Alibaba
Alibaba
If anyone knows rejection it’s China’s wealthiest individual and role model for budding entrepreneurs Jack Ma – the Founder of ecommerce empire Alibaba. He allegedly failed repeatedly to land a job after university and his initial ventures failed.
So how did Ma manage to overcome these setbacks?
“Well, I think we have to get used to it. We’re not that good,” he says.
After his visit to the US in 1995 to work on a government project, Ma returned to China with a mission: to see Chinese citizens using the internet, as he had discovered the World Wide Web for the first time.
At the age of 31 Ma didn’t have any coding or sales experience and gaining trust from the Chinese to embrace online payments was initially a struggle, but what he did have were allies whom he persuaded to help fund and join him on his startup journey.
“In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us US$60,000 to start Alibaba,” he explains.
Referring to himself as a ‘blind man riding on the back of a blind tiger’, Ma decided not to follow someone else’s business model and to focus on quality products that customers could obtain at the click of a button.
However, while it’s easy to assume that Alibaba was always a success, there were many struggles along the way, one being that the company grew too fast and the other the question of how to make a profit from free memberships.
“When you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength,” Ma shares.
0 comments :
Post a Comment