Alibaba and Jack Ma

Alibaba and Jack Ma

Since Alibaba and Jack Ma are not known by many people outside of China, I did some research on Jack Ma and his monster Alibaba. Alibaba is the world’s largest e-commerce company in the world. It is called the greatest bazaar by Economist. Alibaba’s market capitalization is $206.01 billion, compared with $ 194.77 billion for Wal-Mart as Dec 25th 2015. It handles 80% of china’s online shopping market. The founder Jack Ma is the richest man in China and 18th richest man in the world with an estimate net worth of $29.7 billion. The interview with Charlie Rose revealed that his success story is very different.

Life was not always easy for him. His story is full of rejections. What impressed me most is his not giving up and his attitude toward rejection. He was not smart kid in school. He didn’t have much money to start with. He is not a handsome man. He was rejected ten times by Harvard University. He was rejected from 30 jobs. Jack said in another interview with President Clinton, “if I can be successful, eighty percent of people in the world can be successful.” Jack said that because he think he has no talent, nor does he have resources to start with. I think he is wrong. What makes him unique is his not giving up. How many people would continue applying after rejected by Harvard for nine times? He did not give up and learned from each rejection. He said himself in the interview, “if a young man complained a lot after getting rejected, he has no future. If a young man self-correct after each rejection, he has great future. “ His words reminded me what Rocky told his son in movie Rocky Balboa, “It is not about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. That’s how winner has done…” To become a great leader, we need to handle rejections and failures well. You have to be the luckiest guy in the world if you think you can be successful without experiencing failures. Success without experiencing failure will not last, because one does not know how to handle failure and remain success. We should learn from each failure and figure out how we can do better next time.

Jack also emphasized his passion about e-commerce and internet. Without passion, he would not be able to convince himself to continue when he was rejected by investors and people who thought he was crazy and his idea would not work. You can take a lot more punches when you are passionate about what you are doing. When companies hiring people, they tend to look for people who are really passionate about the job. Companies know you can be more productive and do better work if you are passionate about what you are doing. From my own experience, showing how much I am passionate about the work always helped me in my past job interviews.

In another speech, he mention his philosophy is customer comes first, employee second and investors come last. This also reflects on Alibaba’s culture: customer first. Jack told his employee to work to help people and help customers. In one business, Alibaba helped people to buy train ticket online. He did not charge government for this service because he said he did it for the customers. Another company who put customer fist is Zappos. Because of unique culture, Zappos are expending and growing. One of the main reasons that Amazon acquired Zappos is because of its unique culture. Culture matters to a business. It works as a social control system to guide and motivate employees.