Chapter 4 Introduction Why can't Beijing keep Jack Ma?

Yu Zhengsheng once lamented "why Shanghai can't keep Ma Yun", but Beijing never even had the idea of ​​such a sigh - although Ma Yun went to Beijing twice and tried to start a business in Beijing, he finally left. At the end of 1998, Ma Yun voluntarily resigned from his position as the general manager of Guofutong Information Technology Development Co., Ltd. under the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, and led his entrepreneurial team to evacuate Beijing and return to Hangzhou—— Six months later, Ma Yun's Alibaba website was officially launched; Four years later, Jack Ma founded Taobao and made it the largest C2C shopping platform in China;

Six years later, Alibaba Group merged the world's largest portal at that time, all assets of Yahoo in China, and Jack Ma's Alibaba became China's largest Internet company; Eight years later, Alibaba went public in Hong Kong.The prospectus discloses that there are about 4,900 employees holding shares, with an average of 90,500 shares per employee. If calculated at the middle price of the IPO of HK$11, the wealth obtained by each person through the IPO is exactly HK$1 million.There are as many as a thousand multi-millionaires created by Alibaba's listing.This is the wealth creation campaign with the widest area and the largest number that has never been seen in the history of Chinese Internet companies.The Alibaba entrepreneurs who fought hard with Jack Ma got rewards beyond imagination.

And it all started in the winter at the end of 1998, Jack Ma said, I want to leave Beijing. In fact, Jack Ma and his 13-person entrepreneurial team (including Jack Ma) spent one year and two months in Beijing, in the eyes of others, it was quite successful.They have accomplished many things: the internal network of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and its external network; they have established a joint venture company and made a profit for one year.The rest of the team is happy, only Ma Yun is sullen, he thinks he has failed... In December 1997, the China International Electronic Commerce Center (EDI) of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation sincerely invited Ma Yun to join him as the general manager of the information department of the center.Therefore, Ma Yun led his entrepreneurial team: Zhang Ying, Sun Tongyu, Wu Yongming, Sheng Yifei, Ma Changwei, Lou Wensheng, Xie Shihuang, Peng Lei, Han Min, Jiang Fang, Dai Shan and Zhou Yuehong, and embarked on a journey of progress. Beijing train.These people will become the backbone of Alibaba Group in the future.

In the winter of 1997, Ma Yun and the team he led were like those described in martial arts novels: a commoner knight, with a group of disciples, rushed to the capital to roam the rivers and lakes... They work at No. 2 East Chang'an Street, Beijing, in Building No. 1 of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. Just the land where the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation is located is awe-inspiring.Chang'an Avenue, with a width of 50-100 meters, is the longest and widest street in the world and the most important street in China.With Tiananmen Square as the boundary, East Chang'an Avenue is to the east; West Chang'an Avenue is to the west.

The building of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, which stands on the most important street in China, is similar to the office buildings of most state ministries and commissions in Beijing. It is not high, but very large.The three row buildings with gray and white exterior walls do not mix any extra colors. Except for the five-star red flag on the flagpole at the main entrance, and the green military uniforms standing guard on both sides of the gate, even the "Chinese People" marked on the gray brick walls The plaques of the "Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation of the Republic" are all black and white on a correct white background, giving people a sense of solemnity.In short, you dare not speak loudly when you are in front of you, as if you are afraid of alarming something.

These days in Beijing, Jack Ma is not happy, sometimes even depressed.He said: "The more hardships in Beijing that year were better than those in the Yellow Pages..." How much pressure and pain Ma Yun endured in Beijing, and what differences he had with the relevant departments of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation will always be a mystery .Because Ma Yun kept a secret about it. Here, I have to mention the history of the China International E-Commerce Center of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. In February 1996, China International E-Commerce Center was formally established, abbreviated as CIECC in English.Although it was established as early as February 1996, the formal operation of CIECC had to wait nearly a year later—January 1997.At that time, what the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation had to do was a large intranet plus an official government website (MOFTEC website).

For the structure of the large intranet, the leaders’ vision is as follows: to lay optical fibers nationwide, and set up interface outlets in each branch of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, and all the outlets are interconnected to form a large intranet.On this large intranet, Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and its affiliated agencies can handle all foreign trade-related approval procedures for enterprises; at the same time, they can also issue relevant foreign trade policies and regulations to foreign trade companies through this large intranet.The development of the entire intranet project is in charge of the China International Electronic Commerce Center under the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.Moreover, this is also a project supported by the United Nations.

With the support of the government, laying optical fiber and other basic network construction work is not complicated. However, the top management of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation is most concerned about finding excellent and most suitable talents to run this project. What China's Internet in its infancy lacks the most is talents who know how to operate and how to treat the Internet as a business.Therefore, Ma Yun, who became famous in Hangzhou for running the China Yellow Pages, became an ideal candidate in the eyes of the leaders of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.

When they first arrived in Beijing, all team members lived in the collective dormitory of Panjiayuan in the eastern suburbs of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation.A total of 13 people were divided into three small groups and lived in three sets of simple rooms.The work of developing a website is very hard and tiring, and I often have to work overtime. Even though they work for government departments, Ma Yun's team did not enjoy any special treatment, and even worked harder than most people working in the same department.Day after day, everyone's daily life is a repeated scene: in the morning, when the alarm clock rings, you have to get up in a state of extreme pain and unwillingness, squinting your eyes, "every time you hear the alarm clock ringing , I have the idea of ​​death!" Then, everyone gathered at Panjiayuan and waited for the bus, finally got on the bus, and didn't have time to enjoy the streets and alleys along the way, and soon fell asleep, just like this. Sleeping until the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation; working until late at night, everyone went back to the dormitory joltingly...

The team is mainly responsible for the development of the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation (big internal network), which is also the main task that Ma Yun was invited to.For the idea of ​​a large intranet, Jack Ma opposed it from the very beginning, and tried to persuade EDI to build the website on the Internet.Although Ma Yun objected, he, a small manager of a subordinate department of EDI, could not make the decision, and the plan had to be decided by the officials of the ministry. Ma Yun, who was alone and alone, finally succumbed to the official will and bit the bullet and started doing it.Ma Yun's 13-member team, although not many, is full of experts.They are already familiar with website development, not to mention that these people have accumulated rich development experience in the era of China's Yellow Pages.The website is done, done quickly, and very successfully.

However, when it came to the operation, the problem came out again: the government's red-headed documents went down, but the business was very deserted.It is also easy to understand that the large internal network of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation is actually a bit like today's "e-government" system, and its functions are also very simple: the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation and its subordinate agencies can handle all foreign trade-related approval procedures for enterprises; At the same time, relevant foreign trade policies and regulations can also be issued to foreign trade enterprises through this large intranet.Entrepreneurs will definitely think this way: This is what an electronic government should do. Why should our enterprises pay the bill? Therefore, the business operation model of this large intranet project of EDI is not feasible.Of course, Ma Yun knew this well, and he expected such an embarrassing situation. It is only because those leaders did not accept his plan (doing the Internet) at the beginning.Therefore, after problems occurred in the operation of EDI's large intranet, Ma Yun continued to lobby the high-level executives to expand the intranet and rebuild the Internet. Finally, in July 1998, with the approval of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, EDI established a joint venture, Guofutong Information Technology Development Co., Ltd., with Ma Yun as the general manager. After the establishment of Guofutong, Ma Yun led the team to develop the project of "online Chinese commodity trading market". This is a real Internet project, and it is also what Ma Yun really wants to do.No matter from the perspective of structure or actual operation, the "Online Chinese Commodity Trading Market" was considered a very successful project in China's e-commerce field at that time.Although it is also a fee-paying business, the charging method is not as old-fashioned as the big intranet (promoted with government red-headed documents), but a more market-oriented method.Therefore, small and medium-sized enterprises are very active in surfing the Internet, and the website quickly becomes profitable.Moreover, Guofutong and the China Commodity Trading Market website were both profitable projects in the year they were established, with net profits as high as 2.87 million yuan. Among the Chinese government websites, the website of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation is not only the earliest one in the domestic internal committee, but also one of the best government websites. On October 5, 1998, the textile quota bidding system was put into operation on the China International E-Commerce Network, and the electronic bidding for textile quotas was realized for the first time in the country.At that time, the leaders of the central government and more than ten ministries and commissions attended the demonstration of the electronic bidding opening.Standing in front of the leaders and performing a demonstration for them was a young man with an urchin-like appearance and a pleasant smile.This young man was none other than Ma Yun, who was the general manager of Guofutong at the time.Standing on his left is Li Lanqing, Vice Premier of the State Council; standing on his right are State Councilor Wu Yi and Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Shi Guangsheng. The venture in Beijing appears to be a success.The new company and website are doing well, the salary is great, the team is working together, and everyone is happy. But Jack Ma was not happy.Jack Ma also has no sense of success.For a long time, Ma Yun has found that many things are difficult to do in the government's establishment, and there are many unclear problems.Although at that time, when it came to the cooperation between Jack Ma and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, people said that it was China's "dream team", but in fact, even Jack Ma himself couldn't explain what happened. With the passage of time, the conflict between the two thinking and the two modes has become more and more obvious, that is, the conflict between businessmen and officials has become more and more intense.Although EDI has given Ma Yun a high courtesy and a high position, Ma Yun knows in his heart: he is just a senior wage earner who works on a website.He and his Beijing team have always been non-staff members of MOFTEC.If there are talents who can do Internet work in the Ministry, who will look for them? At the meetings of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation that Ma Yun participated in, who would take Ma Yun seriously among those central and local economic and trade officials?In official China, all this is the norm.What's more, it is in Beijing, which is the political center. Zhang Ying (Ma Yun's wife) later recalled: "I know that Ma Yun is neglected, but he is a very optimistic person. From the time I know him to the present, he never said that today is very depressed or angry. He always uses a normal heart. Treating these always gives me hope.” Ma Yun's pain and troubles never show.But Ma Yun came to Beijing to start a business and to pursue his Internet dream. He did not come to simply work to earn money. By the end of 1998, the Internet boom was sweeping the world, and China also had an Internet fever for the first time.All kinds of websites are springing up like mushrooms after rain, and Sina, Sohu, and Netease are advancing all the way. Jack Ma, who was once the number one person on the Internet in China, how can Jack Ma, who wakes up early and catches the evening set, not be anxious? Ma Yun is facing nothing more than two paths: stay in Beijing, or leave Beijing.If you stay in Beijing, there are opportunities. For example, Sina and Yahoo at the time hoped that Ma Yun would join, but Ma Yun believed that the network in Beijing was too impetuous to make things happen; Stumbling and timid.Ma Yun’s sensitive intuition told himself: China’s network situation has begun to change, and the world’s Internet climax is coming soon. It’s a golden opportunity to stay in the government. At the end of 1998, Ma Yun suddenly announced to everyone: I am going back to Hangzhou! After making the decision, Jack Ma summoned the team he brought from Hangzhou together and said to them: "You can stay in the Ministry. There is a big tree like the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, and there are also dormitories. The income in Beijing is also very good; you After working on the Internet for so many years, they can be regarded as experienced people, and they can also go to Yahoo. Yahoo has just entered China, and it is a very rich company. The salary will be very high, with a monthly salary of tens of thousands of yuan; For the newly established Sina, these roads are fine, and I can recommend them. Anyway, I’m going back to Hangzhou.” Then Ma Yun said: "If you go home with me to start a second business, the salary is only 500 yuan, and you are not allowed to call. The office is in the 150 square meters of my house. I don't know what to do. I only know that I want to create a world. The largest merchant website. How to choose, I will give you three days to consider." At that time, no matter how much you objected, how much you didn’t understand, when it came time to make a decision, no one in Ma Yun’s 13-member team hesitated, and it didn’t take three days to think about it.After five minutes, the decision came out: all returned to Hangzhou with Jack Ma! Back in Hangzhou, Jack Ma said, "I want to start the best company in the world."This company is the future Alibaba Group, and it was born in an ordinary residential area in the west of Hangzhou, Lakeside Garden.The exact address is No. 202, Unit 1, Building 16, Fengheyuan, Lakeside Garden—a four-bedroom house in a 4-story residential building in the community, with an area of ​​150 square meters. It was used as the office of Alibaba. At that time, Alibaba's model was very unique to the Chinese Internet.At first, most people in Ma Yun's team thought that building a portal like Yahoo and Sina was the only feasible solution.But Ma Yun believes that "you should stop doing what most people are optimistic about, because it's not your turn anymore."Therefore, Alibaba did not copy any existing mature models, but chose to innovate, and the risk of innovation is ten times that of copying.It is obviously absolutely impossible for such an "extraordinary" risky move to be operated in Beijing, within the framework of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation or Guofutong. Before Christmas in 1998, Zhang Ying and Jiang Fang (later assistant to the general manager of Alibaba B2B-ICBU) returned to Hangzhou first, and began to decorate the "office" of the lakeside garden.Zhang Ying found carpets and curtains from home, as well as an oil-burning heater and some old tables and chairs.Everything is simple.Later, several young engineers used newspapers to paste the surrounding cement walls, which was the only decoration.The Chinese and English newspapers used are all related to IT technology, and ordinary people can't understand them. The lakeside era is the era of Alibaba's passion. The work and rest time is from 9 am to 9 pm, 12 hours a day, which is the normal work and rest time.When working overtime, I have to work 16 hours or more every day, and overtime is very frequent.Xie Shihuang (later Managing Director of Alibaba Strategic Investment and Vice President of Alibaba Group) said: "There is a small meeting room in the lakeside garden, which can be used as a floor. At that time, sleeping in the office was no less than sleeping in a rented house." The editor-in-chief of the Asian Wall Street Journal, which visited Alibaba in the early days of its business, wrote: "I work day and night, and there is a sleeping bag on the floor of the house. Anyone who is tired can get in and sleep for a while." A few months later, Justin Dubler, a senior reporter of Forbes magazine, visited the house when Ma Yun started Alibaba: "20 customer service personnel are crowded in the living room, and Ma Yun and financial and marketing personnel are among them. One bedroom, 25 website maintenance and other staff in another bedroom. ... Like all good entrepreneurs, Jack Ma knows how to stick with limited seed money for a longer period of time." During this period, there was an interesting episode. One day, several engineers worked until 5:40 in the morning. It was dawn, and everyone was still awake.Someone made a suggestion: go out for a walk.So, several people roared out and came to the side of the West Lake by taxi. These people have been imprisoned for several months and have no time to go to the city, let alone come to the West Lake. Running out is a bit like a herd of sheep out of the pen.At that time, it was early spring, the drizzle was falling, and the willow silk was blowing lightly.Several people ran to the broken bridge, shouting and singing loudly.After spending an hour on the edge of West Lake, they went to Zhiweizhai to have a delicious meal, and then went to Xinhua Bookstore, where they each bought a "Back to Back".It was almost 10 o'clock when we returned to the lakeside garden. It was found that all other employees were standing on the balcony looking at them, all of them looked serious.Ma Yun's first words when he saw them were: "It's okay, just come back!" It turned out that when everyone came to work in the morning, they found that all the engineers had disappeared, and the server had also crashed. They did not say hello or leave a note.They should be fast asleep on the ground at this time of day.Some people panicked and even asked to call the police. The disappearance of the engineer is no joke!So everyone ran to the balcony to look from a distance. From these young engineers, Alibaba's entrepreneurial spirit is reflected to the greatest extent.They can fight hard all night, and they can also have fun in bitterness.Sometimes they watch ghost movies in the middle of the night and play pranks after watching them.One day, at 12 o'clock in the middle of the night, several engineers were chatting on the side of the road in the community. When they saw a person coming, they wanted to scare him.When the person was about to see the swing, they swung the swing high, and then quickly hid; the person saw the empty swing, was frightened half to death, and quickly slipped away.And this kind of ease is unimaginable when working overtime in the gray and white building of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation. On November 5, 1999, Zhang Pu (later the human resources director of Alibaba) went to Alibaba for an interview on the first day. He recalled: "After arriving at Lakeside Garden, I felt that this company was a bit strange, like a leather bag company. After entering and exiting, I felt strange. Well, the lights are dark (because of a power outage), there is a pile of shoes at the door, more than 20 people are lying on the carpet in the room, and there is a smell..." The more than 20 people in the 150 square meters of the lakeside garden obviously share the same taste.Just like Ma Yun's passionate speech: "Just go forward, keep going. If you fail, there is still this team and a group of people supporting each other. What do you have to fear? Today, I want you to go out alone. You are a little flustered. At your age, you are now looking for a job in Hangzhou. You can get three to four thousand yuan a month, but you will not have the drive and aggressiveness you have today. After three to five years, you will do it again. Looking for a new job. I feel that in the dark, everyone is groping and shouting together and rushing forward, so there is no panic. More than a dozen people hold big knives in their hands, ah! ah! ah! rush forward, there is no need to panic, right?" This is the story of the little Jack Ma.If you enter www.haibofanyi.com in the browser (the first company founded by Ma Yun after he went to sea as an English teacher: Haibo Translation Agency), you will see a simple but shocking sentence written by Ma Yun: never give up! The famous scholar and the late Yale University professor William Ryan Phelps often said: "Thinking of the happiest thing is the happiest person." Applying this sentence, we can also say: Thinking of the happiest thing is the most successful person. Husband's ambition should be lofty.This is what we are taught from childhood.But, now do you remember the original dream?At the beginning, you happily held a popsicle worth 50 cents, thinking that you would travel into space in the future; now, you save money and walk several miles to the subway station every day, just to save 2 yuan for the bus fare, for the two-bedroom apartment. Mortgage... What's wrong with "Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou"? "Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" is not good at this point: it bullies the weak. So, Ma Yun left - he had to find a suitable nest to incubate Alibaba and incubate his ideals before he really grew up. Jack Ma and the others have left, but there are still people pouring into "Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou". In June 2010, the "Survey on Chinese Urban and Rural Residents' Mobility Willingness" released by Zero Research Consulting Group pointed out that if they could freely choose their place of residence, nearly half of urban residents would still choose Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou as their first choice of residence.Among them, 97% of the respondents in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou hope that they still live in these three cities.The survey also pointed out that rural respondents also showed a strong willingness to move to cities and counties: 55.5% of the people expressed their willingness to live in cities and counties, which was significantly higher than the proportion of 38.9% who were willing to live in rural areas, and the younger groups are more inclined to choose urban life. In June 2010, the human resources service provider "51job" conducted a survey on "escape from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou" on its recruitment website, revealing another side of the big city. The survey results show that nearly 60% of white-collar workers currently working in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou have plans to leave these cities.Among the survey participants, 66% are men, 91% have a college education or above, 21% of the respondents come from foreign-funded enterprises, and 41% have two to five years of work experience. Sina.com also collaborated with The Beijing News to produce an article titled "Beipiao, do you intend to "return"?" "Thematic survey.In the survey, 38.7% of professionals are dissatisfied with the current development situation, and 82.5% of them have considered returning to their hometowns or developing in non-first-tier cities. "If second- and third-tier cities have better development opportunities, would you choose to leave Beijing?" For this question, 69% of the professionals chose to answer yes. "People in the city want to go out, and people outside the city want to rush in."The phenomenon of "city besieged" described by Qian Zhongshu has intensified in recent years in China's megacities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. In fact, no matter whether you "rush in" or "escape", it is just a choice in life, the key lies in what you are pursuing. Obviously, what Jack Ma is chasing is his ideal, his "Internet dream" - to be the largest website in China.That's why Jack Ma left Beijing. On March 10, 1999, there was a website called Alibaba in Hangzhou. Eight years later, Alibaba was listed in Hong Kong.However, as the chairman and founder of Alibaba's board of directors, Jack Ma only holds 5% of the shares (189 million shares) in Alibaba's B2B subsidiary. Based on the upper limit of the offering price, Jack Ma is worth HK$2.27 billion after listing.In the "2007 Hurun IT Rich List" released by Hurun Report, Robin Li of Baidu became the richest man in IT with a net worth of 18 billion yuan.Alibaba's Jack Ma, who has already listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, ranks eighth with a valuation of 5 billion. The reason is simple, Jack Ma holds the lowest level of shares among these people.Ma Yun only holds 5% of the shares, while Chen Tianqiao of Shanda holds 75% and Robin Li of Baidu holds 25%. Ma Yun once said: "It is impossible for me to become the richest man in the world, and I don't want to be the richest man in the world. I never thought about it." Therefore, Alibaba does not make the richest man but builds a group of rich people, and does not pursue individual wealth but the pursuit of employee wealth. This is Ma Yun's realm.He pursues things higher than material, so he and the people around him have received rich material rewards. If he only wanted to make money, he didn't have to leave Guofutong or Beijing. As the general manager of the joint venture company of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, Yahoo and Sina had planned to poach him with high salaries at that time.But if he does not leave, there will be no Alibaba, let alone Jack Ma today. So, this truth is actually very simple.When we discuss leaving, we don’t want you to give up, not to make you regress, and we don’t want you to fall into the comfortable but mediocre life of the second- and third-tier cities, but we don’t want to see you trapped in the bright appearance of the first-tier cities, and we hope you can Have a dream, see the current situation clearly, analyze calmly, and find the starting point that suits you best.Then, strike hard!