When will life change with one or two small things. For example, this is the story below. In 1998, a wealthy American came to China on a trip when a young man went to receive him. The young Chinese tour guide later received a $1 billion investment from the American billionaire and successfully earned 100 billion yuan, becoming the richest man in China. This person is Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba. The rich American was the Chinese-American billionaire Jerry Yang, the founder of Yahoo.
In 1998, Yang was already a world-renowned Internet entrepreneur, and his Yahoo was already the world's third largest Internet company. At that time, Yahoo's market value soared, and Yang was known as the founder of the Internet 1.0 era.
Born in China, Mr. Yang followed his brother to the United States to study and became an American citizen. When Yang was studying at Stanford University, he founded the Yahoo website and received investment from Son Zhengyi, the richest man in Japan, which gradually developed into one of the most well-known websites in the world.
In 1998, Yang Washiyuan was already very famous in China and became an idol figure for many entrepreneurs. This year he decided to travel to Beijing for observation. At that time, Ma Yun started a business in Beijing and created a website for foreign trade and economic cooperation, but his career was not successful. At that time, Ma Yun's Yellow Pages in Hangzhou were merged by the Hangzhou Telecom Bureau, and he was bumping nails everywhere in Beijing, which can be said to be a complete loser.
However, because he worked for foreign trade and economic cooperation, Ma Yun got the opportunity to work as a tour guide for Yang Zhiyuan. Why choose Ma Yun, because there were not too many people who knew English in China at that time, and Ma Yun had also been to the United States and also knew the Internet, so Ma Yun was lucky enough to become this tour guide.
Strictly speaking, this reception work really changed Ma Yun's life. At that time, Ma Yun and Yang Zhiyuan went to many places together and climbed the Great Wall. In the process of contact, the two people shared a lot of ideas with each other. At that time, Ma Yun also regarded Yang Jerry as his idol. In fact, Ma Yun is 5 years older than Yang Zhiyuan.
Yang never imagined that after 6 years, he would hand over a $1 billion in cash to Ma Yun. In just a few days, Ma Yun and Yang Zhiyuan formed a friendship. Then the two of them went back to their own lives. Yang returned to the United States to continue to be his Internet boss, and Ma Yun continued to start a business in China.
In 1999, Ma Yun decided to leave Beijing and return to Hangzhou to continue his business. On the fifth day of the Lunar New Year of this year, Ma Yun returned to Hangzhou with a large group of people and founded Alibaba in Hangzhou's lakeside garden. Five years later, Alibaba has become one of the best e-commerce sites in China, but it faced many opponents at that time. In the B2B field, Alibaba and HC have been fighting, and in the C2C field, Ali and EBAY have also been competing.
Especially in the C2C space, Ali wants a free strategy to beat EBAY's fee model. Because there is no charge, Ma Yun must have sufficient ammunition for himself. At this time, Ma Yun and Yang Zhiyuan met again. Mr. Yang was holding $3 billion in cash at the time, and he was thinking about how to spend it.
Eventually, Ma persuaded Mr. Yang to inject $1 billion into Alibaba and inject all of Yahoo China's assets into Alibaba. Of course, Ma Yun is also very sincere, he sent 40% of alibaba shares.
Another point is that Ali and Yahoo are both companies invested by Son Zhengyi, Japan's richest man. In the end, Yang agreed to Ma's plan. Ma Yun relied on this money to defeat EBAY and became China's richest man all the way through the barriers. Of course, Ma Yun later earned a lot of money for Yang Jeryuan. Before the listing, Ma Yun paid a one-time payment of $7.6 billion to buy back a portion of Alibaba shares. Yahoo now also holds a 15 percent stake in Alibaba, worth $75 billion.
The meeting between Jack Ma and Jerry Yang in 1998, although it was an unintentional meeting, ultimately changed the development process of the Internet in China and the United States.