Jack Ma
Alibaba
I came across an article in the Business
Insider and found something interesting
about failure. “If you haven’t had a failure,
you aren’t pushing the limits. If you are
really an entrepreneur, you are a risk taker
and less cautious by nature, so failures
should be expected. Wear your start up
failure as a badge of courage. Don’t go
after failure, but embrace it when it does
happen and grow from it.”
But those who try fail and quit are way
better than you and me. They have at least
given it a shot.
What about us? We are afraid of just
starting.
Most of us resort to taking the easy route
to a comfortable life (which does not
necessarily mean you are happy and
fulfilled.) We end up being swallowed by
multinational corporate behemoths, with
their air-conditioned corner offices and
posh residential addresses.
But for the most part, we are entrapped in
ourselves, with little courage to do what
we really passionate about. Lack of
courage continues to alienate us from
daring to be ourselves.
Therefore, it is pertinent to draw lessons
from the world’s top entrepreneurs, have
encountered many instances of failure in
the past.
Jack was born during a very difficult time
in Chinese history, during the Cultural
Revolution. His parents were endlessly
harassed and mistreated for opposing the
Communist regime of that time.
Throughout his life, until he founded the
successful e-commerce goliath, Alibaba,
Jack terribly failed many times. He always
got rejected and criticized even by his own
parents who strongly advised against his
risky ideas which could have landed him
in prison.
While talking to Davos’ Charlie Rose, he
said, “I failed a key primary school test
2 times, I failed the middle school test 3
times, I failed the college entrance exam 2
times and when I graduated, I was rejected
for most jobs I applied for out of college.
(Ma was the only one out of 5 applicants to
the police force to be rejected and the only
one of 24 applicants to be a KFC manager
to be rejected. I applied for Harvard ten
times, got rejected ten times and I told
myself that Someday I should go teach
there.”
Just like many creative minds, Jack performed terribly at school, especially during
his early years in primary and secondary
schools, where he failed repeatedly. However, he shone in his passions, for example,
learning English on his own. During these
early years, he believed that as long as he
was firm in achieving his goals, he too had
a chance to be successful. He once said, “If
you never tried, how do you know there’s
no chance?”
Even in the 90’s when he was raising capital for Alibaba, he was heavily criticized
and rejected for having an unprofitable and
unsustainable business model.