Rags to Riches
Jack Ma is an amiable fellow. Back in 1994, while visiting the United States he decided to give that newfangled internet thing a whirl. At a moment of peak inspiration, he executed his first search engine request by typing in the word beer.
The search results had such a profound impact on Ma that he returned home to China and immediately started his first internet business. After several tries he hit it big with Alibaba. So much so that he’s accumulated a net worth of $27.1 billion USD – over 7.3 times more than President-elect Trump. Not a bad rags to riches story for a poor Chinese school teacher.
Indeed, Ma takes a shrewd, yet casual, approach to business. Back in 2014, he got a little sozzled up and bought China’s most popular soccer team from fellow Chinese billionaire Hui Ka Yan. All in all, the soccer team purchase only cost Ma $192 million. As Yan recounted of how the deal with Ma went down:
‘By accident I got him drunk. I told him my Evergrande soccer team is planning to issue shares and raise money to support strategic development, will you join? He said I will. We finished it in 15 minutes.’
This post was published at Acting-Man on January 14, 2017.
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