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Why you should read Jack Ma’s Interview

For many Chinese entrepreneurs, Jack Ma is a hero. A former school teacher, Jack is the founder and CEO of the Alibaba Group, China’s premier e-commerce player. The company controls Yahoo China and Taobao, the country’s top consumer Web site. The flagship of the group is Alibaba.com, a business-to-business service that connects small and midsized importers and exporters all over the world. Alibaba is in 240 countries and territories with more than 40 million registered users, the world’s largest b2b marketplace. According to BusinessWeek, Jack is named as one of The 25 Most Influential People on the Web and was also named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet.

I feel this interview is of the utmost importance to every young entrepreneur out there.  It’s not about the type of marketing that Jack did to promote his company or the technology that Jack used.  Rather, his success comes down to a very critical components of a company: the company culture base on six core values!

Throughout this interview, you’ll notice Jack stress the importance of the six core values. He also mentions that entrepreneurs should believe in their dream and believe in themselves. Success and profitability are outcomes of focusing on customers and employees, not objectives. Don’t afraid of making mistakes, learn from mistake and improve ourselves every year!  And customer first is the key to succeed!

Jack walks the walk, and reading this interview will take you one step closer to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Question to Jack Ma: How old were you when you started your first company? Where did you get the funding to start it? Was it successful?

I was 30 when I started my first company, China Pages, in 1995, with $2,000 (USD) that I had borrowed from family and friends. China Pages was an online directory service which made home pages for Chinese companies, and it was probably the first Internet company in China.

The business was not very successful because at that time the thought of having an online directory was difficult for people to fathom.  There were lots of challenges. However, I believe our team‘s efforts were worth it because those efforts helped sow seeds for the development of the Internet in China.

Question to Jack Ma: Where did the idea for Alibaba come from?

The idea for Alibaba.com traces back to my early Internet experience. In 1995, I went to Seattle to visit some friends and that was the first time when I ever touched a keyboard and heard the word “Internet”. My friend told me to search for whatever I wanted on the Internet, and the first word I typed was “beer” – I found American beer, Japanese beer, but no Chinese beer. Then I typed “China” and “beer,” and nothing came up.

When I returned to China, I decided to start an Internet company to make Chinese businesses searchable by foreign companies. That’s why China Pages was set up.

From my early experience, I realized what small businesses were in real need of, and what they could benefit most from, e-commerce. So I founded Alibaba.com with 17 other people in 1999 with a dream of helping small entrepreneurs grow their businesses through e-commerce.

Question to Jack Ma: What is the key characteristic unique to successful entrepreneurs?

Successful entrepreneurs believe in their dream and believe in themselves. They learn quickly, and learn from others the strategies, tactics and skills, but they stick with their dream. If there are nine rabbits on the ground and you want to catch one, just focus on one.  Change your tactics if you need to, but don’t change the rabbit you’re focused on.  Just stick with it.   There are so many opportunities out there that you cannot catch them all. Get one first, put it in you pocket and then catch another.

Also, being successful isn’t just about making money. Successful entrepreneurs create value for people and take care of their employees. They focus on helping others, and if they are successful, good things come their way.  Success and profitability are outcomes of focusing on customers and employees, not objectives.

Question to Jack Ma: What is the biggest mistake that young entrepreneurs make and how can they avoid it?

The biggest mistake some young entrepreneurs make is to be afraid of making mistakes.  They don’t completely believe in themselves, and this hinders them.

In my case, I have no regrets about anything. We are a strong company today because we’ve learned from the hundreds of mistakes we’ve made along the way. I think the most important thing is that we believed in our dream from day one.  I remember that when I talked about my story for B2B and e-commerce in China in 2000, everybody thought I was crazy. Of course we made many mistakes, like any company, but we are still here today because we learned from our mistakes, improved each year, and never abandoned our dream.

Question to Jack Ma: How have the Alibaba cultures and values played a role in the success of the company?

Question to Jack Ma: What kind of entrepreneur/business do you look for when deciding who to give the Alibaba SME loan program?

Alibaba.com is a community built on trust. Right from the beginning we recognized that trust is fundamental to e-commerce, as it is for all areas of business. So we entered into a partnership in early 2007 with Industrial and Commercial Bank of China and China Construction Bank to help facilitate loans to our small business customers in China.  In 2008, we helped banks make nearly $150 million (USD) in loans to our small business customers.   We hope to facilitate nearly $1 billion (USD) this year in loans.

Under this Ali-loan program, Alibaba.com helps our small business customers make applications for loans and also provides the online transaction history and trust rating of our small business members to the banks. This online financial solution has helped companies with limited assets or credit history, but who have proven record of doing business with integrity online, secure financing to expand their business. We are also broadening the program to include the Bank of China, China Merchants Bank, China Postal Savings Bank, Shanghai-Pudong Development Bank, Agriculture Bank of China, City Merchants Bank. The Ali-loan program is now expanded to more provinces and cities in China apart from our home base Hangzhou, including Guangzhou and Shanghai.

Question to Jack Ma: What are the major differences between building a startup and leading a large established company?

Over the past 10 years, Alibaba has transformed from a bulletin board service for businesses to post, buy and sell trade leads to a vibrant global marketplace for SMEs. We have become a truly global company serving more than 200 million registered users in more than 240 countries and territories in B2B, B2C, online payment, software and classified listings through our five major core businesses.  We operate the largest B2B marketplace in the world (Alibaba.com) and the largest online retail platform and online payment platforms in Asia (Taobao and Alipay).

The major difference between 10 years ago and now is the size of our company and the need to continue to protect our culture as we expand around the world.   Alibaba Group’s team has grown from 18 founders to more than 12,000 people.  Although the majority of staff is still based in China, we have offices in the US, the UK and Asia-Pacific.  As the company becomes stronger, we have more resources to utilize compared to the past, and we need to be very stringent and prudent in allocating our resources so that we can achieve our corporate goals.

Our vision is to build a company that lasts 102 years (so we span three centuries). Today we have only traveled 10 years. We have a very long-term view, but our mission will never change: to make it easy to do business anywhere in the world.  This reminds us to stay focused and facilitate the creation of a level-playing field on which everyone can compete on equal terms. Also, one thing that has not changed in the past 10 years, and that will never change, is our six core corporate values, of which the most important one is Customer First. This core value has been keeping us on the right track no matter where we are and it will continue to serve as our No. 1 guiding principle.