Jack Ma - Founder of Alibaba retires in style

[Jiehfeng]

And for his employees, he did this:

The message (paraphrased): "Thank you all for your contribution to the company. I have learnt working with wine that work should be like water, it's quality decides that of the wine. But life should be lived like a wine, full with fragrance. I hope your life will also be like this wine. Full of flagrance and taste!"

Here's his story for those that don't know: https://www.inc.com/business-insider/alibaba-jack-ma-life-story.html

Without money or connections, the only way Ma could get ahead was through education. After high school, he applied to go to college -- but failed the entrance exam twice. After a great deal of studying, he finally passed on the third try, going on to attend Hangzhou Teachers Institute. He graduated in 1988 and started applying to as many jobs as he could.

He received more than a dozen rejections -- including from KFC -- before being hired as an English teacher. Ma was a natural with his students and loved his job -- though he only made $12 a month at a local university.

Ma had no experience with computers or coding, but he was captivated by the internet when he used it for the first time during a trip to the US in 1995. He had recently started a translation business and made the trip to help a Chinese firm recover a payment. Ma's first online search was "beer," but he was surprised to find that no Chinese beers turned up in the results. It was then that he decided to found an internet company for China.

Though his first two ventures failed, four years later he gathered 17 of his friends in his apartment and convinced them to invest in his vision for an online marketplace he called "Alibaba." The site allowed exporters to post product listings that customers could buy directly.

Soon, the service started to attract members from all over the world. By October 1999, the company had raised $5 million from Goldman Sachs and $20 million from SoftBank, a Japanese telecom company that also invests in technology companies. The team remained close-knit and scrappy. "We will make it because we are young and we never, never give up," Ma said to a gathering of employees.

 

[Hanafuda]

The audience's reactions give me the feeling there's a camera trained on every face at the "party" to make sure their reactions are sufficiently gushing. But that's life when you choose to work for a narcissistic billionaire.

 

[gamesquest1]

thats actually pretty cool, as much as people like to moan about anything any everything I'm sure those in attendance had a pretty cool night out

i mean i have only ever been to 1 sort of private corporate event for the launch of one of the sony xperia phones and it was pretty cool even though they had cameras and shit in peoples faces to catch people looking happy, its a free night out with fancy food and free drinks and you got a free phone, not to be scoffed at by any means if you actually get to go even if you do say "urggh it was just sony trying to woo the press"....which it certainly was

 

[Jiehfeng]

The audience's reactions give me the feeling there's a camera trained on every face at the "party" to make sure their reactions are sufficiently gushing. But that's life when you choose to work for a narcissistic billionaire.

That's a good attempt at humor, but you'd be surprised at how many people there respect the man and have him as their role model. Also where do you get narcissistic from? I'm curious, all I've seen is him being more or less humble, definitely nothing like some US entrepreneurs who can be douchebags.