Jack Ma: FAILURE IS PROGRESS (Best Motivational Speech)

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• published: 09 Jul 2017
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Jack Ma: FAILURE IS PROGRESS (Best Motivational Video) The most expensive sake that Alibaba’s Jack Ma ever had This year marks the tenth anniversary of one of the most lucrative deals in tech history. In 2005, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang led Yahoo's negotiations to buy a 40% stake in Jack Ma's then fledgling Chinese e-commerce company, Alibaba, for $1 billion. That stake is now worth over $20 billion. On Thursday night, during an interview at Stanford University, the two executives took a trip down memory lane and talked about the blockbuster deal. Yang played the part of the interviewer while Ma answered his questions. "It was a big risk when [Yang] put $1 billion into Alibaba," said Ma, now Alibaba's chairman. "We went back and forth over the terms, and almost ended the deal at one point." That night, to help settle the impasse, Yang asked Ma out for a drink. Yang bought Ma a massive glass of sake, and aimed to convince Ma how wonderful Yahoo was, and how the deal would help Alibaba. "It was the most expensive sake I have ever had," Ma joked. Yang and Ma's history spans decades. Yang first met Ma on a trip to China in 1997, when Ma was working for the Chinese government as a translator. Ma was assigned to take Yang on a tour of China's Great Wall. Nearly ten years later, Yang started hearing about Alibaba, a marketplace for businesses much like eBay. Yang kept wondering if it was the same Jack Ma that had been his tour guide in China. It was 2005, and Yang recalled that Yahoo was trying to build a business in China after seeing success with Yahoo's operations in Japan. "But we couldn't build a China business," Yang explained. Yahoo's eBay-like site in China was getting "killed" by a local company called Taobao, one of Alibaba's e-commerce sites. "I thought, if you can't beat them, join them," Yang said. The story will take a new twist if and when Yahoo (YHOO) eventually spins off its massive investment in Alibaba (BABA, +0.14%) amid pressure from Wall Street to return money to shareholders. Yahoo’s plan is to put the shares in an independent public company called Aabaco Holdings as a way to avoid billions in taxes. But the IRS has declined to rule on a proposed tax-free spin-out, creating uncertainty around the plan. Ma and Yang didn't address the current state of Yahoo's stake. But during the interview, Ma revealed another interesting tidbit — that Alibaba videotapes many business discussions. In particular, there are videotapes of many of the heated discussions around the decision to take money from Yahoo back in 2005. When it comes to solving really hard problems, Ma has a famous quote that I love: "Today is hard. Tomorrow will be worse. But the day after that will be beautiful. Most of your talent won't make it past tomorrow." But as a leader, you must inspire people through those hardest times: To stick with it, to move through it, and to see past it so they can make it to the day where things are beautiful. That's when you're really innovating. You have get your team there. I'm a dropout of Harvard Business School, but I took a very helpful leadership class while I was there that really stuck with me. We discussed looking at problems from every angle, and looking at the person inside the puzzle. See their picture, their concern, their point of view, and understand that people feel passionately the way they do. Your job is to see the 360º and come up with the answers. On the flip side, you have to balance this by pushing people to their boundaries. How do you get there, if most people don't make it past Jack Ma's tomorrow? You ache to get talent to do things they've never done before. And that's hard. *CREDIT Jack Ma FAIR-USE COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER * Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, commenting, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favour of fair use. 1)This video has no negative impact on the original works 2)This video is also for teaching and inspirational purposes. 3)It is not transformative in nature. Law Of Attraction Coaching does not own the rights to these images, videos and audio files. They have, in accordance with fair use, been repurposed with the intent of educating and motivate others. However, if any content owners would like their images removed, please contact us by email at innergrowth.inc@gmail.com