The Man That Rejected 30 Times

4 min readOct 11, 2020

In today’s everyday life, online shopping is one of the activities we do. There is also more and more e-commerce available in the world, starting from Alibaba.com, AliExpress, Amazon, eBay, etc. Among the e-commerce list above, Alibaba.com and AliExpress are part of the Alibaba Group.

Alibaba Group is a multinational company specializing in e-commerce, retail, internet, and technology. Alibaba Group was founded by Jack Ma and his friends on April 4, 1999. In this article, I will tell you about Jack Ma and how he managed to establish the Alibaba Group.

Who is Jack Ma?

Ma Yun (known as Jack Ma) was born in Hangzhou, located in the south-eastern part of China. His parents were traditional Musicians-Storytellers and they didn’t make enough to be even considered as a middle class during those days. During his lifetime, Jack has failed and rejected over and over again. In his early childhood, he failed in his primary school examinations twice, thrice during his middle school exams, and thrice before finally joining Hangzhou Normal University. After spending his 3 years in university and got his bachelor’s degree, Jack failed to land a job after applying to them 30 times. One of the experiences that he recollects from his interview is that “When KFC came to China, 24 people went for the job. Twenty-three people were accepted. I was the only guy who wasn’t.”

How Jack Ma established Alibaba

In 1995, Jack visited the United States for a government project related to highway building and at that time he was introduced to the internet and computers by his friend. The first thing he did at the time was a search for “Beer” and he couldn’t find any information about beer from China. He then searched about “China” and none of the information came up. It was then that he decided it was time for China and its people to use the internet.

In the year of 1999, Jack gathered 17 of his friends in his apartment and convinced them to invest in him and his vision for an online marketplace he called “Alibaba.” The site allowed exporters to post product listings that customers could buy directly. A few months after Jack successfully convinced his friends and started Alibaba, in October the company had raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank. Later on, in 2005 Yahoo invested in $1 billion in Alibaba in exchange for about a 40% stake in the company. It was after that, the company continues to grow rapidly and expanding all across the world.

Final words

I myself start to make Jack Ma as my role model to never give up when I was in the 1st year of university. At that time I was so impressed when I watch the interview then know that he got rejected 30 times even from KFC and this answer from Jack Ma about rejection become my favorite “Well, I think we have to get used to it. We’re not that good.”

Below are some of my personal favorite quotes from Jack Ma about not giving up.

“Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.” — Jack Ma
“If you don’t give up, you still have a chance. Giving up is the greatest failure.” — Jack Ma
“You never know how much can you do in your life.” — Jack Ma
“The very important thing you should have is patience.” — Jack Ma

Thank you for spending the time to read this article. I hope after reading this article you all know that being rejected does not mean that you are not good enough, it is actually a process to become better and reach a new point of your life.

References

The Man That Rejected 30 Times

Written by Alexander Salim