Jack Ma

Jack Ma was born Ma Yun in Hangzhou, China, in 1964, and grew up in a family with modest means during the early years of the country's economic reforms. He failed the university entrance exam twice before finally being admitted to a teacher training college, and after graduating he applied for job after job, including, famously, one of twenty-four applicants for a job at Hangzhou's first KFC, and was the only one turned away.

He worked for several years as an English teacher on a low salary before starting his first internet venture in 1995, a directory of Chinese businesses, at a time when almost nobody in the country had used the internet and he had to explain what a website even was to potential clients. That business struggled, but in 1999 he gathered eighteen friends and former students in his apartment and founded Alibaba, a platform to let small Chinese manufacturers sell directly to buyers abroad.

The company survived the dot-com crash and years of doubt from investors who could not see how a business connecting small factories to foreign buyers would ever turn a profit, before growing into a vast e-commerce and finance empire and making Ma one of China's richest people. He was known for an unusually theatrical leadership style, performing at company events and describing repeated failure as essential preparation.

He stepped back from Alibaba's leadership in 2019 and largely disappeared from public view in China after 2020 following criticism of state regulators, a reminder of how precarious even great success can be.