Dream and experiment: learn from Alibaba

Rumors of Alibaba's listing have recently been rife, with many speculating that Alibaba's market capitalisation will overtake Baidu and other Internet companies, becoming the biggest market-capitalisation company in the Chinese Internet industry. What interests me is not the result of a successful business (in just 8 years from zero to more than 1 billion renminbi turnover, tens of billions of of the market value), but the success of the business and what we can learn from it.

Ma's own statement is very simple: the process is to resign from Business (1999), get Goldman Sachs and son venture capital (1999:5 Million dollars, 2000:20 million dollars), start to have income, earn 1 Yuan (2001), daily Income 1 million (2002), Earning 1 million (2003) a day and paying a tax of 1 million (2004) per day. These figures are admirable, but they do not allow us to learn from them.

In the study of Alibaba, perhaps the most serious, the most detailed is the "southerly window" senior financial reporter Mr. Zheng in 2005 on the basis of in-depth investigation wrote a book: "Alibaba: The world is not difficult to do business." Friends who want to know more about Alibaba can buy this book for a look.

Alibaba and Ma Yun's success, there are a lot of factors. People who don't like Ma Yun may be more likely to attribute his success to Ma's luck: When no one in China knows what the Internet is (1995) He has contacted the internet in the United States and made his first humble web page (to publicize his first company: the Haibo translation agency, founded in 1993). He was able to rely on ministry to experiment with some of his ideas (1997-1998). He got the favor of VCs in the hottest days of the internet, and not a small number. He got to know the big names in the Internet field early (soft silver son, Yahoo's Jerry Yang, etc.). He caught up with 2003 years of SARS, can not go out of the people can only do business online, and in addition to Alibaba people do not have too many choices. Of course, there are many people choose to doubt, suspected Ma Yun Big talk, doubt whether Alibaba really like Ma described the success.

I don't want to get involved in these arguments, maybe when Alibaba goes public, there's something to clarify. I believe Alibaba is a successful enterprise. And the subjective reason behind this success, I believe is Ma Yun and his team dream and experiment.

On the dream, Zheng said: "Ma Yun is not so much the president of Alibaba ..., it is better to say that he is Alibaba's dream-making more appropriate." He is responsible for creating a dream: What the future will be, what Alibaba can do in this future, and then use this dream to guide Alibaba forward. ”

This dream is: "Let the world no hard to do business." means to build one of the world's largest online fairs. Specific targets, Ma Yun in his opening speech said: "First, we want to build a company that survives 80 years." Second, we need to build an E-commerce company that serves Chinese SMEs. Third, we want to become the world's largest E-commerce companies, to enter the top ten global web sites. "Today, these may not be called dreams," he said. But in the 1999 years of February, Ma Yun started his business, he only had 500,000 yuan start-up funds and 18 start-up employees. At that time, such an idea you can only say is a dream (the unkind will say: This is wishful thinking).

Jack Ma and his team were fortunate to have defined their dreams through a series of (intentional and unintentional) experiments and found a way to achieve their dreams.

The first experiment: a rough Web page was made in the United States in 1995, and a few hours later, 5 emails were sent to cooperate.

The second experiment: the Chinese Yellow Pages, which began in 1995, copied his previous experience for other businesses. At this point he found that small and medium-sized enterprises in the desire for profit, as long as they can make money, they can earn money. 1997, the company's revenue reached 7 million.

The third experiment: to Beijing for the Moftec to build China's online commodity trading market. Using this site to verify the many elements of Alibaba's website, such as search engines, commodity classification, fees and so on, also found that BBS forum even more than the homepage of the site is also popular.

A fourth experiment: in many possible profit models (online electronics market, paid members, online promotions, online virtual hosts, Chinese supplier Services, etc.) find the most suitable for market demand "Chinese suppliers" service, and this product makes Alibaba has a few billion annual income (2005: About 10 to become " Chinese suppliers "of enterprises, each annual payment of Alibaba 460,000 Yuan.

I admire the people who have dreams. Want to have a dream of friends like Alibaba, have enough luck and experimental conditions, the dream into reality.

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