NEW YORK—Jack Ma is a funny guy. He again demonstrated this in an entertaining speech at the Economic Club of New York on June 9, 2015.
He shared anecdotes about how difficult it was starting the business, how he thinks about his wealth and income inequality, Chinese traditional culture as well as Alibaba’s plans for future expansion, including America.
Here are selected topics with his abridged remarks. We encourage readers to also read up on some of the controversy surrounding his claims in the links and as part of the suggested reading.
Alibaba’s Difficult Beginnings
Twenty years ago I came to America—my first trip to America was to Seattle. I learnt so much about America. Books, teachers, parents. I think I know enough about America.
America is not what I learnt from the books. In Seattle I found the Internet. I came back and said I am going to open a company called ‘Internet.’
My friends said: ‘Forget about it. Don’t do it.’ One person said: ‘I trust you, go ahead and try it.’ I was 30 years old. I started my business without knowing anything about the computer business—my wife and I, and a schoolmate. We had $1000 to start the business.
It was so difficult. I survived until today. For the first three years life was really bad. I tried to borrow $3,000 from a bank. I had to borrow it from friends.
[My friends said] Jack is telling a lie because there is no such network called Internet in 1996. Later in 1996, China was connected to the Internet.
I invited 10 friends to my apartment, I am not telling a lie: there’s a network. It took 3.5 hours to download the first picture. ‘Yes it worked, but not today, in 10 years it will work.’ It proved I was not telling a lie.
We tried getting small business to sell online. Nobody wanted to sell because nobody can buy.
So at first we buy everything they sell, in order to tell people that it works. It was not easy from 1995 to 1999. We failed. Nothing was ready. In 1999 I invited 18 friends to my apartment; we try to do it again. We founded Alibaba.com. We believe the Internet is a treasure island for small businesses.
