Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, shares ten principles from his path to billions: perseverance through repeated rejections, building culture over technology, and prioritizing customers first, employees second, shareholders third. Alipay now serves 800 million users. He learned communication from movies like Forrest Gump and The Godfather, and finds opportunities in complaints.
He started his business with $20,000 that his wife and his friend helped him raise. He's the first mainline China entrepreneur to be featured on the COVID of Forbes magazine. He's the richest man in China and the 18th richest man in the world with an estimated fortune of $29.7 billion. He's Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba.com, and here are his 10 rules for success.
When I graduate from universities and before I, you know, for 3 years I tried to fill in the universities. So I applied jobs for 30 times, got rejected. I went for a police, they said, "No, you're not good." I went to even the KFC. When KFC come to China, come to my city, 24 people went for the job. 23 people accepted. I was the only one guy. And we went for police, 5 people, 4 of them accepted. I was the only guy that I received it. So to me, being turned down, rejected— oh, by the way, I told you that I would— I applied for Harvard for 10 times rejected. I know if you reject, I just want to say that. Sorry now. 10 times you wrote them and said, I'd like to come to Harvard. Yeah. And then I told myself, someday I should go teach there, maybe. We have a secret code for Alibaba's success. Just like "Open Sesame" is the secret code for Alibaba, the secret code for everybody is keep your dream alive because it might come true someday. This is what the secret code is. What do you think your core competence is? I would call it culture. It's not the technology. I think technology is a tool. The core competence of our companies, we have 20,000. We grow from 18 people to now 20,000 young people. And we focus a lot on the value and the mission and making sure the culture, everybody work for helping others instead of just making money. People don't like it. So many people I talked to at that time for Alipay, they say, this is the stupidest idea you have ever got. But I say, I don't wear the stupid glove as long as people use it. Now we have 800 million people using this Alipay. I learned a lot of things from, from movies. I learned how to make a speech from the movie called Bodyguard, Whitney Houston. When she sings the songs, I look at her, wow, that's the way that you make a speech, because I never know how to make speech, because I'm not actor. But when I saw the movie, I say, wow, if you sing from your heart, if you sing naturally, if you are yourself. So I realize, and I learn a lot from the movies, you know, even learn from the Godfathers. I learn my favorite movie is Forrest Gump, you know, these These are the things I learned so much. Then I would discuss about the, the muse, the inspirations we got from movies. What kinds of business ideas have you said no to? I'm saying no to a lot of ideas because as a CEO, I have to say no to opportunities. Because if I say yes, I probably get 5,000 opportunities every day. But whether yes or no, everything based on the mission that we're helping doing business easier. If it's on that, we'll consider. If somebody come and say, can you— we will, you know, have this deal, we'll make a lot of money, I'm not interested. Why did you call it Alibaba? Alibaba? Well, when I started, I think internet is global, we should have a global name and a name that, um, interesting. Like at that time, the best name is Yahoo, right? I think I can— so I've been thinking for many days, suddenly Alibaba is a good name. So I I was happened to be in San Francisco that day. I have a lunch and the waitress come. I ask her, do you know about Alibaba? She say yes. I say, what is Alibaba? She said, open sesame. Good. So I went on the street, ask about 10, 20 people. They all know about Alibaba, 40 thieves and open sesame. And I think this is a good name. And start with A, whatever you talk about, Alibaba is always top. We believe the co-founder different from Wall Street. We believe customer number one, employee number two, shareholder number three. Customer one, employee two, shareholder three. Yeah, we again, this is my religion. You know, if you— it's the customer that pays us the money. It's the employees that drive the innovation. It's the shareholder. And the shareholder always say, you know, I remember the day before we IPO and a lot of people say, Jack, can you give us the shares? We were long-term shareholders. But when the crisis came, These guys run as soon as— they ran away. My people stayed, customs stayed. And I told him, I want to tell young people, when most people complain, where is the opportunity is? People start to complain, some people complain, some start— people start to change themselves, change others. Where the opportunity is, is where the complaints are. Where the trouble, where is the opportunity. And I will speak to you then.
Thank you guys for watching. The question of the day for you is, I want to know what kind of rejection you've had to overcome in your life and in your business. If you've had to overcome a lot of rejection, you have a special story to share, I'd love to hear from you if you want to leave a comment below. I made this video on Jack Ma because Jeff Liang asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile, profile, leave a comment, let me know what you think, and I'll see what I can do. And of course, if you like this video and you want to see more, don't forget to subscribe to the newsletter and the channel. Thank you for watching. Continue to believe. Have an amazing day, and I hope you'll start your day again with me tomorrow with another inspirational video.
