How I created E-commerce In China

Jack Ma built one of the world’s biggest internet companies without learning how to code. The lead founder and executive chairman of Alibaba taught himself English by offering tours to foreign visitors of his hometown, Hangzhou, in eastern China. That’s where, in 1999, Ma launched Alibaba, which took in nearly $23 billion last year. Now Ma is hoping to expand his U.S. business, especially by encouraging more American companies to sell their goods on Alibaba’s platforms.

- Maria Aspan

I STARTED MY FIRST INTERNET company in 1995, after I visited Seattle. China was not connected to the internet, and nobody believed there was this network. So it was difficult to even hire people. The first three people were me, my wife, and a guy who was a university lecturer with me, who had a computer background. China was starting to think about exporting, but small businesses couldn’t go to international trade shows. So our business model was to make homepages for Chinese companies, so they could promote their products and be found by international customers.

Nobody wanted to try it. But I had a friend, Maggie Zhou, who later became my secretary and now is our ambassador to Australia. She worked for a hotel called the Wanghu [Lakeview], the first four-star hotel in Hangzhou. I told her manager that I could make the hotel a free homepage, “and if there are any people who come to your hotel through that homepage, you can pay me.” He agreed. And nothing happened for three months.