Gregory, the ‘21st Century Leadership Models’ author, states, “47% of Alibaba’s employee population is made up of women. The top layers of his company also shows strong gender diversity results with women representing 33% of company’s managers while there are 24% women in the senior management, including CEO, CFO, and CPO (Gregory, 5).
As he told to his workers, it is important to challenge even there is lots of difficulties and hardships you faced. Also, the leader of the group should have a foresight that can see the world beyond the obstacles. He acclaims that if there is a vision you made, believe in your vision. Maybe people will reject your plans and vision, but never stop. He says, tomorrow will be dark, the day after tomorrow will be darker, but on the third day, there will be a shine. Throughout his life and how he did it, he is eligible to call ‘the godfather of China’s entrepreneurial spirit’.
Works Cited
Allen, Frederick E. “What Makes Alibaba’s Jack Ma a Great Innovator?” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 8 May 2014, www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2014/05/07/what-makes-jack-ma-a-great-innovator/#6fe5f3f82c71.
Anderlini, Jamil. “Person of the Year: Jack Ma.” Financial Times, Financial Times, 12 Dec. 2013, www.ft.com/content/308e46a8-6189-11e3-916e-00144feabdc0#axzz3139OjXpI.
Broadsight. “Jack Ma’s Secret of Success: No Money, No Technology and No Plan.” Medium, Medium, 26 Nov. 2014, medium.com/@BroadsightMagazine/jack-mas-secret-of-success-no-money-no-technology-and-no-plan-3fa61ef4a124.
Handley, Lucy. “Alibaba’s Jack Ma on e-Commerce in China, Globalization and Trump.” CNBC, CNBC, 3 Nov. 2017, www.cnbc.com/2017/11/01/alibabas-jack-ma-on-e-commerce-in-china-globalization-and-trump.html.
