Alibaba’s Jack Ma Speech at Stanford University

Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba.com, recently visited USA in search of partners for the sake of business expansion. In his visit, he was alsinvited by Stanford University for a speech. Here are the highlights of his speech by Jefferson Chen, a 1st year Stanford GSB.

• A company’s balance sheet can only be fixed when it dies (i.e. there are ongoing ups and downs in a company’s history. The same for an individual life)
• Disasters always come the moment you start tsense success
• Chinese should use the Chinese way – imported ideas from the west might not work as well as you think (The world is changing – reversing positioning of China and the US in the past decade)
• MBA case studies never work in reality – HBS did a case study on Alibaba years agbut the company could barely recognize themselves in the case
• The purpose of this trip by the entire Alibaba management team is mainly “internal team building”
• Think, learn, innovate
• Visit Ebay, Google, MSFT, Starbucks, Yahoetc
• Looking for partners (making more sense for these big corps in the down turn – “back tbasics”)
• Recruiting from Silicon Valley (looking tadd 5,000 new positions in 2009, current employee base is 12,000) – best time tcompete for the best talents
• #1 priority for a company is NOT its shareholders, but its “CUSTOMERS”
• #2 priority for a company is its Employees; shareholder is only #3
• Most companies only focus on #s, not the vision or its customers and employees, hence they fail
• He personally thinks 2008 was the worst year and best year for Alibaba
• Sensed the financial crisis very early
• Did a lot of internal restructuring (downsize certain functions, preserve cash, etc) tbetter position in the downturn
• Hence now in a superior position vs. competitors
• Think 2009 will the best year for Alibaba
• Believe the darkest period has passed (Aug-Sept 2008), but the most difficult period has not (probably the next 3-5 years)
• Wants twrite a book on “How NOT to be big”
• Current users on Alibaba:
• 30 mm Chinese SMEs and 70 mm int’l SMEs
• 100mm+ users on taobao.com
• Taobao.com
• Overtakes Walmart global total volume in 10 years
• DESIGN FOR CONSUMERS
• Alibaba is a global company – just happen tbe started by Chinese
• “Forget” about your competitors, JUST focus on your CUSTOMERS
• Be yourself, be comfortable yourself
• Group dnot control anything at subs
• Subs fully run by their own CEOs
• NKPI on subs performance
• Group ONLY provides support, not overhead
• Work happily, live seriously