19 Entrepreneurial Lessons from Alibaba to Inspire You

Alibaba’s e-commerce sites offer an unparalleled variety of goods to consumers. Its logistics offering ensures those goods are delivered quickly and reliably. And the company’s finance subsidiary ensures that buying on Alibaba is easy and worry free.

Below, I’ve listed my favourite quotes, which I picked from the book — Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built.

1. Customers first, employees second, and shareholders third.

2. A global technology platform sounds great, like a Boeing 747 flying. But if the airport is a schoolyard, you cannot land.

3. Nobody knows the future. You can only create the future.

4. Come up with an idea, make it fun, and breathe something into it which otherwise is still just an idea.

5. If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one. Change your tactics if you need to, but don’t change the rabbit… Get one first, put it in your pocket, and then catch the others.

6. Focus on the process, instead of the results. Break your task down into phases, each day could be dedicated to one key step in the process… and eventually you wouldn’t be far off from your goal.

7. It is difficult for an elephant to trample an ant to death, as long as you can dodge well.

8. Masters of negotiation always listen, don’t talk. A true master listens, and as soon as he moves his sword, you pretty much collapse.

9. 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.

10. The pioneers take the arrows, settlers take the land.

11. Leaders make sure people not only see the vision, they live and breathe it.

12. If you use money to solve problems, why on earth would the world need businessmen anymore. Businessmen understand how to use the smallest resources to expand.

13. If you have no enemy in your heart, you will be invincible in the world.

14. If I had to bother about what other people speculated about, how would I get anything done?

15. The survival and growth of Taobao are not because of free service. It is, instead, because Taobao pays more attention to user experiences.

16. Alibaba might as well be known as ‘one thousand and one mistakes.’ We didn’t have any money, we didn’t have any technology, and we didn’t have a plan.

17. I am the CEO of the company, because I lead it with my wisdom, courage, and resourcefulness, not capital.

18. Wisdom is acquired through experience. Knowledge can be acquired through hard work.

19. Work happily, but live seriously.

That’s all for today. Will come up with another article soon.

Share your favourite books related to entrepreneurship in the comments below. I am looking for my next read. And make sure you FOLLOW ME!