Jack Ma 1.0: A struggling teacher who wants to enter the tech world
Jack Ma's life story is a typical rags-to-riches saga that resonates with the public. Ma Yun, formerly known as Ma Yun, was born on September 10, 1964 in a poor family in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Since he was a child, his family was poor, his grades in school were not outstanding, and he failed the college entrance examination twice, and was admitted to Hangzhou Normal University the second time.
After graduating from university in 1988, Jack Ma began a long and arduous road to employment. He applied for dozens of jobs, all of which were rejected, including a job offer at KFC. He had to start his career as an English teacher, earning just $12 a month.
Despite repeated setbacks, Jack Ma has never wavered in his life path. He loves teaching and educating people and has gained valuable life lessons from it. Years later, at the Davos Forum in 2018, Jack Ma admitted that every problem he encountered as a child benefited him a lot. It was the experience of teaching and nurturing that developed his leadership skills to gather strength, identify and develop talent, delegate work, and set the direction for the team.
In 1994, Jack Ma began to engage in translation services. A year later, he traveled to the United States on a business trip to experience first-hand the enormous potential of the Internet, which led to the idea of promoting the Internet in China. In 1995, Jack Ma paid 7,000 yuan in advance, and together with his family and friends, he pooled 20,000 yuan to found one of China's earliest Internet companies, "Haibo Network", and launched the China Yellow Pages project.
Although the "China Yellow Pages" project ultimately failed, Ma did not give up. In 1999, he gathered 17 like-minded friends to launch Alibaba.com in Hangzhou, ushering in a new era of e-commerce in China. Alibaba.com was originally positioned to provide an online trading platform for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to list their products directly online and expand into domestic and foreign markets.
At that time, Jack Ma knew nothing about marketing and computers. But he humbly said at Davos that it was his years of teaching that taught him how to lead his team and set the direction that ultimately led to Alibaba's success. Jack Ma is more of a teacher than a manager in the traditional sense.
Jack Ma 2.0: A pioneer in opening a new era of e-commerce in China
The establishment of Alibaba opened a new life for Jack Ma. In the first few years, Jack Ma and his "18 Arhats" struggled forward, and were repeatedly questioned and ridiculed. It wasn't until 2003, when Alibaba launched Taobao for individual consumers, that China's e-commerce really ushered in the spring of development.
The emergence of Taobao has allowed Chinese consumers to experience the convenience of online shopping for the first time. With Taobao, consumers can find a wide variety of items online, and the prices are often cheaper than in physical stores. Taobao also provides a platform for countless small and medium-sized merchants to display and sell their goods, so that their business is no longer limited to offline.
In 2004, Jack Ma further improved Alibaba's ecosystem and founded Alipay, a party payment platform. The emergence of Alipay has effectively solved the security risks of capital flow in online transactions, and further improved consumers' shopping experience and confidence.
In this way, under the leadership of Jack Ma, Alibaba's ecosystem has become a leader in e-commerce in China and even the world. In 2014, Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange, becoming one of the world's largest online retailers. On the day of its listing, Alibaba's market capitalization once exceeded $230 billion, second only to Google and Amazon.
Jack Ma has said many times that Alibaba's success is not achieved overnight, but is built on the concept of "making it easy to do business in the world". He hopes that through the power of the Internet, everyone will have the opportunity to realize their dreams. This concept of "speaking up for the little people" is also an important reason why Jack Ma and Alibaba are widely recognized in China and even around the world.
Jack Ma 3.0: An "educator" who embarks on a new journey
In 2013, Jack Ma handed over the post of CEO of Alibaba to his successor, Lu Zhaoxi, as the full-time chairman of the board of directors. In the years that followed, Jack Ma began to gradually fade out of Alibaba's day-to-day operations and devote more energy to public welfare.
In September 2018, Jack Ma officially announced that he would step down as chairman of Alibaba's board of directors on September 10, 2019, handing over the company to the younger generation. In the following year or so, Jack Ma began to prepare for the "second half" of his life.
September 10, 2019, coincided with Jack Ma's 55th birthday and Alibaba's 20th anniversary. On the same day, Jack Ma officially stepped down as chairman of Alibaba's board of directors in Hangzhou and was replaced by Daniel Zhang. In his resignation speech, Jack Ma admitted that he would devote more energy to environmental protection and education in the future.
"In the past, Jack Ma's focus was on Ali and the business that is not difficult to do in the world, but in the future, he will care about air and water, as well as deserts and education. Sina Finance commented. Retiring without ending will be a true portrayal of Jack Ma after he stepped down.
Jack Ma's passion for education goes back a long way. As early as 2014, Jack Ma gave a speech in New York to lament the status quo of Chinese education "teaching children into machines". Over the years, Jack Ma has funded a large number of schools and students in poor areas through personal donations and the Ali Charity Foundation.
At the beginning of 2020, the Jack Ma Foundation donated a large amount of medical supplies to Hubei and other epidemic areas, and pledged to invest 1 billion yuan in the next five years to engage in scientific research and raise public awareness of epidemic prevention. This series of public welfare behaviors further highlights Jack Ma's "educator" side.
In 2022, Jack Ma rarely appears in public, and his whereabouts remain a mystery. It has been reported that he may be meditating and preparing for future public welfare. No matter what career Jack Ma pursues in the future, I believe that "benefiting the people" will be his ultimate goal.