What is your reason?
Read this Excerpt from an interview with Jack Ma of AliBaba
There were three
reasons why we survived. We had no money, we had no technology, and we had no
plan. Every dollar, we used very carefully. "Jack Ma"
Alibaba started as a B2B online portal in
1999 and now, It is one of the largest internet based company in the world.
Post Alibaba’s IPO launch this Thursday, It turned out to be the biggest
US IPO in the history. Just to give you an idea, Alibaba’s IPO is bigger
than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined.
Now the question is how does it all
happened? Well, It’s a lot of hard work, persistence and strong belief of that
one person who was behind the company in good times as well as in bad times. We
know him as the co-founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma.
The sole purpose of this post is to inspire
everyone. So, let’s just begin.
1. Jack began his career as an English teacher.
Jack Ma was an English teacher by profession
and knew very little about computers. He claims not to know much more about
computers than how to send and receive e-mail.
2. His First Salary was just 12-15 USD per month.
At the University where he taught English,
he was the only teacher assigned to 500 students. His pay was
100 to 120 Renminbi, which is around $12 to $15 per month. Before moving
on, he taught there for 5 years.
3. He used to guide tourists for free for 8 years and
that’s how he learned speaking English fluently.
When Jack was 12 years old, he grew a
strong desire to learn English. He’d guide tourists from foreign countries for
free and learn English by conversing with them. It went on like this for 8
years.
4. He was almost killed by an American Businessman in
1995.
In 1995, Jack traveled to the US for helping
one of the Chinese firm to recover their money from an American Businessman and
there he experienced the unexpected. Instead of returning the money, the
businessman threatened him by showing gun and locked him in his house for two
days. Jack came out of this situation by promising him that he’d start an
internet company in China in partnership with him. Although, he knew very
little about Internet at that time.
5. He took first step towards the internet by building
websites for Chinese Companies.
After the incident mentioned above Jack took
first step towards the internet world and he started building
websites for Chinese companies.
6. He raised initial round of funding
for Alibaba within 2 hours. It was $60,000.
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 $60,000 to start Alibaba.
After 6 months they raised second round of
funding from Goldman Sachs.
7. This is why Jack chose the name ‘Alibaba’.
Jack was always clear that he wanted to take
his company to the global level and that’s why he wanted 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.
8. Jack Ma is the first mainland Chinese entrepreneur
to appear on the cover of Forbes.
9. An interesting conversation between Jack Ma and his
wife Zhang Ying.
Zhang was one of the founding members of
Alibaba and this conversation was after a couple of years the company was
launched.
Zhang asked her husband how much money the
company had made, and Ma raised a single finger. “Ten million yuan (US$1.6
million)?” Zhang asked, and Ma said no. “A hundred million (US$16 million)?”
she asked, and Ma said no again. “One million (US$160,000),” Ma said to Zhang’s
disappointment, until he added, “a day.”
10. In an interview he mentioned the reason behind his
success. I bet you want to know this.
There were three reasons why we survived. We
had no money, we had no technology, and we had no plan. Every dollar, we used
very carefully.
***You have at least one of the three vital instruments he said they
lack in their time, which made things tedious then, technology.
Technology has come to stay and it is making life easier day by
day. Technology has made the world become a global village, shorten distances, improved
life issues, help in monitoring health matters, made burdens light, shift focus
from rigorous manual labor to machine efficient monitored production, simplified
and fast forwarded transactions (warehousing, stock keeping, trading, ecommerce,
financials, delivery and what have you) thereby enriching people. To buttress
my point you now have technology compacted and placed in your hand as a mobile
phone. Whichever specification or brand, you can do a lot with it.
Ask those who used Nokia 3310.
You can browse with your phone that is why you can read this unless
you are on PC. Why don’t you use your phone data and get paid instead of it
becoming a liability consuming your money and data subscriptions without a
return on investment.
I hope this post gets you thinking till the arrival of my next
email.
Think well and think fast.
What is your plan for the New Year?
Make it good.
Check your inbox for further beneficial emails from me.
To your success.
With a positive mindset of I CAN, you will surely succeed.
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