In 1994, at the age of 30, Jack Ma started his own business and founded the first professional translation agency in Hangzhou - Haibo Translation Agency.
In 1995, 31-year-old Jack Ma, who "spoke the best English in Hangzhou", was entrusted by the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Transportation to go to the United States to collect a debt. As a result, he did not get any money, but he discovered a "treasure trove" - ??in Seattle, Jack Ma, who knew nothing about computers, got on the Internet for the first time. As soon as he learned how to surf the Internet, he unexpectedly thought of making an online advertisement for his translation agency. At 10 a.m., he sent the advertisement online. Before 12 noon, he received 6 emails, one from the United States, Germany and Japan, saying that this was The first web page they see about China. Jack Ma realized at that time that the Internet was a gold mine. I began to imagine returning to China to establish a company specializing in the Internet. Jack Ma came up with the idea of ??collecting domestic business information and posting it online to the world. He immediately decided to cooperate with friends in Seattle to create the world's first B2B e-commerce model, and this is how he started to get creative. And named China Yellow Pages (chiinapage).
On the night of returning to China, Ma Yun made an appointment with 24 friends who were engaged in foreign trade and were also his nominal students at night school, and introduced them to them. As a result, 23 people objected, and only one said that he could try it. Ma Yun thought about it all night and decided to do it the next morning. Even if 24 people opposed it, he would do it.
"Actually, the biggest determination is not that I have great confidence in the Internet, but that I feel that experience is success in doing something. If you try it, if it doesn't work, you can still turn around. But if If you don't do it, it's the same as if you think about a thousand roads at night and take the same path in the morning." When Ma Yun mentioned that at the beginning, he admired his courage rather than his vision.
In April 1995, 31-year-old Jack Ma invested 7,000 yuan, and together with his sister, brother-in-law, parents and other relatives, he pooled together 20,000 yuan to create "Haibo Network". "Haibo Network" has since become One of the earliest Internet companies in China, its product is "China Yellow Pages".
In 1996, 32-year-old Jack Ma struggled to promote his own Chinese Yellow Pages. In many cities without the Internet, Jack Ma was called a "liar", but Jack Ma was still as unyielding as a madman. He did this every day. Remind yourself: "The Internet is a 3,000-meter race that will affect human life for the next 30 years. You must run as fast as a rabbit and as durable as a tortoise." Then go out and talk to people about the Internet and convince customers. The business started with difficulty. In 1996, the turnover reached an incredible 7 million yuan! It was also this year that the Internet gradually became popular.
In March 1996, due to the disparity in competition between Hangzhou Telecom, Jack Ma had no choice but to cooperate with Hangzhou Telecom. Jack Ma's China Yellow Pages assets were converted into 600,000 yuan, accounting for 30% of the shares, and Hangzhou Telecom invested 1.4 million yuan. Accounting for 70% of the shares. Later, due to different business concepts, Jack Ma and Hangzhou Telecom parted ways, gave up his China Yellow Pages, and gave all 21% of his China Yellow Pages shares to his employees who started the business together.
This year is 1997. This is the first failure in Jack Ma’s entrepreneurial career. Jack Ma was 33 years old this year.
In 1997, after Jack Ma left China Yellow Pages, he was invited by the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation to join the newly established company of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, China International E-Commerce Center (EDI), which was established and managed by Jack Ma, with Jack Ma accounting for 30% shares, and participated in the development of the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and later the online Chinese commodity trading market. In this process, Jack Ma's btob idea gradually matured, "using e-commerce to serve small and medium-sized enterprises." He even thought about the domain name of the website-Alibaba. The Internet is like an infinite treasure waiting for people to discover, just like the cave opened by Alibaba with a spell.
In 1999, the 35-year-old Jack Ma was fed up with the constraints, obstacles and timidity of working in government enterprises. Unwilling to be controlled by others, Jack Ma declined invitations from Sina and Yahoo and decided to return to Hangzhou to start a business. Team members All gave up other opportunities and decided to follow. In 1999, this was Jack Ma’s second entrepreneurial failure in his life.
On January 15, 1999, Jack Ma and his team quietly returned south.
In February 1999, the first plenary meeting was held at Ma Yun’s home on the lakeside in Hangzhou. 18 entrepreneurial members sat or stood around the impassioned Ma Yun with solemn expressions. Ma Yun delivered a quick and crazy speech Passionate Speech "Let's grope together in the dark and shout together. When I shout and rush forward, you won't panic. You hold a big knife and keep rushing forward. A dozen people rush forward. What's the point of panic?" "At this "rebellion" meeting, Jack Ma and his partners raised 500,000 yuan in capital. The entire process was videotaped as usual. Ma Yun firmly believed that this would be of great historical value. At this meeting, Jack Ma said, "We are going to build an e-commerce company. We have three goals. First, we want to build a company that can survive for 102 years; second, we want to build a company that serves small and medium-sized enterprises in China." E-commerce company; third, we want to build the world's largest e-commerce company and enter the top ten global websites. From this day on, Jack Ma became determined to do e-commerce.