Professional Documents
Culture Documents
about a year. The general manager of deeply changed me. Going public is an important milestone
China Telecom offered to invest $185,000 for Alibaba. The time was right. Our B2B
to do a joint venture. It was the most technology, and we had no plan. Every company is established, market conditions
money I had ever seen in my life. But dollar, we used very carefully. The office are healthy, and management is strong.
unfortunately, China Telecom got five opened in my apartment. We expanded The reception proved a mainland Chinese
board seats. I got two board seats. when we raised money from Goldman company can list in Hong Kong and still
Everything we suggested, they turned us Sachs in 1999 and then Softbank Corpora- get a very strong valuation and global
down. It was like an elephant and an ant. I tion in 2000. investor interest.
resigned. Then, I got an offer to come to
Beijing and run a new government group Were in China today because I believe in My vision is to build an e-commerce
to promote e-commerce. one thing: global vision, local win. We ecosystem that allows consumers and
designed the business model ourselves. Our businesses to do all aspects of business
My dream was to set up my own focus is on helping small and medium-size online. We are going into search with
e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered companies make money. We never copied a Yahoo, and have launched online auction
18 people in my apartment and spoke to model from the U.S., like a lot of Chinese and payment businesses. I want to create
them for two hours about my vision. Internet entrepreneurs did. We focused on one million jobs, change Chinas social
Everyone put their money on the table and product quality. It has to be click and get and economic environment, and make it
that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I it. If I cant get it, then its rubbish. the largest Internet market in the world.
wanted to have a global company, so I
chose a global name. Alibaba is easy to spell I call Alibaba 1,001 mistakes. We Im just a purist. What is important
and people everywhere associate that with expanded too fast, and then in the dot- in my life is that I can do something
Open, Sesame, the command that Ali com bubble, we had to have layoffs. By that can influence many people and
Baba used to open doors to hidden 2002, we had only enough cash to survive influence Chinas development. When I
treasures in One Thousand and One Nights, for 18 months. We had a lot of free am myself, I am relaxed and happy and
the book of Middle Eastern folktales. members using our site, and we didnt have a good result.
know how wed make money. So we
There were three reasons why we developed a product for China exporters Inc.com For a full archive of How I Did
survived. We had no money, we had no to meet buyers in the U.S. online. This It features, visit www.inc.com/hidi.
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