ALSO LISTED IN - IT & Software Entrepreneurs
ALSO KNOWN AS - 马云 zh-TW
FAMOUS AS - Entrepreneur
NATIONALITY - Chinese Famous Chinese Men
BORN ON - 10 September 1964 AD
BIRTHDAY - 10th September Famous 10th September Birthdays CENTURY 20th Century
AGE - 52 Years
SUN SIGN - Virgo V
BORN IN- Hangzhou
PERSONALITY TYPE-Ambitious
GROUPING OF PEOPLE-Billionaires
CHARACTER TRAITS-Logical
SPOUSE/PARTNER: Zhang Ying
EDUCATION -Hangzhou Normal University
FOUNDER/CO-FOUNDER Alibaba.com, Alibaba Group
NET WORTH- $27 billionHOBBIES Tai Chi and Kung Fu Novels
CHILDHOOD & EARLY LIFE

Jack was born to parents, who were involved in a profession of storytelling through music, on the 10thof September, 1964. The place of his birth was Hangzhou city located in the Zhejiang Province of China.Since a really young age the lad was very keen on gathering knowledge about English and tried his best to communicate better in the language. His passion to be a better speaker used to even drive him to a hotel located near his residence, which was frequented by foreigners. The youngster even started guiding tourists in visiting sight-seeing places around the city. The motivewas to spend more time with native English speakers in a bid to gain a command over the language. Simultaneously, Ma also aspired to enrol in a university and even attended exams for the same reason,but remained unsuccessful. He then joined the ‘Hangzhou Teacher’s Training Institute’ to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in English. Jack graduated from the institution in the year 1988.
SUCCESS FROM JACK MA, SELF-MADE BILLIONAIRE AND CEO OF ALIBABA.
It takes a rare person to accumulate a total net worth over $20 billion through a devoted work ethic
while maintaining a sense of perspective. Jack Ma is one of those people. The founder and CEO of
Alibaba, one of the world’s leading e-commerce web portals, is one of the world’s richest men, but he
has not let success cloud his vision for the future or his acknowledgement of where he came from. Jack Ma’s keys to success are true and inspiring for everyone from aspiring billionaires to owners of the smallest businesses.

1. HE VALUES ATTITUDE
When Jack Ma talks about the biggest mistake he ever made he describes how when he founded
Alibaba he told his team that the highest level they could achieve would be that of managers, and that
executives should be hired from the outside. Ma has learned his lesson and now stresses the importance of attitude and passion over theoretical skills.

2. HE UNITES PEOPLE UNDER A SINGLE GOAL
Ma understands that no matter how hard you try you will never be able to convince every single
employee, business partner, and potential investor to trust you or believe what you say. Accepting that and changing your approach is another key to his massive success. Rather than uniting his company under the vision of one person, he unites them under a common goal. The vision is more important than the leader.

3. HE HAS FORESIGHT
Jack Ma believes that a good leader should have foresight. He should try to stay one step ahead of the
competition and anticipate how decisions will play out ahead of other people. Taking time to develop
creative thinking skills and following informed intuition is a hallmark of any great business leader.

4. HE HIRES PEOPLE WITH SUPERIOR SKILLS
When asked what separates a leader from an employee Ma has gone on record saying “Your employee should have superior technical skills than you. If he doesn’t, it means you have hired the wrong person.” Focusing on the skills of employees and hiring people with the know how to carry out yourvision is an important pillar of any great company.

5. HE IS TENACIOUS
In addition to foresight Ma says leaders should be tenacious and have a clear vision. Knowing what youwant to achieve and having the drive to chase it down will not only put you on the path to success, itwill inspire those around you to work hard for that common goal. Taking pride in your work and nottaking no for an answer are keys to Ma’s business philosophy.

6. HE DEFINES FAILURE AS GIVING UP
According to Ma, “giving up is the greatest failure.” If you go out, try your best and fail to achieve
your goal but see it through to the end you are a success. Like all great leaders, Ma recognizes that a
person is able to learn the most from obstacles and hardships. They key to success is persevering and
learning from your mistakes.
7. HE LOVES LIFE
“I always tell myself that we are born here not to work, but to enjoy life. We are here to make things
better for one another, and not to work. If you are spending your whole life working, you will certainlyregret it.” This sentiment lies at the heart of Jack Ma’s lifestyle. Life is for experiencing the world andhelping out other people. If money is your goal, you have to change your mindset.

8. HE DOESN’T MAKE ENEMIES
One the most unique aspects of Jack Ma’s business philosophy is the idea of friendly competition. Ma
does not see his competitors as his enemies, rather they are friends whom he can learn from and who
challenge him to achieve his full potential.It is clear that Jack Ma’s philosophy is built for success in a rapidly developing world. We can all learna thing or two from this self-made billionaire.
The man known in the West as Jack Ma was born Ma Yun in 1964 in Hangzhou during China’s
Cultural Revolution, during which his family was persecuted because of his grandparents, who were
members of the Nationalist party that opposed the Communist party. If few things can characterize JackMa's background, education and path to success, they are failure, rejection, fighting, resolve, hard work, agility and vision. All throughout Jack Ma's life, from childhood till building a multibilliondollar global ecommerce technology giant, he has failed many times, been rejected and called crazy,even by his father who warned him about his unique “dangerous” ideas that could have resulted in his imprisonment in an earlier generation.Jack Ma has learned more from his and others' failures than through the traditional channels of education. Ma, a man of incredible resolve, has learned to fail better and fail forward. As he declared in an interview with Charlie Rose in Davos, "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.’" In the late 1990s after starting Alibaba, Ma tried to get venture capital funding in Silicon Valley for Alibaba and got rejected for running an unprofitable business model. He eventually went back to China without funding. Unlike many idolized college drop-out successful entrepreneurs such as Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, Jack Ma earned his MBA from Cheung Kong University while already building Alibaba in the early 2000s.
 Though critical of traditional teaching practices, especially at business schools,Ma is fond of academics. He was a university English teacher himself, and he talks about teaching again someday in the future. Like many brilliant innovative minds, both past and present, Ma struggled academically, especially throughout his early years in primary and secondary schools, where he failed repeatedly. However, he excelled in the things that he was passionate about, for example, teaching himself English. During these formative years, Ma thought that, as long as he kept his resolve and worked to achieve his objectives,he had a chance to succeed. 
Ma said, "If you never tried, how do you know there's no chance?" Masuccessfully failed forward academically into Hangzhou Teacher's college and thereafter, in his career and business. When one listens objectively to Ma's speeches about his early, formative years, one can observe that Ma learned most by experimenting, observing and questioning the status quo. As an adolescent, he taught himself English and polished it by becoming an unofficial tour guide to foreign tourists.Through those tourists, pen pal relationships he cultivated with some of his tourist clients and his interaction with some relatives in Australia, Ma learned much about the outside world (especially the Western world). 
More importantly, he learned to question (not necessarily disbelieve) everything he thought or was told before, a practice he applies to this day. That ability to question and reexamine issues helps him to look at situations from various angles and see opportunities where most see only problems. For example, when most people feared conducting ecommerce in China due to an unreliable and untrustworthy payment system, Ma got Alibaba to build Alipay without the Chinese banking authorities approval at the risk of his personal freedom. 
Now Alipay facilitates more business globally than PayPal, as measured in U.S. dollars. (For more, see: How Counterfeiting Affects Alibaba's Business.) Ma could be said to have graduated from both formal and informal education systems. If informal education is thought of as "the School of Hard-Knocks," Ma has earned a doctoral degree with honors in addition to his MBA from Cheung Kong University. Ma is also heavily influenced by martial art teachings, especially Thai-Chi, which he claims helps him to find balance that he applies to both his personal and business life.