1984, after hard work, Ma Yun finally stumbled into the Foreign Languages Department of Hangzhou Normal University-his score was a junior college score, 5 points short of the undergraduate course, but it happened that the undergraduate course was not full. Ma Yun was fortunate to be an undergraduate and was elected president of the student union with full enthusiasm and chivalry. After graduating from college, Ma Yun taught English at Hangzhou Institute of Electronic Technology. 199 1 year, Ma Yun set foot in business for the first time and founded Haibo translation agency with friends. As a result, the first month's income was in 700 yuan, and the rent was 2,000 yuan, which was unanimously ridiculed. When everyone is shaken, Ma Yun firmly believes that as long as you do it, there will be prospects. He went to Yiwu and Guangzhou with a big sack on his back. translation agency began to sell gifts and flowers and kept running with the most primitive small commodities. In the past two years, Ma Yun not only supported translation agency and organized the first English corner in Hangzhou, but also became the teacher who offered the most courses in the hospital. Today, as Ma Yun wishes, Haibo has become the largest translation agency in Hangzhou and even in Zhejiang Province. "My philosophy has always been that people who really want to make money must look down on money. If money is always on your mind, you can't make money. " The experience of going to sea for the first time left a deep impression on Ma Yun. At the end of 1994, Ma Yun first heard about the Internet; 1at the beginning of 995, he accidentally went to the United States and came into contact with the internet for the first time. Jack Ma, who knew nothing about computers, began to understand the Internet with the help and introduction of his friends. At that time, there was no information about China on the Internet. Out of curiosity, Ma Yun found someone to make a web page of his own translation company. Unexpectedly, he received four emails in three hours. Sensitive Ma Yun realized that the Internet will definitely change the world! Immediately, restless, he came up with an idea: to make a website to collect information about domestic enterprises and publish it to the world online. At this time, Ma Yun, who has just turned 30, is already one of the top ten outstanding young teachers in Hangzhou, and the principal has also promised him the position of director of the Foreign Affairs Office. However, Ma Yun, a maverick, waved his hand, gave up all his positions, status and treatment in the school and resolutely went to sea. At this time, the Internet is still very strange to most people in China; Even on a global scale, the internet has just begun to develop: on the other side of the ocean, Negroponte just wrote "Digital Survival", and Yang Zhiyuan founded Yahoo less than a year ago; In Beijing, Professor Qian of China Academy of Sciences just connected to the American Internet with an optical fiber and sent and received the first email. Under such circumstances, as far away as Hangzhou, where dial-up internet service has not been opened, Ma Yun has dreamed of using the Internet to start a company, go to sea and make a profit. This idea was immediately strongly opposed by relatives and friends. "I invited 24 friends to my house to discuss. I talked for two hours, and they were all at a loss, so was I. What happened in the end? Twenty-three people said forget it, only one said they could try, and if they couldn't, they ran back quickly. I thought about it all night and decided to do it the next morning, even if 24 people opposed it. " "In fact, the biggest determination is not that I have great confidence in the Internet, but that I feel that doing one thing, whether it is failure or success, experience is a kind of success. If you travel, you can turn around if you can't; But if you don't do it, it's like thinking about thousands of roads at night and getting up in the morning to take the original road. " After many years, recalling the situation of pushing and shoving in the crowd that year, Ma Yun still applauded his choice. 1In April, 1995, Ma Yun and his wife raised 20,000 yuan with a friend, and the company Haibo Network, which specializes in making home pages for enterprises, opened. The website was named "China Yellow Pages" and became one of the earliest Internet companies in China. Three months later, Shanghai near Hangzhou officially opened the Internet, and Ma Yun's business volume surged. When companies are busy building their own homepages, Ma Yun's foresight has brought him huge profits. At that time, the price of making a home page with 2000 words in Chinese and English and color photos was 20000 yuan. In less than three years, Ma Yun made an easy profit of 5 million yuan and became famous in China. 1997 At the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, Ma Yun led an entrepreneurial team to the north, and established a series of national websites such as official website of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, online China Commodity Exchange Market, online China Technology Export Fair, China Investment Promotion Association, online Canton Fair, and China Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. This experience is precious to Ma Yun. He told reporters: "Before that, I was just a small businessman in Hangzhou. Working in the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, I know the future development direction of the country and learn to think from a macro perspective. I am no longer a frog in the well. " 1at the beginning of 999, Ma Yun, who broadened his macro vision, returned to Hangzhou to start a second business. He decided to get involved in e-commerce. In what mode? At that time, the e-commerce done by the global Internet basically served the top 15% large enterprises in the world. However, Ma Yun grew up in Zhejiang, where private small and medium-sized enterprises are developed, and rolled over from the bottom market, knowing the plight of small and medium-sized enterprises. He resolutely made a decision-"abandon whales and shrimps, abandon 15% of large enterprises, and only do 85% of small and medium-sized enterprises." "If enterprises are divided into the rich and the poor, then the Internet is the world of the poor. Because large enterprises have their own special information channels and huge advertising fees, small enterprises have nothing, and they are the people who need the Internet most. And I just want to lead the poor to the revolution. " What Ma Yun has to do is to provide such a platform to gather the import and export information of small and medium-sized enterprises around the world-"Small and medium-sized enterprises are like stones on the beach, but they can all be stuck together through the Internet. Stones glued with cement are very powerful and can compete with big stones. The characteristic of the Internet economy is that it is hard and slow. " In this way,1September 1999, Ma Yun's Alibaba website was born, determined to be the guide for small and medium-sized enterprises to knock on the door of wealth. At that time, it was the moment when the Internet boom surged in China, but both investors and the public always paid attention to the portal. Ma Yun's establishment of e-commerce website at this time is a contrarian move in China, creating a brand-new model of the whole Internet industry, which is called the fourth Internet model after Yahoo, Amazon and Yi Bei by the international media. Alibaba's unique B2B model, even in the United States today, is difficult to find a successful example. One month after the website was registered, the $5 million venture capital led by Gao Sheng arrived immediately. The first thing Ma Yun did with this money was to introduce a large number of external talents from Hong Kong and the United States. This period is also the time when Ma Yun declared that "entrepreneurs can only hold positions of company commander and below, and all positions above the head level are held by MBA". At that time, the senior management team of 12 people, except Ma Yun himself, all came from overseas. At the end of 1999, Ma Yun won the appreciation of Sun Zhengyi, the boss of Softbank, who is known as the "network weather vane" with a six-minute story. After three minutes of separate negotiations, Ma Yun got a $35 million investment from Sun Zhengyi. Softbank accepts investment applications from 700 companies every year, and only invests in 70 of them, while Masayoshi Son only negotiates with one of them. Facts have proved that both Goldman Sachs and Masayoshi Son have made accurate judgments on Ma Yun. In the field of e-commerce, Ma Yun showed his unique perspective and vision: in the year of starting a business, Alibaba had 89,000 members; It reached 500,000 in 2000; In the severe winter of 200 1 internet, it still achieved the goal of one million members and became the first business website with more than one million members in the world. At present, the total membership has exceeded 3.5 million. In the coldest winter of the Internet, Alibaba became the first batch. . Com company announced its profit, and was selected as a case by famous business schools such as Harvard and Stanford, and ranked first in the world's best e-commerce website by Forbes for four consecutive years. In February this year, Alibaba announced its new round of successful private placement with a total amount of US$ 82 million in Beijing, which is by far the largest fundraising in China's Internet industry. This strategic investment, plus the balance of previous venture capital and its own profit of more than 654.38 billion yuan, currently Alibaba has 654.38 billion yuan in cash, which can keep pace with any domestic portal. Ma Yun released grandiloquence in this regard-"In 2004, we will achieve a daily profit of 654.38+0 million; In 2005, we had to pay a tax of 6.5438+0 million yuan every day. " This is Yun himself-seemingly arrogant, but actually smart. The figures released by Ma Yun are all based on financial statistics: the goal of a single-day profit of 654.38+0 million was actually achieved in July 2003; In front of the public, he boasted that the "Haikou" with a daily tax payment of 6.5438+0 million yuan is also the goal being implemented within the company.