Jack Ma

In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'

— Jack Ma

I respect Apple. It's a great company that changed the world, especially the mobile time.

— Jack Ma

I want to change history, do something important in my life, and influence individuals like we have with millions of small businesses on Alibaba. Then they love and respect you because you made their life important.

— Jack Ma

My job is making money, helping other people make money. I am spending money, trying to make sure more people get rich, because you cannot spend a lot of money, right? So my job is spending money, helping others. This is a headache.

— Jack Ma

My vision is to build an e-commerce ecosystem that allows consumers and businesses to do all aspects of business online.

— Jack Ma

On privacy issues, it's just like hundreds of years ago when people said, 'I would rather put my money under my pillow than in a bank.' But today, banks know how to protect money much better than you do. Today, we may not have the answers to privacy issues, but I believe our young people will come up with the solutions.

— Jack Ma

Our philosophy is that we want to be an ecosystem. Our philosophy is to empower others to sell, empower others to service, making sure the other people are more powerful than us. With our technology, our innovation, our partners - 10 million small business sellers - they can compete with Microsoft and IBM.

— Jack Ma

The lessons I learned from the dark days at Alibaba are that you've got to make your team have value, innovation, and vision. Also, if you don't give up, you still have a chance. And, when you are small, you have to be very focused and rely on your brain, not your strength.

— Jack Ma

The more I come to know about the outside world's perception of China, the more I feel there are all sorts of misunderstandings, and to a certain extent, people do not get the full picture from the media. A lot of foreigners have few opportunities to visit China, and a lot of Chinese people do not have the chance to go to Europe or to the West.

— Jack Ma

The most important thing is to make the technology inclusive - make the world change. Next, pay attention to those people who are 30 years old, because those are the internet generation. They will change the world; they are the builders of the world.

— Jack Ma