Life Summary: Jack Ma, Business Magnate

Born to a poor family in communist China, Jack Ma endured numerous failures in school and entrepreneurship before finally setting up Alibaba—a company which revolutionised trading in China and earned him billions of dollars. This is the timeline of the downs and ups across his life…

1964 – Ma Yun is born in Hangzhou, China. His mother is a factory worker. His father is a photography for the Hangzhou Photography Agency. At the time of his birth, there is almost no private enterprise in China. 90% of industry is run by the state. 

Age 2 – Chairman Mao comes into power and the Cultural Revolution happens, resulting in 10 years of turmoil, bloodshed and stagnation. 

Childhood – Yun is a fan of the author Jin Yong, whose writing is infused with traditional Chinese culture and arts, as well as Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. He learns tai chi.

Age 14 – Deng Xiaoping launches China’s ‘open-door policy’—leaving self-sufficiency behind to allow Chinese citizens to participate actively in global markets. Tourists begin coming to Hangzhou. For the next 9 years, Jack would offer tourists a free tour of the West Lake if they taught him English. One of the tourists has a father and husband both named Jack. She suggests Yun be called Jack too and he becomes known henceforth as Jack.

Age 15 – The Morleys from Australia visit Hangzhou and Jack befriends them to practice English. They begin a penpal correspondence that helps Jack improve his written English.  

Age 16 – Jack fails the higher education entrance exam badly, scoring only 1/120 in math. He becomes a menial labourer with his father’s connections, delivering bundles of magazines from printers to train stations. He is rejected from numerous other jobs. 

Age 18 – Jack tries the higher education entrance exam again but still fails to qualify for higher education. He applies for 11 jobs and is rejected by all. He starts going to the library of Zhejiang University every Sunday to memorise formulas and equations. 

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Age 19 – He attempts the entrance exam for a third time and finally raises his math score enough to be accepted into a local university, the Hangzhou Teachers College—not a prestigious college in the city.

Age 21 – He is elected president of the student union and president of the Hangzhou Students Federation. The Morleys, his Australian pen pals, invite him to stay at their home in New Lambton, Australia. He goes to stay there for a month and returns suddenly aware that China is not the richest country in the world, unlike what he’s been taught. He realises he has to use his own mind to make judgements. Jack invites the Morleys back to his family home in return, securing the use of a pickup truck for their trip and arranging a banquet with local officials and VIPs for them too. The Morleys start funding Jack’s compulsory live-in fees at college because Jack’s family can’t afford it. 

Later at college – Jack falls in love with a fellow student from Zhejiang, called Zhang Ying, Cathy. They marry and the Morleys once again step in and give them 22,000 Australian dollars to help them finance the purchase of their first home.  

Age 24 – Jack graduates with a degree in English and gets a 2-year contract to become a lecturer in English and international trade at the Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Engineering. After his day job at the institute, he teaches English at the Hangzhou YMCA. 

Age 28 – Deng Xiaoping pronounces that “to get rich is glorious”, inviting entrepreneurs across the country to return to action. Jack decides to launch his own business before turning 30. He starts a company called ‘Hope’ and works on it part-time after class. Jack’s first child is born. He is named Jerry. 2 more children will follow in the years ahead.

Age 29 – Jack founds the Hangzhou Haibo (meaning ‘hope’) Translation Agency to help local companies find customers overseas. He employs 5 retired teachers from the institute. He gets students from his English night school to help publicise the business and find his first clients but he experiences cash flow issues from the start. To support his business, he starts peddling goods on the streets, effectively turning his translation company into a trading company that sells gifts, flowers, books, plastic carpet, etc.

Age 30 – His translation company is hired by the government of Tonglu County to translate a dispute with an American company. For this he travels to Hong Kong, and later to the United States, ending up in Seattle in a twist of fate where he uses a computer and the internet for the very first time at the home of his colleague’s son-in-law. There is no data on China on the internet then so he creates China’s very first page, advertising his translation agency in there and gets 5 emails enquiring about his services within hours. He decides to set up a business helping Chinese companies find export channels online and partners with his colleague’s son-in-law, Stuart Trusty. Stuart wants a deposit of $200,000 but since Jack is penniless, they agree that Jack just needs to pay up as soon as possible. He brings a computer home with him, the most advanced in China at that time, quits his teaching job and starts his second business—China Pages. He ropes a former colleague, He Yibing, who was a computer science teacher at the same school, and they register the company Hangzhou Haibo Network Consulting. 

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Age 31 – China Pages opens its first office, funded by money borrowed from his family. His wife is his first employee. During the day, they go out and find clients. In the evening, they teach a course about the “information superhighway”. This course helps them get some of their earliest customers. Jack also calls in family and former students to spread the word but this is difficult because Hangzhou itself is not connected to the internet, relying only on Stuart in the USA to upload the information and send over screenshots to prove that the information is indeed online. Until at last, in the fall of 1995, Zhejiang Telecom provides internet services to Hangzhou. Jack is one of the first 200 users of the internet. He steps up his efforts to promote his business and gains some success when the Zhejiang provincial government hires China Pages to build its website, bringing the Chinese government online for the first time. Soon, the papers are featuring his story. Jack travels to Beijing to promote China Pages there and gets more publicity. But even then business is poor. 

Age 32 – Jack is almost bankrupt. He enters a join venture with a bigger company, Hangzhou Dife, his competitor and with only 30% of the company in his ownership, soon loses control of China Pages.

Age 33 – Jack gives up his stake in China Pages and moves to Beijing. He takes a job at the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Corporation and is asked to receive Jerry Yang (founder of Yahoo and a billionaire by age 30) and take him on a tour around Beijing.

Age 35 – Jack founds Alibaba with a few friends, all regular people, none of who come from privileged backgrounds. The China internet market was now dominated by others. He decides to focus on small businesses instead. Over the next year, the number of internet users in China grow from 2 million to 17 million. Jack meets Joe Tsai, a Taiwanese-born investor living in Hong Kong, and gets him to help incorporate his company and find investors around the world. Jack lists all the friends who helped start the company as shareholders, and starts promoting the company in the media. Towards the end of the year, Goldman Sachs invests $5m for a 50% stake in the company.

Age 36 – Alibaba moves into a bigger office in Hangzhou. They start to host gatherings of SMEs in hotel ballrooms, arranging tables to group companies from similar industries. Japanese investment firm SoftBank invests $20 million. Jack travels to Silicon Valley to hire John Wu, a yahoo executive. He allows him to work from Fremont, California. By this time, there are 150,000 members on Alibaba from 188 countries. The company goes on a hiring spree in mainland China, Hong Kong, and California, and steps up advertising. Jack is featured everywhere, including Forbes, but Alibaba is making less than $1 million from web building and hosting for its users.

Age 37 – The tech downturn continues. Jack and Joe bring in COO from GE, Savio Kwan to help turn Alibaba into a proper business. At this point, all Jack wants is to remain standing. 

Age 38 – Alibaba is slowly edging towards profitability. eBay enters China and gains 90% share of the consumer e-commerce market. Jack decides to enter the consumer market to protect Alibaba from eBay with a new venture called Taobao. SoftBank invests $80 million to support this new venture. 

Age 39 – Alibaba launches Taobao in May, during the SARS epidemic and advertises by posting on free bulletin board systems and online forums. He gets each of his employees to find 4 items to list for sale. They only announce their association with Alibaba later in July. New investors start investing in Alibaba and Taobao. 

Age 40 – Ken Morley, the man who had financed Jack many times in his youth, dies at 78. His obituary mentions that he had befriended a poor, young Chinese boy who now heads a successful company in China. Goldman Sachs sells off its stake in Alibaba for $3.3million (this stake would rise in value to more than $12.5 billion later on). Taobao launches Aliwangwang, a chat window for buyers and sellers to communicate. Later that year, they launch Alipay. eBay begins to fail in China.  

Age 41 – Taobao overtakes eBay in market share. Alibaba partners with Yahoo and takes over operations of Yahoo China. 

Age 42 – eBay exits China for good. There are now 30 million users on Taobao. 

Age 43 – Alibaba.com is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, selling 19% of the company for $1.7 billion. Its handle is ‘1688’ which sounds like prospering along the way in Mandarin. 

Age 44 – Tmall is introduced to complement Taobao. 

Age 45 – Jack sells some of his shares for $35 million and buys prime real estate in Hong Kong. Alibaba launches cloud computing subsidiary, Aliyun and acquires HiChina, a leading China infrastructure service provider. 

Age 46 – Alibaba launches Juhuasuan and acquires more companies. 

Age 48 – Alibaba buys back half of Yahoo’s stake in the company and delists Alibaba from the Hong Kong stock exchange. 

Age 49 – Alibaba goes into logistics, TV OS and networking apps. 

Age 50 – Alibaba expands into more digital services and goes public on the New York Stock exchange. Its handle is ‘BABA’. Jack and Joe create the Alibaba philanthropic trust to care for China’s environment and health care. Alibaba Pictures is launched. 

Age 51 – Alibaba expands their digital services and collaborations and acquires more companies. Jack buys Brandon Park estate in New York State’s Adirondack Mountains for $23 million. Alibaba purchases the South China Morning Post, the main English daily newspaper in Hong Kong. They also launch the Alibaba Hong Kong Young Entrepreneurs Foundation. 

Age 53 – Jack makes his acting debut in a kung fu short film Gong Shou Dou. 

Age 53-54 – He is given an honorary doctorate degrees from universities in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Israel. 

Age 54 – Jack steps down as executive chairman of Alibaba Group Holdings.

2020 – Ma is 56 and China’s richest man with a net worth of $44.3 billion.

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Photographs: JD Lasica, World Economic Forum. Compiler: Sy
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