In the past ten years, one of the most successful entrepreneurs in China's business circles was Ma Yun. Almost single-handedly changed the format of e-commerce in China. Today's e-commerce models in China, such as B2B, B2C and C2C, are completely different from those in Japan, the United States, South Korea and Europe, and now the total sales volume of e-commerce in China has surpassed that in the United States. In this sense, the achievement of Alibaba, the founder, is very great.

214 may be the year of Ma Yunnian, and Alibaba will be listed in North America, which is also an important turning point of Alibaba's 15th anniversary. Ma Yun has also reached the age of knowing his destiny.

the best business model in the world is the national model. What is a country? In essence, the state protects the rights of all citizens in a violent machine. The main profit of the country depends on taxes first. As long as you are a citizen, you have to pay taxes every day. Second, it provides many goods that look very cheap. For example, it connects tap water to your home. If you want to use tap water, you have to pay it. It also sends electricity to your home; It builds roads and stations on the land and ferries by the river. It also provides many public services, such as hospitals and universities. In your daily life, you have to pay taxes first, and then you will consume these public services, and the country can get great benefits from them.

Li Beihai, a calligrapher in the Tang Dynasty, said, "If you imitate me, you will die.". Ma Yun used this sentence to comment on his success and experience.

To succeed, one needs to keep a high degree of vigilance against failure and constantly sum up from others' failures.

Over the years, one of the eight mistakes made by Ma Yun: moving the capital to the headquarters

There are two strange times in the business circles in China. One is 1984. In the 199s, some very important enterprises for China's manufacturing industry, such as Lenovo, Haier, Vanke, Jianlibao, Nande and Kelon, were all born in 1984. Therefore, in the history of China enterprises, we call 1984 the first year of China enterprises. The second great moment just happened in the internet field, that is, between 1998 and 1999. The three kings of the portal era, namely Netease, Sohu and Sina, which were called "the third kings", and BAT, which now rules the Internet in China, were all born between March and December, 1999.

In p>1999, there were two main business models in the Internet field: news portal and search. Ma Yun is the only one among these people who does e-commerce. One of Ma Yun's visions for establishing Alibaba is: "Alibaba will become an e-commerce company serving small and medium-sized enterprises in China in the future".

In 1999, Ma Yun got 25 million yuan in financing. At the end of 1999, Ma Yun set up an international headquarters in the United States, and at the beginning of 2, he set up a China headquarters in Shanghai. In mid-2, Ma Yun became the cover figure of Forbes magazine, and he was the first entrepreneur in China to appear on the cover of Forbes magazine. Ma Yun became famous with this cover.

the causes of the "headquarters crisis" are analyzed from three aspects: time, location, people and people.

Timing: In 2, it was an important moment when the global Internet bubble burst. The most important "concentration camp" for internet companies around the world is Nasdaq in the United States. The Nasdaq stock index was only 5 points in April 1991, which is not a particularly important market compared with NYSE. In July 1999, it broke through 2 points; By March 9, 2, it broke through 5 points. When the stock index broke through 5 points, all the newspapers in the world were telling one thing-a new century is about to begin, and the Internet is about to rule the world. That is, at this point in time, Ma Yun reached $25 million. Almost at the same time, the three important news portals in China at that time-China, like other countries in the world, was in the portal era-Sina went public on April 13, 2, Netease went public on July 5 of the same year, and a week later, on July 12, Sohu went public. A portal website, listed on NASDAQ in one quarter. This is a time point that looks very surging.

but at the same time, another thing happened at this point in time. From the second week of April, 2, the Nasdaq index fell from 5 points, and fell by 4% in half a year. This is a major stock market crash moment in the Internet field. 4% means that in the capital market of North America, the market value of the entire Internet company has evaporated by 8.5 trillion US dollars. $85,-at that time, it dropped to the United States, and no country's GDP exceeded this figure, and now China's GDP is just this figure-all evaporated in half a year. This point in time is a great moment for the global Internet. The reason why these companies in China can survive, including Alibaba, including Tencent, is that they all got financing before the second quarter of 2; The three portals raised funds through listing, Tencent sold its equity to MIH, and Alibaba also raised $25 million.

Alibaba is going to move its international headquarters to the United States and its China headquarters to Shanghai when there is a major stock market crash and it is snowing heavily, which is contrary to the general trend. Operating costs are increasing, and the whole industry is in an avalanche crisis-that's why Ma Yun found himself making a major mistake one year after moving his headquarters.

Location: Shanghai is a city where two kinds of capital are very concentrated: first, state-owned capital. Up to now, Shanghai's state-owned enterprises are very strong, and private enterprises are basically in a state of being oppressed on a large scale; Secondly, foreign capital, which is the window of China's opening to the outside world, welcomes some capitals such as Fortune 5, the world's largest investment banks or banks. In 213, Lujiazui has a very proud data: there are 27 buildings in Lujiazui, and the annual tax paid by each building is 1 billion RMB, which is 27 billion RMB, equivalent to the annual tax revenue of many prefecture-level cities in Central China.

There is a natural conflict between a city that likes big capital and an Internet company that must focus on destruction and innovation. So in this sense, Shanghai is a city without Internet. Shanghai once had an Internet company Shanda Games, which introduced a game product Legend from South Korea and became the largest online game company in China. But then, all of Shanda's innovations in Shanghai met with all kinds of resistance. By 214, Shanda ranked fourth and fifth in China online game companies.

Harmony: Since 1998, the central government has allowed private enterprises to conduct free foreign trade. There is a term "MADE IN CHINA", which appeared in 1999. When millions of private enterprises like China started to do foreign trade, a problem arose: 99% of these bosses didn't know English, while the vast majority of foreign enterprises that came to China to purchase goods didn't know Chinese. At this time, a trading platform is needed. Therefore, the emergence of Alibaba in 1999 actually conformed to the general trend of "MADE IN CHINA". Under this general trend, these millions of private manufacturing and foreign trade enterprises mainly appear in Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Guangdong. China's whole "MADE IN CHINA" is based in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong, so Ma Yun founded Alibaba in Hangzhou in 1999, which is quite grounded.

the biggest advantage of grassroots entrepreneurship is "sticking to the grassroots" and pursuing "being tall", which is one of the most common mistakes made by entrepreneurs.

The second of the eight mistakes Ma Yun has made in recent years: buying Yahoo

In August p>25, there was a very explosive news in China's internet industry: Yahoo announced that it would buy 35% of Alibaba's shares for $1 billion, and at the same time gave Yahoo China to Ma Yun as a dowry. This was the largest Internet investment in China at that time, and this record was kept for a long time. It was not until 211 that JD.COM raised 1.5 billion US dollars that this record was broken.

in p>2, after the internet bubble burst, the growth of the whole internet in China took a completely different road from that in the United States. China's news portal began to transform, and China enterprises have defeated its foreign competitors in almost every field. For example, Sina defeated Yahoo in the portal field, Netease defeated Yahoo and Google in the mailbox field, and Baidu defeated Google in the search field. In 23, Alibaba launched a domestic C2C platform called "Taobao", which defeated eBAY in a year and a half.

So 25 was a crucial time for an Internet company in China to win over global Internet companies, and it was at this time that the largest investment in China took place. Yahoo bought a 35% stake in Alibaba for $1 billion, which means that in August 25, Ali's valuation has reached $2.8 billion, which means that at this point in time, Ali has actually become the most valued enterprise in the Internet field in China at that time. Tencent went public in April 24, when it raised 1.438 billion Hong Kong dollars with a total market value of 5.2 billion Hong Kong dollars, which was also the market value of Tencent at that time. What was the market value of Sina, the largest news portal in China? In January 26, Sina's market value was $1.27 billion, which means that in the first quarter of 26, its market value was only about half that of Alibaba.

At the end of p>25, Ma Yun persuaded Yang Zhiyuan to come to China as soon as possible: "Because China is the most populous country in the world and e-commerce is very weak, you can put a lot of Yahoo's experience in China." Therefore, Yahoo entered China in May 1998 and opened the Chinese "Yahoo" website, which was the first news portal in China. At that time, Yahoo put forward the concept of "finding anything and communicating with everyone". "Find anything" is a search concept, and "communicate with everyone" is a portal concept, which clearly points out what Yahoo is going to do in China. At that time, Yahoo quickly became the number one Chinese portal.

Later, people in China began to imitate it, imitating Yahoo to do the Internet in China. For example, Zhang Chaoyang made Sohu. China's first local news portal has a very strong imitation of Yahoo. But after 1999, with the rise of China local news portals such as Sina, Netease and Sohu, Yahoo was quickly squeezed out of the first camp. First, the cost of foreign companies is very high. Second, to be a news portal in China-news is a regulated industry in China, and there are many license issues and many topics that cannot be solved. So Yahoo quickly declined and slowly moved out.

in p>23, Yahoo bought "3721" of Zhou Hongyi, a search engine in China at that time, for $12 million.

what are the reasons why jack ma failed to integrate Yahoo China? There are probably three reasons:

First, business integration is out of focus. Yahoo has portal, email, search and IM, and these businesses of Yahoo China need to be integrated with Alibaba. But in 25, Alibaba already had its own email products, strategic search products and its own IM system, all of which were available. So how to integrate these "biological sons" of Alibaba with the business from Yahoo China becomes a very difficult problem. For a long time, the business integration between Yahoo team and Alibaba team has not been completed, and even a gathering point has never been found.

second, it is difficult to integrate Yahoo China's business with Alibaba's business. Yahoo China tried many times to develop and transform independently, first positioning itself as a news portal, and then focusing on search. When the community consumption industry started, someone inside Ali went out to start a business and made a word-of-mouth network. Ma Yun also bought the word-of-mouth network and tied it with Yahoo, hoping to form a business module, but it didn't succeed later.

third, the team runs in.

This seemingly glamorous merger case finally produced three big bitter fruits:

First, since then, Ma Yun lost control of Alibaba in the sense of equity, and 7% of the shares were given to Sun Zhengyi and Yahoo;

second, Yahoo China, the dowry of that year, finally became a big chicken rib of Alibaba group.

in the business world, free lunch is often the most expensive!

In recent years, the third of the eight mistakes made by Ma Yun: the collective death of airborne troops

Around p>26, Ma Yun introduced a number of international talents from outside, including Wei Zhe (CEO of B&Q China), Wu Weilun (CFO of Pepsi China), Ceng Ming (professor of cheung kong graduate school of business), Xie Wen (CEO of Hexun.com) and Cui Renfu (Senior Vice President of Wal-Mart Department Store Group). This is a group of excellent young talents, who have two characteristics: first, most of them are from the world's top 5, and second, they are not from Internet companies.

These two points show that one of Ma Yun's major demands in recruiting these talents is that, first, he needs senior international talents from the world's top 5 to help him. Second, he believes that there are no international talents in the Internet field, whether in the United States or Japan, so other talents from the world's top 5 mature international companies should be used to transform Internet companies and Alibaba.

why are these international talents "collectively killed" in Alibaba?

the first reason: cultural exclusion. Alibaba has two very important cultures. The first one is called martial arts culture. Tencent, another Internet company in China, also has its own unique culture, that is, taking English names. Martial arts culture itself is iron-blooded and playful. This kind of chivalrous culture, which flouts all rules, is a heresy for those senior managers from the world's top 5, so it is difficult for these people to accept it from the cultural level. Alibaba's second culture is the handstand culture. Ma Yun said that the world is in the eyes of everyone, and we want to subvert the world. How can you subvert the world? The first way is to stand upside down first, because after standing upside down, the world in our eyes will become different. Handstand means to look at the world upside down.

the second reason: the utilitarianism of performance. The assessment and evaluation of values of the world's top 5 enterprises is a balanced evaluation, and its requirement is to move forward at a uniform speed and overcome all difficulties to reach that destination. But for a company like Alibaba, the performance appraisal is geometric and nonlinear. This kind of performance appraisal is very suitable for those entrepreneurs. In a company like Alibaba, there is a unique martial arts culture, which is full of the atmosphere of "killing Buddha when encountering Buddha and killing ghosts". Its rules of the game are that you are a hero if you can pass the customs, and a bear if you can't, no matter where you come from.