Jack Ma Business Perspective

In 1982, Jack Ma failed his first college entrance examination. Altogether he took 3 times before he passing the exam. When the first time he failed, he dreamed to be a hotel waitress or policeman, however he was been rejected because his appearance. Although Jack Ma failed many times, but he never give up. In 1994, he started his business, founded the first translation agency “Haibo” in Hangzhou. In order for the company to continue operating, he started his part-time life by selling the crafts, socks and flashlight. Jack ma visited the United States, at that time he got the opportunity contact to the internet. He created his first internet company in china and the product is “China Yellow Pages”. Due to the different business concept, Jack Ma abandoned his “China Yellow Page”. After that, he resigned his post in EDI, his second company, an information technology company. He foundered Alibaba as a business to business (B2B) marketplace site in March. Alibaba is a China- based business to business marketplace site which is expected to improve the domestic e-commerce market and perfect an e-commerce platform for Chinese enterprises. Well to say that Jack Ma may through this process very understanding of failure is an option. He was overcome the hardship in his business and today he is the richest man of Asia.

One of the traits that Jack Ma having to became a successful entrepreneur is open culture. In 1994, he heard about the internet and he went to the United States at the early of 1995. He got introduced to internet with his friends' help. As the first encounter he searched the word "beer". He was wondered because although he found information related to beer from many countries, but nothing from China. He was surprised again once he tried to search for general information about China and the answer was nothing again. So from there, he and his friend created an "ugly" website related to China. Within five hours of creating the website he had received emails from some Chinese who wishing to know about him. This makes him realized that the internet had something great to offer. In April 1995, Jack Ma, his wife and a friend collected twenty thousand dollars and started an internet company. Their company was dedicated to creating websites for companies. He named their company "China Yellow Pages." Within three years, his company had made ¥5,000,000 which was equivalent to U$800,000. He also introduced the Alipay system to this world. He keeps spreading about his service around people. The open culture character that Jack Ma having was helped him a lot to be one of successful entrepreneur in the world and became a known business man to this world.

 Moreover, Jack Ma also is an example of entrepreneur with team-oriented character. In 1999, as a prelude to his business, he had set up a team with his 17 friends in his apartment at the lakeside gardens in Hangzhou. The group was established for focusing on building their own online marketplace. In the makeshift headquarters, he gave talk about his plan to make a great start-up so that china can compete on the world. Even as the team began to grow, Alibaba felt more like a close-knit family. He created an ethos of being scrappy little company towards a large business to motivate the team. When Alibaba is steadily developing and gaining profit, he provided every employee with a can of silly string. The team also created a fun atmosphere so that all the staff eager to do their job. He got the team working on it to do hand stands during breaks to keep their energy levels up in the early 2000’s. Jack Ma was not someone that keeping all the equity for himself and really hoarding all of the wealth and riches. He was able to get an amazing performance out of his team by empowering his workers with an ownership mentality. In the business context, Jack Ma never just about him but the team.

 Jack Ma is also an opened risk-taker because of he dared to take the risk to challenge the status quo that was supported by many years of conventional wisdom about business and competition in the digital age. Besides that, he believed partnership is very important to his business and it will help him to manage his business become more systematically. However, his unconventional way of thinking is placing customers as his first priority, partners as his second priority and lastly the shareholders which he already took the risk and challenged it. As we knew that china is the country that treated women as inferior to men, but, Jack Ma was taking the risk and challenge it. In his company, there are total 47% of the employees are women and most of them are company’s top executives. By this, it will balance the leaderships and ideas to conduct business efficiently.

Last but not least, jack ma is definitely a visionary entrepreneur, he certainly process the ability to look into the future and know what will happen in the future, he sees the opportunity that others don’t.  Rebecca Fannin, an author and journalist have interviewed Jack Ma and conclude that he is a true visionary.  Due to his visionary 16 years ago, he started the Alibaba with his 17 friends in his apartment, while now, Alibaba become the largest online retailer in china and handled $248 billion of transaction.  The success of the company is due to the ability of Jack Ma to look into the future and see the opportunity and possibilities that other do not know, this is how Jack Ma leads the company into the golden path of success.  Short to say, his fail his effort and hard work can be summarize into one word, that is “visionary”. 

From the explanation above, we could conclude Jack Ma is known by the world today because he practiced the various types of entrepreneur traits such as failure is an option, open culture, team oriented, open risk taker and visionary.  Besides the business knowledge and traits, there are still many factors that could determine one`s success.  Success is not something that can be achieve easily, one need to put in time, money, passion and effort.  I would like to end the essay with a quote by jack ma “if you don’t give up, you still have a chance”.