How a Failed Student Made $38 Billion After Being Rejected by KFC

you know my small business isn't easy that's its pain points but alibaba.com helped ease them anything from anywhere in the world with alibaba.com the sourcing pros scrawny and just over five feet tall Mayan was always outnumbered when he applied for a job with KFC there were 24 people in the room he was the only person that went home without an offer the rejections didn't stop there but it helped ma become the richest man in China with a net worth of over 38 billion dollars in 1964 Mayan was born in Hangzhou China his parents were professional ping 10 performers they raised mile at a time when China was isolated from the West Communist Party campaigns dominated daily life after President Nixon visited Hangzhou it became a tourist attraction masa this as an opportunity to practice his English when he was 12 he woke up at 5:00 a.m. to walk or bike to the city's main hotel and gave free tours for English lessons it was then that he was given the name Jack by a tourist despite his determination to learn a second language he wasn't a great student I failed a key primary school tests two times I failed the middle school test three times I failed the college entrance exam two times he especially struggled with math and scored one out of 120 points on his college entrance exam I'm not good at math have never studied management and still cannot read accounting reports but he didn't let that stop him from dreaming about Harvard Business School I applied for Harvard ten times God rejected ten times and I told myself that someday I should go teach there eventually he moved on and applied to Hangzhou teacher's Institute at the time it was considered the city's worst university he failed the entrance exams twice on his third try he finally passed and pursued a bachelor's degree in English when he graduated the university's president stopped him at the gate and waved him over he asked Jack to promise him that we'll stick with teaching for six years Jack hesitated but agreed many opportunities came his way but he kept his promise it taught him how to be a good teacher and how to communicate with his students after the six years passed he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his life he applied to 30 different jobs and was rejected by all of them when KFC came to China 24 people went for the job 23 people were accepted I was the only guy who wasn't the same thing happened when he tried to become a cop all of the four or five applicants were hired except for him another time he lost out on the job to his own blood my cousin and I waited for two hours in a long queue to be the waiter for the four-star hotel in my city on a very hot day my cousin's score was much lower than mine but he was accepted and I was rejected so he returned to his University and taught English and international trade he only earned between 12 to 15 dollars a month in 1994 Jack took his first shot at being his own boss he started his own translation company while continuing to teach it took a year to develop but it allowed him to work with some of the first US and foreign companies that did business in China after learning about their success stories he set an ambitious goal of changing China's corporate culture in 1995 Jack travelled to the US for the first time as an interpreter for a joint venture project while there he tried to collect a debt on behalf of a friend from a businessman in California the businessman refused to pay back the money and locked jacked in his house at one point he started playing with his handgun it was obviously meant as a threat a few days later the businessmen took Jack to Las Vegas for a showcase trip for Chinese businessman Jack was penniless but he decided to try his luck at gambling after all what could he lose luck was on his side he wants six hundred dollars from playing the slot machines he used the money to buy plane tickets to Seattle and Flint leaving all of his belongings behind it was a terrible experience every time I think of LA I have a nightmare in Seattle he visited a friend and notice a gray box with a screen on his desk what the heck is this he asked jack it's not a bomb his friends say it's a computer just touch it and play it any way you want it was then that Jack discovered the Internet he typed in beer and was shown a list of results but when he typed in year and China there was nothing at the time Netscape just started in Yahoo barely launched very few people in the world understood the Internet and fewer could see its potential but Jackson stood big opportunity and believed the internet was going to change the world when he returned home he started another company I was 30 years old I started a business without knowing anything about the computer business my wife and I and a schoolmate we had a thousand dollars to start the business together they built a directory service for businesses in China called China pages it turned out to be a disaster it ran on a dial-up connection until three and a half hours to load half a page the next few years remained a struggle Jack tried to borrow $3,000 from a bank but they rejected him so he had to borrow from friends instead some of them were skeptical and said to each other jack is telling a lie because there is no such Network called the Internet in 1996 Jack finally proved them wrong that year China was given access to the Internet he raised $60,000 from 18 friends and built an e-commerce website for small businesses at the time Americans focus on big businesses but it didn't make sense for China since they had more small businesses Jack called his website Alibaba named after Alibaba a poor carpenter who accidentally finds treasure in the tale 1001 nights we should help the small guys we should not help small guys to reduce costs small businesses should learn how to make money early on Jack faced many hurdles most of the small businesses were mom-and-pop shops who had no education beyond middle school the internet was utterly foreign to them so Jack sent people to knock on their doors and teach them how to set up connections and register on Alibaba but they had trouble getting people to trust their service China had no credit checking system and many businesses had no credit history so Jack and his team built a trust system called trust pass to encourage people to do business online when they registered they could pay Alibaba a small fee to hire a third party to verify their business licenses physical addresses and bank accounts eventually Alibaba started to attract members from all over the world in 1999 they raised five million dollars from Goldman Sachs and twenty million dollars from Softbank but they weren't profitable in the first three years they expanded too fast and almost imploded when the.com bubble burst they were on the brink of bankruptcy and only had enough cash to survive for 18 months I call Alibaba 1001 mistakes we had a lot of free members using our site and we didn't know how we'd make money so we've developed a product for Chinese exporters to meet us buyers online this model saved us by the end of 2002 we made $1.00 in profits each year we improved in 2003 jack face another hurdle eBay launched in China Alibaba was still a young company at the time being only 4 years old and yet Jack wanted to create a sister site to compete with them even though Alibaba offered different services Jack was convinced that eBay would come after their wholesalers his team always believed in him but this time they were doubtful one day Jack rallied his team in one room and asked him to stand against the wall afterwards he told them to stand on their head they were hesitant but Jack said they had no excuse he was the oldest among the group and could do it himself one by one they all managed to stand on their heads Jack told them when you stand upside down you'll see the world from a different perspective you see you can do things that you have never done before to compete with eBay Jack secretly built a consumer auction site called Taobao meaning searching for treasure I pulled together six people in my office I told them that I had a secret project for them if they were interested in finding out what the job was they would have to first resign from Alibaba and then move to work from a secret location they couldn't tell their friends or family what they were working on they couldn't even tell anyone at Alibaba what they were working on in his old home a three room apartment Jack and his team built Taobao and launched in 2003 they offered free listing longer listing periods and an instant communication tool to help buyers and sellers interact it quickly became popular and encouraged menu to switch from eBay in 2005 the battle between eBay and Taobao shifted to one of China's biggest e-commerce issues the payment system most people in China did not have credit cards so business transactions were done in cash or through wire transfers knowing this Jack launched an online escrow payment system called Ali pay the system held its users money in escrow until products were delivered by sellers ensuring that goods were received and payments were made after noticing taobao's growth eBay offered to purchase the company Jack rejected their offer and made a historic deal with Yahoo instead Yahoo invested 1 billion dollars in exchange a 40% stake in Alibaba by 2006 eBay announced it was closing its site in China Jack finally overcame one of his biggest hurdles years later Jack revealed my father said if you were born thirty years ago you'd probably be in a prison because the ideas you have are so dangerous in 2014 Jack decided it was time to take Alibaba public at the time the company had over 200 million active buyers Jack wanted to list with the Hong Kong stock exchange but they rejected him so he filed with the New York Stock Exchange instead that move ended up helping Alibaba become even more successful they became the largest IPO in US history at 25 billion dollars in a letter to employees Jack wrote we know well we haven't survived because her strategies are farsighted and brilliant or because our execution is too perfect but because for 15 years we have preserved in our mission of making it easier to do business across the world because we have insisted on a customer first value system because we have persisted in believing in the future and because we have insisted that normal people can do extraordinary things just five years after the IPO Amazon admitted to being defeated by Alibaba the company struggled to compete with Alibaba slow often free shipping which didn't require users to meet any minimum orders in an announcement to sellers Amazon wrote they were shutting down its Chinese domestic ecommerce business in other words they would no longer compete with the massive ecommerce Giants of China like Alibaba this is the story of how it all began with the website that changed the face of global business for more inspiring 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Channel: Hook

Views: 524,941

Keywords: how alibaba was made, alibaba, amazon, ebay, rise and fall, rise and fall of alibaba, taobao, behind alibaba, success stories, success story, who made alibaba, story of alibaba, company man, the rise of alibaba, rise of alibaba, fall of ebay, downfall of ebay, jack ma, the rise and fall

Id: 6Q0lcBFVH44

Length: 10min 46sec (646 seconds)

Published: Fri May 22 2020