Ma
Yun was born near Shanghai, China. Short
and scrawny, Ma was teased about his size as a kid, but he was energetic and
fearless when it came to defending himself against bullies. There was no one he wouldn’t stand up to,
regardless of how much bigger they were.
When
Ma was still young, he decided that he wanted to learn English. Every day, he rode his bike to a hotel 45
minutes away in order to meet and converse with the foreign tourists staying
there. He was charming, offering to
guide them around the city for free so he could practice and improve his
English. He also bought a radio so he
could listen to English broadcasts.
Although
he took to learning another language easily, Ma wasn’t as strong in math. In fact, when he took China's college
entrance exam, his low scores on the math section caused him to fail the test
twice.
After
rigorously studying, Ma passed the test on the third try and became eligible
for college. He eventually graduated and
applied for a number of jobs and was rejected for all of them — including a
manager position at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Eventually, he was able to become an English teacher, due in part to his
fluency with the language. He was earning
about $12 a month.
Thanks
to a number of economic reforms in China, many of the country’s enterprising
citizens began experimenting with new businesses that brought their once closed-off
society into closer contact with the rest of the world. Ma became one such entrepreneur when he
started a translation company. This led
to his first visit to the USA, where a friend introduced him to a new
technology he had never seen: the Internet.
Ma’s
friend said that absolutely everything a person could think of was on the
Internet, so Ma tested out the claim by searching for a number of Chinese
products. He found none, and quickly
determined that there was almost nothing about China on the Internet. When he returned home, Ma decided to start
China Pages, the country’s first Internet company.
China
Pages wasn’t a success, but Ma learned a lot from the experience, and in no
time, he made another attempt. This
time, he gathered 17 of his friends into an apartment to create a company that
would let Chinese exporters post product listings that online buyers could
browse. Once their site was online, it
quickly started to attract members from around the world.
Ma
Yun, known to the rest of the world as Jack Ma, became the first Chinese
entrepreneur to appear on the cover of Forbes Magazine just two years after
founding Alibaba. But his biggest
challenge was still to come.
The
opening of the Chinese market to the rest of the world had caught the interest
of the leaders at eBay, the largest online shopping website in America. They decided to expand into China, first by
purchasing one of Alibaba’s competitors, then by opening their own Chinese eBay
site. Jack knew his company was under attack
and could lose many of their customers, so he decided to take action.
He
put together a small team to create a new site specifically to compete with
eBay and maintain Alibaba’s position as the leading Chinese Internet shopping destination. In talking about the coming battle between
the two companies, Jack said, “eBay is a shark in the ocean. We are a crocodile in China’s Yangtze
River. If we fight in the ocean, we will
lose. But if we fight in the river, we
will win." What he meant was, if his
company tried to do exactly what eBay did, the giant would certainly crush
them. But if he specifically tailored
his new site for Chinese users with flashy, fun, human touches, they might just
be able to triumph.
Jack’s
company went on the attack, using bold business model adjustments, hilarious
publicity campaigns and shrewd partnerships to win over both users and
investors, and, after a five-year struggle, Jack’s company emerged as the clear
winner when eBay shut down its Chinese site.
Jack
Ma went from being an unemployable college graduate to becoming a
globally-recognized entrepreneur and the richest man in China, with an
estimated net worth of over 29.7 billion dollars. And stunningly, he made his fortune creating
and operating an enormously successful internet business despite never actually
writing a single line of code himself.
This just goes to show that not knowing how you’re going to reach your dreams will never stop you, as long
as you’re focused on why you’re undoubtedly
going to succeed.
Until Next Week…
Live Your Dreams!
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