Top 10 surprising facts about Jack Ma

Top 10 surprising facts about Jack Ma

Jack Ma is a Chinese business magnate, investor and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and former executive chairman of Alibaba Group, a multinational technology conglomerate. In addition, he co-founded Yunfeng Capital, a Chinese private equity firm.

His story begins on September 10, 1964, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. He was born in a modest family to parents who worked as traditional musicians-storytellers.

His story has been an encouraging one, as it’s full of failures, but that did not deter him from finding a seat at the world’s richest people’s table.

Let’s have a look at some ups and downs of Jack Ma’s life.

1. Jack Ma’s real name is Ma Yun

Jack Ma – Flickr

Jack is a nickname given to him by one of his foreigner friends, who had a hard time pronouncing his Chinese name. Young Ma adopted that nickname and uses it up to date.

2. Jack Ma is a Tai Chi enthusiast

Tai Chi practice – Flickr

Ma has been practicing Tai Chi for years now. He also often hires Tai Chi masters to teach regular classes to Alibaba employees, and it’s mandatory.

He holds high regard for Tai Chi that he hopes to be remembered as a Tai Chi master rather than as the founder of his company Alibaba. Furthermore, he said Tai Chi can be a business philosophy as it is about calming down and keeping oneself balanced.

3. How Jack Ma learned English

At the age of 13, his hunger for the English language had him driving for 45 minutes to and from home to Hangzhou Hotel to talk to foreigners and give them free tours in exchange for him learning the English language.

This exposed him to a more globalized view and learned about the western people’s methods.

4. He failed his university admission exam twice

Jack Ma at the UNclimatechange _ Flickr

It took Ma three years to get admitted into a university. The Chinese college entrance exams are held once a year, and Ma failed in his first two attempts. It was after the third attempt that he got accepted to The Hangzhou Teacher’s Institute to study Bachelor of Arts in English.

Despite the hard time being admitted to college, his leadership skills didn’t take long to show. Before his graduation in 1988, Ma was elected student chairman of his university, and he later served as the city’s Student’s Federation chairman.

5. He started his career as an English Teacher

Though Ma Yun had trained to be a high school English teacher, he was among a group of students who were assigned by the government to teach English at a university.

He was assigned to Hangzhou Dianzi University as an English lecturer with a salary of around $15 per month.

6. He has experienced rejection and failures

Jack Ma speaks at the Official Launch of Electronic World – Flickr

Ma didn’t have it easy, as he had his share of struggles. Ma didn’t perform well in school and that saw him failing the entrance exam twice. During his first job as a teacher, Ma applied to Harvard Business School 10 times and got rejected each time.

After his teaching job, he applied for a job in KFC that had just opened an outlet in Hangzhou, and out of the 24 applicants, Ma was the only one to be denied the job.

He applied for 30 different jobs and got rejected by all of them. One of them was a police job where he is quoted saying “I went for a job with the police; they said, you’re no good”.

7. He was kidnapped on his first visit to America

In 1995, Ma traveled to the United States for the first time for an interpretation gig. Part of the reason for accepting the gig was to help a friend collect a debt from an American businessman. 

The deal however did not go to plan as the businessman didn’t pay back. Instead, he locked Ma in his house and got a handgun out, trying to bully Ma into cutting a deal.

Ma had no option but to comply with his demands while figuring out an escape plan.

A few days later, the businessman took Ma with him to Las Vegas as a “routine showcase trip”. Ma had no money on him, so he gambled the last few dollars he had on slot machines. Fortunately, he was able to win $600 which he used to buy a plane ticket to Seattle, leaving everything behind.

The events traumatized Ma that he says that every time he thinks of LA, he has a nightmare.

8. When Ma first discovered the internet

In 1995, Ma went on a trip that he didn’t know was about to change his life for good. On his first trip to the United States he went on an interpreting business in Seattle and while visiting a friend, Ma first laid his eyes on a computer.

Astonished by the mysterious device, his friend told him to try it out, and that’s when he discovered the World Wide Web. He surfed the internet searching for beer, but he was surprised none of the information was about China. He instantly saw potential and started looking for ways to make use of the internet in online business in China.

9. The reason behind the name Alibaba

Alibaba and the Forty Thieves coloring Book – Flickr

He took inspiration from the world-famous story Ali Baba and forty thieves, and he named the company Alibaba. Ma went on the streets asking people asking them if they knew Alibaba and people from all over the world all said they knew about Alibaba. 

Ma wanted a name with global appeal, and he had just found one in Alibaba. He settled with the name Alibaba also because it begins with A, meaning his company would appear on top of lists.

10. His initial plan was to hand over the company to professionals after four years

Alibaba signage – Flickr

Jack Ma is well known for his bold talks nowadays, but that wasn’t the case back in his early years. He first discovered a computer at the age of 31, he had no coding knowledge, and he was the founder of an online technology company.

In 1999 when starting Alibaba, he was a guy with a dream who felt he could only stay at the company for four years before handing it over to professionals. This plan however did not happen.