What REALLY Happened To Jack Ma & Alibaba?

imagine you're looking for a job you've tried 30 different places and got rejected by every single one you're getting desperate so you apply for an entry-level job at KFC and 23 out of the 24 people who apply get hired you're the only one who doesn't your life has been a string of failures and you're not sure where to go from here that was the situation Jack ma found himself in when he was younger and yep fast forward a few decades and Jack has become one of the most successful entrepreneurs alive I'm one of the richest

men in the world this video is the incredible success story of Jack Ma and Alibaba showing how Jack turned his life around and built a giant Global Empire from nothing but I warn you in advance not all success stories have a happy ending foreign [Music] ER but back in 1964 when he was born in China he was given the name Jan meaning cloud and his Beginnings were extremely humble his mother worked in a factory production line what his father was a photographer they didn't have much money at all and Jack was born at a time

where entrepreneurship in China was pretty much dead around 90 of industrial production was in the hands of the Chinese government and China was extremely isolated from the world with millions in the country starving at a young age Jack ma developed an interest in the English language and English literature and he would regularly listen to recordings of Mark Twain on a shortwave radio the problem was he didn't really have any way to develop his English skills but then in the 70s China launched a new open door policy to try and get foreign trade and Investments unless

many tourists came to visit the country and Jack used this opportunity to learn English he'd wake up at 5am every morning and ride his bike 40 minutes to a big hotel in the city where many foreign tours from Europe and the US were staying Jack would give them a free tour of the area and an exchange they would teach him English he did this for about nine years no matter whether it was raining or snowing he'd always show up to practice his English with the tourists and it was actually one of these tourists he met

who suggested he adopt Jack as his English name and from that moment on he became known in English as jagmar however Jack needed to make money and was desperately struggling to get a job he says he applied for about 30 different jobs but every single company turned him down when Jack tried to get a job at KFC they hired 23 of the 24 applicants but Jack was the one single applicant they rejected and to be honest at this point Jack's life was a series of failures he'd failed his primary school exams twice before getting to

middle school he then failed his school exams three times before graduating and then he repeatedly failed the entrance exams to get into University as well but he never gave up he would always have the persistence to just keep trying until he got what he wanted he was relentless like he reportedly applied to Harvard 10 times and they rejected him every time but in the end he did manage to get into his local University instead where he got a Bachelor's degree in English after graduating he became an English teacher and it reported he worked for just

15 per month however by this point things were changing in China private Enterprise was no longer illegal and a wave of entrepreneurs started popping up when Jack saw this he vowed that he would start his own business by the time he was 30. and he did in 1994 at the age of 29 Jack created a small part-time translation agency it wasn't really a commercial success at all but it made Jack realize that running a business excited him much more than his career path as a teacher and so he began thinking of other businesses he could

start Jack's breakthrough idea would come on his first visit to America in 1995 when Jack got introduced to the internet and although he didn't really understand it he was fascinated a friend told him to search for something but at first Jack didn't want to as he was worried he'd break the computer and wouldn't be able to pay for it but his friend insisted so Jack typed the first word that came to his mind beer the search engine showed results for different beers from all over the world well not China was from a country of about

a billion people and yet there was virtually no mention of any Chinese products or services on the internet at all because of how closed off the country had been at that moment a seed was planted in Jack's mind that there was a huge opportunity for companies in China to do business with the rest of the world with the help of the internet unless when Jack returned to China he and a friend created a website containing info about various Chinese businesses it was extremely basic but the first day they put the website live Jack's friend informed

him they'd already received five emails Jack said great but what's an email the basic website they created proved there was demand for people in other countries to buy from Chinese manufacturers and so Jack quit his teaching job and created his first full-time business which he named China Pages Jack's plan was essentially to build an online Yellow Pages for Chinese companies this online index would help Chinese companies create their own web pages to help them attract International customers they officially launched in July 1995 and it was one of the first companies in China devoted to the

internet the only problem was it the vast majority of companies in China had no idea about this new internet thing so they didn't really get the appeal in fact China had less than 1 million internet users at the time but Jack had a plan to help drum up interest in his new China Pages business Jack began widely circulating a quote from Bill Gates where he said the internet will change every aspect of human beings lives Bill Gates had a reputation as a very successful entrepreneur by this point so the quote certainly made business owners take

more notice of the internet the only thing was that wasn't a quote from Bill Gates Jack completely made it up he figured that if people thought Bill Gates believed in the internet it would get other people to take it more seriously so ironically Jack knew Bill Gates would see the potential of the internet before even Bill Gates himself knew either way circulating this fake quote was good marketing to get more people in China interested in the internet and thus get customers for China pages one major problem still remained though China Pages was too limited it

had text and images but there was no way for people to actually make purchases online it was just a directory of info Nation unless China Pages couldn't charge businesses much for its services as a result the company was running out of cash and then to make matters much worse a rival company then copied their idea and used the almost identical name China page within a couple of years Jack stepped away from the company and had to go and get a government job instead in order to earn a living it looked like the whole thing was

just yet another failure for Jack Ma even though China Pages hadn't gone to plan Jack knew he was onto something and in 1999 he gathered a group of 17 friends in his apartment and gave a passionate speech about the internet and then pitched them on the idea of an e-commerce business essentially a B2B Marketplace to let Chinese manufacturers sell directly to buyers all around the world there was something about Jack's conviction that was appealing and they agreed to team up with him and put in a small amount of money each to try and build this

B2B Marketplace and thus Alibaba was born now the name Alibaba is pretty unusual considering it's an Arabic word not Chinese it actually comes from the folk tale Alibaba and the 40 thieves and Alibaba is the character who uses the magic words open sesame but Jack liked the name as he knew he wanted this to be a truly global company and the name was very recognizable and easy to pronounce in many languages plus they figured a company beginning with the letter A would always be near the top of any directories so the team worked extremely long

days and nights for many months whilst building this B2B platform called Alibaba and even in those very early days Jack was extremely ambitious and regularly gave big speeches to motivate his team he'd tell them we don't want to be number one in China we want to be number one in the world now when Jack created Alibaba in early 1999 China had only 2 million internet users but by the end of the year it would reach 9 million then 17 million six months later and Alibaba was perfectly positioned to ride the wave of Rapid internet growth

in China their location also meant they could operate much cheaper Jack's quoted as saying to keep one programmer happy in Silicon Valley it takes 50 000 to a hundred thousand dollars for that much money in China I can keep 10 very smart people happy all the time so alibaba's operating costs were much lower when building their Online Marketplace plus the good news for Jack was that in the late 90s because there was so much hype around internet companies in the US many investors were now looking at other countries like China for new companies to invest

in and this meant Jack managed to get a meeting with Goldman Sachs who invested 5 million dollars into Alibaba in its very early stages then in October 1999 Jack met with the investor when Jack met Massa they didn't talk about revenues or business models they just talked about a vision of the future and what the company could become both men were similar in many ways and some who observed them chatting described them as soul mates they saw things very similarly and both like to make quick decisions after just five minutes of Jack's presentation massasan interrupted

to say he'd already decided he wanted to invest in Alibaba now Goldman had valued the company at 10 million dollars just a few weeks ago but now Massa was offering to invest 40 million dollars for 40 of the company meaning a 60 million dollar pre-money valuation for Jack suddenly having all his interest in the company was obviously very exciting but even though it was a huge investment offer Jack didn't want to give away so much Equity so he actually negotiated down and told Mata he only wanted 20 million dollars instead in exchange for 30 Masa

wanted to pay more money for more Equity but he didn't have a choice so he accepted Jack's offer when Mata was later asked about this he said it was the look in his eyes and an animal smell I invested because of my senses smell and if you're thinking that sounds insane welcome to the world of masayoshi-san but it turns out it wasn't as crazy as everyone thought it was actually one of the greatest Investments of all time as that 20 million dollars Master invested turned into about 50 billion dollars 14 years later when Alibaba had

its IPO but back in late 1999 Alibaba now had an influx of 25 million dollars thanks to Goldman Sachs and SoftBank which allowed them to really step things up and begin hiring plenty of new employees to grow the company by this point alibaba's Marketplace site had 150 000 members in 188 countries clearly connecting suppliers in China with Buyers around the world was working very well and things were looking great for the company word was spreading rapidly about the sides as buying directly from Chinese manufacturers meant businesses could get some really low prices with things seemingly

going so well Jack was actually thinking they might be able to have an IPO in a few years meaning to sell their shares on the public stock markets but very shortly after this in the spring of 2000 the.com bubble began to burst as many internet companies went bankrupt the hype died down and valuations of companies fell drastically before this the Mantra was just to grow as fast as you can at all costs but suddenly profitability became the key thing investors wanted and for Alibaba despite setting up more than half a million users by this point

its Revenue hadn't even reached 1 million dollars they didn't really have a clear business model the company was creating a lot of value for its users but capturing very little of it I remember many times when I go to restaurant have a dinner somebody came when I was trying to pay the bill the owner of the restaurant came to say sir your bill is repaired by someone and the small note say hey Mr Mark I'm your customer of Alibaba group Alibaba platform I made a lot of money and I know you don't make any money

I pay the bill for you alibaba's rapid hiring had also caused all kinds of problems as the right systems weren't in place and expenses were Rising much faster than Revenue thus in 2001 businessweek published an article with the headline alibaba's Magic Carpet is losing altitude suggesting Alibaba could soon be over completely was this going to be yet another failure for Jack ma Time Magazine had even dubbed him crazy Jack however in the years after the.com Bubble Burst and internet company's values plummeted Alibaba managed to slash costs and kept much leaner and more efficient whilst simultaneously

increasing its revenue and the most crucial turning point for the company came in 2003 when Alibaba launched a new website that were catapult Jack ma to success he'd never even dreamed of before we get to the next chapter I want to save you money which is why I reached out to a site I really love called appsumo to see if they'd sponsor this video thankfully they did the reason I love ebsumo is they offer really useful software templates and all kinds of digital products but at massively reduced prices for example I recently got tidycal because

I was sick of back and forth emails to set up calls with people where I'd give a list of options but then by the time they've replied I've booked something else in or they need a different date it was a nightmare but tidycal solves that by syncing with your calendar and letting people book in spots when you're available and with appsumo you get lifetime access you pay a small one-time fee to keep it forever instead of paying every single month so it works out way cheaper as an exclusive deal for us appsuma was giving 10

off the already discounted price to the first hundred people who click the link in the description so click the link below now and save money on tidycal and so many other great softwares on appsumo when eBay had its IPO in 1998 it had been a massive hit with investors and in the next two years its valuation Grew From 2 billion to 30 billion dollars however eBay wanted to expand into China and thus they bought the largest consumer e-commerce business in China at the time called each net eBay now had an 80 share of the market

so it looked like they were perfectly positioned to dominate consumer to Consumer sales in China but then in 2003 Alibaba created taobao which roughly translates as searching for Treasure taobao was a consumer to consume a Marketplace like eBay instead of B2B like alibaba's original site Jack wanted the company to dominate in both B to B and C to C and so he publicly declared war on eBay and had his employees dress up in Army outfits one day as a symbolic gesture of the battle they were beginning to get things started Jack had everyone who was

working on taobao all find four items each to list on the sides even Jack himself rummaged through his cupboards to find things to sell to get some initial listings the team then worked very long hours promoting and improving the taobao sites and Jack his employees doing handstands during breaks to keep their energy levels up however the team were nervous that competing with the vast resources of eBay looked like an impossible task eBay had far more money and a much bigger team but Jack was adamant they could do it since they understood the Chinese market so

much better than eBay he famously said eBay is a shark in the ocean we are a crocodile in the Yangtze River if we fight in the ocean we'll lose but if we fly in the river we'll win in other words they had the Home Advantage for example after eBay acquired each net They removed features they thought were useless but the Chinese people actually really like Belton likewise eBay's China site had the same design it used in the west which was fairly clean and uncluttered but the Chinese market found it boring and we used to pop-ups

and lots of bright graphics and animations in contrast taobao was built by the Chinese for the Chinese they understood exactly what Chinese consumers wanted and made a site that was uniquely Chinese and thus it was much more popular Jack also felt that eBay's policy of charging users a transaction fee was a weekend business they could exploit and he took the risky move of making taobao completely free to use for both buyers and sellers instead of charging fees taobao would make money in other ways like selling advertising space or additional services to users and this gamble

paid off massively because of course having no fees attracted more sellers which attracted more buyers which attracted more sellers in an endless loop of growth taobao also encouraged open communication between buyers and sellers such as opening up bulletin boards and a live chat system so they could discuss deals whereas eBay who relied on fees were much more wary of letting buyers and sellers chat freely in case they made a private deal which would mean eBay didn't get their commission fee but perhaps the biggest blow to eBay's hopes of winning the Chinese market was when Alibaba

introduced alipay its own payment solution with an escrow model that held funds securely until the transaction was fully complete which massively established trust between buyers and sellers by 2007 taobao had a 67 market share and eBay had lost hundreds of millions of dollars in its attempt to crack China jackmeyer and Alibaba had beaten them Jack also managed to get Yahoo to invest 1 billion dollars into Alibaba which only helped them ramp up expansion even faster whilst they didn't technically need that much investment Jack's philosophy was raise money when we don't need it because when you

do need it it's too late meanwhile taobao had become so popular Jack later decided to split it into three different marketplaces firstly they kept their consumer to Consumer Marketplace which was like eBay under the name taobao this was where individuals could buy and sell Goods to each other I was like a collection of digital Market stalls buying from here felt like actually being a Chinese Street Market you use alibaba's chat application to haggle about prices or negotiate free shipping and a vendor might hold up a product on a webcam to give you a live demonstration

and sales pitch on taobao you'll find pretty much everything including some really bizarreless things like one student began selling earrings made from dead mosquitoes or you can rent a fake boyfriend or girlfriend for social events but then secondly Jack opened taobao Mall known as Tim all which is an online shopping portal for businesses to sell directly to consumer kind of like Amazon once again you can buy pretty much anything from groceries to cars it's the largest virtual shopping mall in the world and this is where larger and more luxury Brands go to sell their goods

for example apple or Burberry and here on Timor Alibaba does take a small Commission on each sale but then finally there's also ital a shopping search engine to compare deals and discounts so basically whilst Alibaba was started as a B2B Marketplace and it's actually the world's biggest business the business trading platform their original site has actually been eclipsed by their consumer-facing websites like taobao and Timor that's why Alibaba is such a dominant force in e-commerce no matter who is selling to who they own the platform for the trade to happen and they also own the

payment service too alipay which is the most popular payment tool in China even many non-alibur sites use alipay and Chinese citizens use it for money transfers paying for things in physical stores even paying for water and electricity bills but if you thought Jack ma was just stopping at dominating online shopping think again in 2014 the Alibaba group had its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange and raised 25 billion dollars which at the time was by far the largest IPO in history and put the company's market cap in the hundreds of billions of dollars Jack

became a multi-billionaire and as the share price soared Chet became the richest man in all of Asia Jack actually encourages employees to sell some stock though telling them you need a reward you've been working too hard since then Alibaba has gone on to not only dominate an online shopping but also all kinds of different Industries they ventured into entertainment music hotels AI Healthcare Sports and they also own the largest cloud computing business in all of China the company has become a conglomerate acquiring endless different businesses and by 2020 it was one of the largest companies

in the world what's really interesting though is back when Alibaba was having its IPO Jack noticed another separate company called the ant group alibaba's fintech sister company and in a slightly controversial move he moved alipay under the ownership of the ant group instead of Alibaba by 20 2020 the ant group had grown to become the highest valued Financial tech company in the world processing more transactions than MasterCard and Visa the company had also moved into insurance and wealth management and processed around 17 trillion dollars of payments in 2020 alone and so when in October 2020

the ant group was due to have its own IPO it was expected to be the biggest in history I just want to reiterate that as it's pretty insane jagma's company Alibaba was the largest IPO ever in 2014 then in 2020 Jack Ma's other company the ant group was due to take the crown of biggest IPO in history however right before the company went public on the stock market Jack gave a speech where he criticized the Chinese governments and that comment would change everything in 2019 Jack ma stepped down as Alibaba CEO he said it was

because he wanted to focus on philanthropy but many suspect it was due to pressure from the Chinese governments you see tension had been building between Jack and the government for years but the Tipping Point seemed to have come in October 2020 when at a conference in Shanghai chakma publicly called them out for lacking vision and saying Chinese Finance has no system and the lawmakers that enforce Global Financial regulations are like an old people's Club then days before the ant group's historic IPO was due to happen the Chinese government ordered Jack ma to Beijing to appear

before Chinese Regulators exactly what transpired at that meeting remains a mystery but most assume it was for the government to reprimand Jack for criticizing the country's Financial Regulators shortly after the an group's planned public offering which had already been approved was abruptly suspended where some saying the order came directly from China's presidents the ant group was also ordered to restructure its customer financing business reduce its money market fund and form a separate Financial holding company that would be partly owned by partners with close ties to the government the ant group was also ordered to share

data with the government and other companies effectively taking away its main competitive Advantage the news wasn't any better for the other half of Jack's Empire as in April 2021 the government levied a record 2.8 billion fine against Alibaba for Anti-Trust violations accusing the company of monopolistic conducts in addition they ordered the deletion of alibaba's internet browser from App Stores which at its height had 400 million active users now here's a sentence that isn't said very often on YouTube but in defense of the Chinese governments Alibaba absolutely did act like a monopoly for example if forced

sellers to sign exclusive deals where they couldn't sell on other platforms so the antitrust claims clearly had some merits but that had been going on for many years so why the sudden Crackdown from the Chinese governments well some feel it was very specifically targeted at Jack ma after he'd publicly criticized the governments they perhaps wanted retribution and not just that they possibly wanted to just not Jack down a few pegs as they were concerned how much power and influence he had because according to polls Jack ma was better known outside of China than the Chinese

presidents and the Chinese government are obviously quite concerned about what info its people get and so seeing Jack become so powerful especially after he'd been acquiring a lot of media companies probably meant they wanted to limit his power and influence however others think it was more of a state power play to reassert Chinese regulatory influence over private entities and big Tech in general who were seemingly getting too powerful either way all of this combined led to Alibaba losing a staggering 344 billion dollars in market capitalization in the span of just one year the biggest shareholder

loss in history finally in a clear sign that the Chinese government was making an example of Jack he was forced to step down as president of Hooper University a business school he himself had found it with his Empire seemingly crumbling Jack ma then mysteriously disappeared from the public eye prompting speculation of his whereabouts and if he was even still alive wounds Jack Ma has reportedly not been seen in public for several weeks now the billionaire founder of China's giant online retailer Alibaba has not been seen in public since October who hasn't been seen in public

for two months whilst he has made a couple of brief appearances since then like occasionally showing up a charity events he's very rarely seen in public these days and no longer active on Twitter due to the secretive nature of the Chinese government it's unclear if he's in legal Jeopardy but it's certainly very unusual for Jack who prior to all of this was constantly making public appearances it seems pretty clear that China are not going to allow him to command the kind of power he once had in fact in July 2022 it was announced Jack was

being forced to fully give up control of the ant Group after pressure from the Chinese governments so what the future holds for Jack ma Still Remains to be seen but clearly his past is pretty remarkable at Stanford University in 2013 Jack admitted even today I still don't understand what coding is all about I still don't understand the technology behind the internet he said he's a very simple guy with very stupid brains and there are times when listening to Jack ma but he doesn't exactly come across as some kind of business genius there was even a

viral video of Jack and Elon together where many felt Jack came across as kinda um yeah hey I I hate the word AI called artificial intelligence I call it Alibaba intelligence yeah might end up being true you never know um however Jack's achievements surely suggests he's a very intelligent guy and it seems Jack perhaps prefers to be underestimated when he was asked which person had most inspired him jack replied without hesitation Forrest Gump his interviewer paused then said you know he's a fictional character right but Jack explains you love Forrest Gump I love Forrest Gump

why do you like him simple never give up people people thinking he's done but he knows what he's doing and so there you have it the story of Jack Ma and Alibaba how a guy who got rejected from 30 different jobs became one of the wealthiest men in the world and if you enjoyed this I have one quick favor please consider subscribing to magnates Media for lots more entrepreneurial stories like this like the insane rise of Airbnb or the tale of Mark Zuckerberg's enemy the Bitcoin billionaires you can watch either of those videos right now

by clicking here so just take your pick and I'll see you there cheers