An Interview with Jack Ma of Alibaba & Taobao
I was privileged to sit in on an interview with Jack Ma, president of Alibaba and Taobao . Alibaba is the largest B2B and C2C e-commerce business in China. Taobao is China’s version of eBay .
Jack Ma started Alibaba from scratch about 10 years ago. Despite having one very influential friend or maybe because of, in Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo Jack had to go it alone without the financial backing that might have been there.
In 1995, Jack, aged 31 at the time, and named after a client’s (more later) husband, visited Seattle where he said he touched a keyboard for the first time in his life. After several prompts to input something, he typed in the word ‘beer’…even he himself doesn’t drink.
"Nothing from China came up," he said. He decided then and there that the internet was something that would fly in China. He committed himself to starting something.
His first venture was an online translation service. At 9:30pm they put up their web site and by 12 midnight they had 5 emails.
He was off like a ‘blind man riding a blind tiger.’ And he hasn’t looked back.
Alibaba now serves 12 million businesses and holds an 85% market share in China.
Such humble beginnings and to such great heights.
Great job, Jack.
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