Business Takeaways from Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba Group

I caught an interview with Jack Ma, the CEO of Alibaba Group, on TV.

In case you still dont know, Alibaba Group is the largest B2B marketplace portal in China which consist of major subsidiaries like Alibaba.com; Taobao, Alipay and Alibaba Cloud Computing.

Though he had a few errors here and there, in the span of ten years or so, he grew the company from a few headcount to almost 18,000 employees.

Here is a few takeaways from his interview and how he grew his company. Would be useful for all budding entrepreneurs out there:

1) Focus on the company health rather than size

Company health is more important than size.

Make sure the company got its fundamentals right. Profit, balance sheet, product line, quality etc. Once these are right, the company would grow naturally.

From my personal observation, too many start ups fail cos they focus too quickly and too much on expanding eg. getting a big office from the onset, hiring too many people during launch. This zaps their focus, seed money and resources.

2) Listen to customers not shareholders

When his company started to grow, his shareholders recommended that he move his HQ from China to US in an effort to "internationalise themselves. He listened to the shareholders, uprooted his HQ and moved to US. However, their customers wanted Alibaba's office to be closer to them for faster responses. He listened to the customers moved the company back to China and business started to grow.

3) Hire people that can surpass you to strengthen the company

His management team also recommended hiring MBA holders to fill in key positions within the company. He soon realised the MBA holders he hired did not have attributes that the company needs. He changed the policy from hiring based on qualifications to and hiring people with the skill sets that the company needs. The company strengthened as a result and is able to diversify into other business like Taobao and AliPay.

Comments

[Bill Chong]

Jack Ma : you better get back in touch with alibaba.com. Their are too many companies on your website that SCAM