I think that in the Chinese business world, Jack Ma has been the most successful entrepreneur in the past ten years or so.He has almost changed the format of China's e-commerce by himself. China's current e-commerce models, such as B2B, B2C and C2C, are completely different from those in Japan, the United States, South Korea and Europe, and the total sales volume of China's e-commerce is now has surpassed the United States.In this sense, the achievements of the founder of Alibaba are very great. 2014 is also a very important symbolic year for Jack Ma. First, he was born in 1964, and he will be 50 years old in 2014. The Chinese say "you know the destiny at fifty", and Jack Ma has reached the age of "knowing the destiny".

Second, 2014 is also the 15th anniversary of Alibaba, which is an important turning point. Third, Alibaba was listed in North America. The listing of Ali made it possible for China to have a second Internet company with a market value of more than 100 billion US dollars. So even if we say "2014 may be the year of Ma Yun", it is not an exaggeration. Ma Yun is the most controversial person in the Chinese business community.It can be said that for more than ten years, we have watched this person change from a joke to a myth, and this myth exudes a very strong "demon atmosphere".Where is Ma Yun's controversy?It's two o'clock.First, he did a lot of things that people couldn't understand; second, he said a lot of things that people couldn't understand.

I met Jack Ma more than ten years ago, that is, in 2000, and I had already written it at that time.In a private poker game, we were playing cards, and suddenly a man walked in and said, "My name is Ma Yun." Do you know what I felt when I first saw his face? —Wow, people can actually grow up like this!I shook his hand afterwards, and his hand was soft, small, and kind of cold, so I felt like I was holding an ET's hand.After seeing "Do Min Joon" many years later, I think that if there is a "You Who Came from the Stars", it should be someone who looks like Jack Ma.

At that time we asked him: "What do you do?" He said: "I am in e-commerce." At that time, none of us knew what e-commerce was.Then he handed us a business card, the company's name was Alibaba, and a line of words was written on it: "The largest bazaar on the Internet".Ma Yun said: "Do you know that there is a place called Yiwu? My company is an online Yiwu, allowing merchants to set up stalls online. Alibaba is a platform similar to a bazaar." We know that the bazaar in Yiwu makes money by collecting stall fees. We asked him: "So how do you make money? Do you collect stall fees directly from enterprises?" Ma Yun thought for two seconds and said: "Oh, This matter is very complicated, let’s not talk about it, we play cards and we play cards.” We only found out many years later, in fact, he didn’t know how to make money at that time.

This is the first time I met Jack Ma, and he left a very, very deep impression on me.Later, I often met him in various conferences. The most impressive contact was in 2005.At that time, Alibaba was already a very famous Internet company in China, so Alibaba commissioned Blue Lion to publish the first official biography about him, titled "Alibaba: No Difficult Business in the World".In the end, I went to Alibaba and Ma Yun to finalize this book.After entering Jack Ma's office, he sat across from me with a tea table in the middle.He was holding a sword at the time, and he pulled the sword in and out of the scabbard-I was so scared at the time that I didn't dare to talk nonsense.

Then everyone started talking. I asked him: "What kind of company do you want Alibaba to become in the future?" At that time, there were two very mainstream rumors: first, Alibaba might go public; second, he might acquire a very large company. company.Of course, we later learned that he bought Yahoo China. Ma Yun answered me like this: "Xiaobo, let me tell you this, don't tell others—in fact, I don't know." He told me that running a business is like building a house, and today I opened a window here , Build a door there tomorrow, put a coffee table the day after tomorrow, and put a sofa the day after tomorrow... After putting it there, the house will become like a home-this is how Alibaba is formed.Then he asked me another question: "Xiaobo, do you know what the best business model in the world is?" I asked him what it was, and he said, "The best business model in the world is the national model."

What is a country?In essence, the state uses a violent machine to protect the rights of all citizens.The main profit of the country: first, it depends on taxes, as long as you are a citizen, you have to pay taxes every day; second, it provides a lot of goods that look very cheap.For example, it connects the water pipe to your home, and if you want to use the tap water, you have to pay it; similarly, it also sends electricity to your home; It also provides many public services, such as hospitals and universities.In your daily life, you have to pay taxes first, and then consume these public services, and the country can get a lot of benefits from it.

Ma Yun said that he will turn the future Alibaba into a national model.In fact, when I heard his ideas for the first time, I felt very unreliable, and what he was going to do, everyone would find it difficult, but after more than ten years, we will find that he does use his own way A lot of things have been done-this is Jack Ma in my impression. Many people say that Jack Ma started his business 15 years ago. It is the process of starting a business from a "diaosi" and becoming one of the best Internet companies in China. This is his success and experience of Jack Ma.And Ma Yun himself has a comment on this, which is very heavy, almost like a curse-"Those who resemble me are vulgar, and those who imitate me will die."This sentence was said by Li Beihai, a calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty.What Jack Ma means is that if you do a business that is very similar to what I do, then you are a vulgar entrepreneur; if you want to learn from my path and imitate me completely, then you will die ugly .So he thinks success is unreliable, on the contrary, he thinks failure is a very important thing.

When I went to his office in 2005, there was a big bookshelf in his office, but there were only five or six books on the shelf, and one of them was written by me.It can be seen that he attaches great importance to the problem of failure.When he mentioned failure in a speech, he said: "I spend the most time studying how domestic and foreign companies fail. The books I recommend to all executives in the company in the past two years are all about how others fail. Failed. Because of the same reasons for failure, just four or five stupid decisions. But everyone thinks that mistake is someone else's mistake, how could I make it. But, you will make it, even if you are reminded , you will still commit crimes."

So he is very vigilant about failure.He even said: "I will write a super best-selling book on the day I retire, and the title of the book is called 'Alibaba's One Thousand and One Mistakes'." Ma Yun announced his retirement for a while, and many people speculated that he was It's not time to go home and write the great bestseller "Alibaba's One Thousand and One Mistakes".As a result, he came back on the eighteenth day after his retirement. I think it is very unlikely that he will write this book in his life, so we can discuss the mistakes that Alibaba has made in the past 15 years-of course, we can’t tell a thousand and one mistakes, otherwise he will be in the future. It might be wrong to put a fart on the board too.Let's talk about eight mistakes that we think are more important and can be used as a reference for you in the past fifteen years.