Alibaba

Jack Ma graduated from Hangzhou Teacher's Institute in 1988 after failing China's university entrance exam twice. He applied for 30 jobs and was rejected from all of them. When KFC opened in Hangzhou, 24 people applied. 23 were hired. Ma was the only one turned down. He applied to Harvard ten times and was rejected every time. He became an English teacher earning $12 a month. He later described the rejection years as the best education he ever received.

Jack Ma founded Alibaba in his apartment in Hangzhou in February 1999 with 17 friends and colleagues. He gave a speech — later called the "Crazy Jack Ma Speech" — telling them they were starting a company that would compete with American internet giants. He warned them it would be hard, that they might fail, and that they should not expect to get rich quickly. Several people in the room were crying. Within fifteen years, Alibaba would be worth more than $800 billion.

Alibaba went public on the New York Stock Exchange on September 19, 2014, raising $25 billion — the largest IPO in history at the time. Jack Ma, the English teacher who had been rejected from KFC, became the richest person in China. SoftBank, which had invested $20 million in Alibaba in 2000, saw that investment become worth $60 billion on IPO day alone.

In October 2020, Jack Ma gave a speech at a financial conference in Shanghai criticising Chinese financial regulators, comparing state-owned banks to "pawnshops." Two days before Ant Group was set to complete the world's largest IPO at $37 billion, Chinese regulators suspended it. Ma disappeared from public view for three months. When he reappeared, he had given up effective control of both Alibaba and Ant Group. The episode was the most dramatic demonstration of regulatory power over private enterprise in modern Chinese history.

In early 2025, Jack Ma began reappearing at Alibaba's Hangzhou headquarters, taking a direct role in strategy for the first time since 2020. His return coincided with a softened regulatory stance from Beijing and Alibaba's aggressive pivot to AI — pledging ¥380 billion ($52 billion) in cloud and AI infrastructure over three years. Alibaba's stock surged over 90% in 2025. The company that had been kneecapped by a speech was back — powered by AI, led once again by the man who had started it all with $12 a month and a refusal to accept rejection.