Jack Ma: The future has come

Chapter 7 Ali's Next Decade (2)
Just like respected iconic companies such as Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and Samsung, the future of Alibaba will also attract the world's expectations.Ali people should not complain or be obsessed with external criticism and accusations. They must strive to repay the society better and better, and meet the expectations and needs of customers!Insistence on the future does not mean that we have to give up today, but if we do not change today for the future, we will not see our future.

There are no omnipotent enterprises and entrepreneurs. Only by making continuous progress and breakthroughs in inheritance mechanisms such as talent discovery, value creation, and cultural organization, can enterprises and entrepreneurs be omnipotent in market competition.For Ali people, no matter how time changes or how the world changes, we must focus on the original starting point - to make the world easy to do business!
Alibaba, Let's open the future (let's open the future)!

Editor's note:

Alibaba Group has implemented a successor training plan for every position in the company since 2003. In 2009, it officially launched the construction of the partner system. In 2012, it began to implement the preparations for the overall replacement and upgrading of the leadership rejuvenation. On May 2015, 5, Jack Ma announced the collective handover of a large number of "old Ali people" in an email to the company's internal employees, claiming that this was the largest management change in history; at the same time, he launched Alibaba's new CEO Zhang Yong.

3. Help American SMEs realize the "Chinese Dream"

20 years ago, I set foot on American soil for the first time, and my first stop was Seattle.Before coming to the United States, I tried to understand the United States from different channels such as textbooks, teachers, and parents.I thought I knew a lot about America, but when I set foot on this land, I realized I was completely wrong.American society is totally different from what I learned from textbooks and what I heard from my teachers.

In Seattle, I was exposed to the Internet for the first time.After returning to China, I told my friends: I plan to start an Internet company.I invited 24 friends and discussed for two hours.In the end, no one understood what I was trying to do, so we voted and 23 people voted against it.My friends advised me: "Forget it! There is no such thing as the 'Internet', don't try it." Only one person said to me: "Ma Yun, I believe in you, although I I don’t know what you want to do, but if you want to do it, do it boldly, because you are still young.” At that time, I was 30 years old.

Alibaba and "Open Sesame"

Without any computer knowledge or business knowledge, I started my business.

My wife, a classmate and I cobbled together $1000 to start our first company.Our entrepreneurial journey at the beginning was very difficult. At that time, I felt like a blind man riding on the back of a tiger.For the first three years of my business, my life was really, really bad.I vividly remember that I wanted to get a $3000 loan from the bank, and it took me three full months.I used all my connections and still didn't get the loan.Everyone thinks Jack Ma is lying because in 1996 people didn't believe in the existence of the internet.

In the second half of 1996, China had just connected to the Internet.So, I invited 10 friends from the media to my home, and wanted to tell them that I wasn't lying, that the Internet really existed.It took us three and a half hours to download a photo.People said, "Will this thing really work?" I said, "Yes, it will work, but not now, it will be in the next 10 years." Anyway, at least it proves that I am not lying.

I also remember when we tried to help small companies sell products on the Internet, but no one wanted to come because no one was buying things on the Internet at the time.So, in the first week, our seven employees went to buy and sell by themselves.By the second week, someone started selling on our platform, and we bought everything he had for sale.We had two rooms full of things we bought online for the last two weeks that were of no use to us.However, this can tell everyone that the Internet exists, and the Internet is a platform for buying and selling.Things are not as easy as imagined, and no conditions are ripe. During the period from 1995 to 1999, our venture failed.

In 1999, I invited 17 friends to my home, we decided to try again and named the website alibaba.com.People ask me, why are we called Alibaba?Because we hope that the Internet will be like a treasure trove, enabling small businesses to realize their dream of "Open Sesame", and the first thing we want to do is to help small businesses.Plus, the name is easy to spell and catchy.

In China, e-commerce is a way of life

At that time, we noticed that e-commerce in the United States was mostly dedicated to helping large companies and helping them save costs. At that time, there were not so many big companies in China, but there were many small companies.Survival is so tough for small businesses.How interesting it would be if we could use Internet technology to help these small businesses.The United States is used to helping large companies, which is like Americans are good at playing basketball, while in China, we should play table tennis to help those small companies.What we need to do is not to help small companies to save costs, they already know how to save costs, what they need to learn is how to make money.Therefore, our business has been focused on helping small businesses make money online.

We hope that Alibaba, a company, can live for 102 years. This is a clear goal we have given to all employees.No matter how profitable we are, no matter how much money we earn, no matter what we have achieved, we cannot be considered successful.We must not forget that our expectation is to persist for 102 years, only 16 years have passed now, and there are still 86 years ahead!At any point during those 86 years, if the company had failed, we would not have been successful.

In the past, people said: "Your platform is free, and your company is so small." When it was listed in the United States, people said: "Your Alibaba is in e-commerce, just like Amazon." Maybe Amazon is the United States. The only e-commerce model in human eyes, but we are not the same as Amazon.We do not do business ourselves, we only help small and medium-sized enterprises do business.On Alibaba's platform, 1000 million small businesses conduct transactions every day.We don't deliver express ourselves, but 200 million people help us deliver 3000 million packages every day.We also do not have our own warehouses, but we help those small and medium-sized logistics express companies manage thousands of logistics warehouses.We also don't have any merchandise in stock, but we have 3.5 million buyers and over 1.2 million consumers visit our site every day.

In 2014, our sales had reached 3900 billion US dollars.You know, Wal-Mart employs 230 million people, and we just went from 18 to 3.4 people.In the United States, e-commerce is business; in China, e-commerce is a way of life for people.Young people exchange their ideas in buying and selling, communicate with each other, form trust, and establish personal credit records.Just like Starbucks, you go to Starbucks not just to taste how delicious its coffee is, it is also a way of life.This is exactly where Internet e-commerce has changed China.

Alibaba will reach a turnover of US$1 trillion in the next five years.That's my goal, Alibaba's goal, and I think we're going to get there.What makes us even more proud is that we have directly and indirectly provided 1400 million jobs for our country.We create jobs in rural China, and we provide jobs for Chinese women.More than 51% of successful sellers on the Internet in China are women.We are proud of these things.

Chinese consumers want more American products
Some people will ask again, Alibaba has done this now, Alibaba is everywhere, so what is your next goal?What are your plans for the future?Today, more than 80% of online transactions in China are created by Alibaba, and our future goal is to expand Alibaba's business to the world.Alibaba not only wants to become the company that best sells products, but I also hope that under the leadership of Alibaba, the infrastructure of e-commerce can be globalized.Compared with the United States, why is China's e-commerce growing at such an alarming rate?Because China's original commercial infrastructure was too poor.Unlike in the United States, where you have cars, you have Wal-Mart and Kmart everywhere offline[6].But in China, we don't have such a good infrastructure.

E-commerce is like dessert in the United States, a supplement to mainstream commerce, but in China, e-commerce has become the main course.We built the infrastructure for e-commerce.Therefore, if the infrastructure of e-commerce can be globalized, including providing payment tools, logistics centers and transparent and open trading platforms on a global scale, it will help small companies all over the world to sell their products to every corner of the world, Help global consumers buy products from all over the world.Our vision is: in the next 10 years, we will help 20 billion consumers around the world to buy products from all over the world online, and receive the goods within 72 hours worldwide; in China, no matter where you are, within 24 hours Goods received.

Alibaba's globalization strategy is still committed to helping small businesses and helping them do business in the most efficient way.We will help another 1000 million small businesses do business on our own e-commerce platform.We will support these small businesses. We will guide more traffic to them, provide them with payment systems, and provide logistics and distribution systems, so that they can conduct business in any corner of the world more quickly and conveniently.We hope to have 40% of our business outside of China, although currently our overseas business only accounts for 2%.

Maybe people will continue to ask, now that Alibaba's business has expanded and it has raised a lot of funds, will you come to the United States?If you come to the United States, are you planning to "invade the United States"?Ma Yun, when will you come to compete with Amazon?When will it compete with eBay?

Actually, I have a lot of admiration for eBay and Amazon.Alibaba's next strategy is to help American small businesses enter China and help them sell their products to China.In China today, the number of middle-income people is roughly the same as the population of the United States.We believe that in the next 10 years, 3 million people in China will become middle class.Their demand for high-quality products and high-quality services is very large, but China's current situation cannot meet their needs for high-quality products and high-quality services.In the past 20 years, China has been focusing on exporting, but I think that in the next 10-20 years, China should focus on importing.China must learn to import and consume.China should consume and become a global buyer.

At the same time, I think American small businesses and American branded products should also use the Internet to enter the Chinese market.In the past 20 years, large American companies have spread throughout China.For small companies in the United States, taking advantage of e-commerce will be a huge opportunity.Alibaba has helped many American farmers sell their products to China, and Seattle's cherries are an example.You can't imagine that the US ambassador to China came to me and asked me: "Jack Ma, can you help us sell the cherries in Seattle?" At that time, the cherries were still growing on the trees, so we made a pre-sale, within 24 hours , 8 Chinese families snatched up 16 kilograms of cherries.After the cherries are picked, they are shipped to China within 24 hours. In 2014, we sold 30 kilos of cherries from the US.Likewise, we help the United States market seafood from Alaska.We also help Canada sell lobsters. The amount of lobsters sold is an international sales volume that they will not be able to achieve in 10 years.Many well-known brands in the United States have also been promoted through our platform. For example, after the Costco supermarket settled in, it sold 600 tons of nuts in the first month, with sales reaching 650 million US dollars.Since we can help them sell lobsters and cherries, why can't we use our system to help more American SMEs?I also want to borrow another data as an example. Every year on November 11, China’s Singles’ Day, Alibaba turns it into a shopping carnival. On "Double 11" in 2014, our transaction volume was as high as 11 billion US dollars, and 97 million consumers flooded in in the first minute.

Every day, hundreds of millions of "hungry" consumers come to shop on Alibaba's platform. Chinese consumers need more American products. This is also the purpose and reason of my coming to the United States.We are not here to compete. We are here to bring American SMEs to China.Our vision is "buy globally, sell globally". In the next 10-20 years, no matter where you are, you can buy products from anywhere and sell your products all over the world.Filipinos can buy Norwegian salmon, Norwegians can sell their products to Argentina, Argentines can buy Chinese products, and they can also sell their products to China.This is the direction of the Internet's future transformation.The force for change is powerful, and Alibaba is proud to have changed China.

"World War III"

After the first technological revolution, the world has a new form of business organization - the factory; after the second technological revolution, the world has a new form of business organization - the group company.In today's DT era, I think a new business form has been born - the platform.Some people predict that the third world war will break out in the first half of the 21st century.If unfortunately, it seems to me that this so-called Third World War will be different from the previous two.The First World War was a war for hegemony between two hostile military groups in the world, and the Second World War was a worldwide anti-fascist war. This time it will no longer be a war of human cannibalism, but a war of It is a "war" for mankind to join hands against disease, poverty and climate change.In my opinion, this is the future of humanity.All countries and all people should unite to face the battle of human survival.

We will be able to rely on the younger generation, rely on computers and big data, not rely on weapons to solve the problems facing humanity.This is a dream I'm passionate about, and it has nothing to do with money.It is not only technology that changes the world, but also your dream that you believe you can change the world.We know the road is long and not easy.As I said before, it was not easy to do Internet business in China in the past 20 years.Today is difficult, tomorrow is more difficult, and the day after tomorrow is beautiful.But the vast majority of people will die tomorrow night if they don't work hard.

Editor's note:

On June 2015, 6, New York time, the 9-year-old Economic Club of New York ushered in a Chinese business leader—Jack Ma, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Alibaba.Jack Ma delivered a keynote speech to nearly a thousand business leaders.He proposed that the United States plays basketball to help large companies; Ali plays table tennis to help small and medium-sized enterprises in the United States realize the "Chinese Dream."Alibaba, which is completely different from American e-commerce, put forward the vision of "buying globally and selling globally" and the goal of reaching a turnover of US$108 trillion in the next five years.Following Alibaba’s IPO (initial public offering) financing roadshow, Alibaba’s “Journey to the East” shows that: Alibaba was born in China, but exists for the world.

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