Jack also points to China Pages as influencing the way he would structure his subsequent ventures: “From then on, I have held a firm belief: When I start businesses in future, I will never hold the controlling stake of a company, making those controlled by me suffer. I will give plenty of understanding and support to lower levels. I have never once had a controlling stake at Alibaba. I am proud of this. I am the CEO of the company, because I lead it with [my] wisdom, courage, and resourcefulness, not capital.”
Rivalry is something that Jack, the philosopher CEO, invested with a deeper meaning: “If you can’t tolerate your opponents, you will be definitely beaten by your opponent. . . . If you treat your opponents as enemies, you have already lost at the beginning of the game. If you hang your opponent as a target, and practice throwing darts at him every day, you are only able to fight this one enemy, not others. . . . Competition is the greatest joy. When you compete with others, and find that it brings you more and more agony, there must be something wrong with your competition strategy.”
When we say, ‘If you have no enemy in your heart you will be invincible in the world,’ we mean you have different strategies and tactics. In terms of strategies, you must pay attention—whenever there is a rival emerging you have to study whether it could become your rival, and if so what to do. Whatever is stronger than you, you have to learn not to hate it. . . . When you treat it too seriously as a rival, and intend to kill it, your techniques are completely exposed. . . . Hatred only makes you a shortsighted person.”
They took adjacent cubicles in a Stanford trailer, where they launched what would become Yahoo on two servers: “Akebono” and “Konishiki,” both names of Hawaii-born sumo wrestlers who had excelled in Japan
The trailer where Jerry and David launched Yahoo was not a pretty site. The company’s first investor, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital, recalled, “With the shades drawn tight, the Sun servers generating a ferocious amount of heat, the answering machine going on and off every couple of minutes, golf clubs stashed against the walls, pizza cartons on the floor, and unwashed clothes strewn around . . . it was every mother’s idea of the bedroom she wished her sons never had.”
Jack was asked to comment on the case and said, “As a business, if you cannot change the law, follow the law. . . . Respect the local government. We’re not interested in polipolitics. We’re just focused on e-commerce.”
Jack Ma: “Raise money when we don’t need it. When you need it don’t go out to raise money, it’s too late.”
The IPO allowed Alibaba to take care of its employees: “Jack understands people more than any business. He knows business well, but if you ask me the three skills Jack has amongst people, business, or IT? IT is the worst. Business second. First is people".