If you have an idea that you hope to try out someday, don’t wait. It goes without saying that you’ve got to take chances and work hard if you want your business to succeed. Jack Ma’s story inspires you to seize your vision, take the leap and make it work!
As Jack Ma was growing up in China, the Internet was more of a folk tale from the western world. Probably due to the reclusive ways of the communist regime, the Internet took it’s time finding its way to China.
Today Jack Ma runs a $25 billion ecommerce giant known as Alibaba. Both the company and founder come from humble beginnings in mainland China. Their rise took 16 years and started with a meeting in his flat which raised a measly $60000 to the biggest IPO in tech history to date.
How did he do it?
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Alibaba may have been new to their Chinese Internet landscape but to the rest of the world ecommerce was already an up and coming force to reckon with. Fortunately China was still an unexplored frontier at the time. Having been to Australia Jack Ma had seen the potential of the Internet and was eager to set up his own ecommerce business in China when the circumstances were right.
Maximize your strengths
From Apple to Facebook, today, almost all tech companies have strategies to set up and grow in China, primarily for 2 reasons: the Chinese population and their affinity for technology. This was not the case back in 1999 when Jack Ma was starting out. Western companies weren’t welcome back then so setting up shop in China was not an easy feat. This presented a great opportunity for aspiring visionary business people like Jack Ma. By investing and building in China he had local knowledge access to the largest technologically adept population with little competition from foreign companies. Moral of the story – identify the unique strengths you bring to the market.
Invest in and own your industry’s eco system
Alibaba is not just one company. It has other companies within it. Apart from Alibaba.com, there is taobao.com which is a consumer to consumer ecommerce website that works the same way as eBay. There is also Tmall.com, a business to consumer website with thousands of brands selling their goods to end users. And then there’s Alibaba.com which is a B2B website catering to the thousands of importers that seek goods from China. In a nutshell, almost everything ecommerce goes through the hands of Jack Ma and the Alibaba group.
Hire bright people
Jack Ma had no technology background whatsoever. He was a trained English teacher who had the knowledge to bring together people who were skilled in technology and other areas necessary for Alibaba to succeed. Like a jigsaw puzzle, he brought the pieces necessary together and made sure they fit as was necessary for success. To this day, Jack Ma can barely write code, but he probably has the best team in the world.
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