New Perspective On Starting A Career

New Perspective On Starting A Career

New Perspective On Starting A Career

Copyright © 2024 by Leland Kornegay

All rights reserved

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 : SEIZE THE RIGHT OPPORTUNITY

CHAPTER 2 : LEARN BUSINESS JUST BY READING A BOOK

CHAPTER 3 : PIONEER AND LEADER

CHAPTER 4 : SO THERE'S A NEW RUNG IN THE OLD LADDER?

CHAPTER 5 : WORK ORIENTATION

CHAPTER 1 : SEIZE THE RIGHT OPPORTUNITY

10 am on November 6, 2007, China's largest e-commerce company Alibaba B2B (1688.hk) was successfully listed on the Hong Kong Exchange, the opening price was 30 Hong Kong dollars, increasing 122% compared to the issue price of HK$13.50.

Before Alibaba went public, they expected subscriptions to be $40 billion. One surprising thing is that at the first roadshow station (31) in Hong Kong, Alibaba attracted 36 billion dollars, then in Singapore it reached 60 billion dollars, and finally when it came to New York, it collected 180 billion dollars. . Initially, Ma Van set the issuance price at 12 Hong Kong dollars. When he realized that the roadshow situation was going so well, someone suggested that the issue be raised to 24 Hong Kong dollars, with each share only needing An increase of 1 Hong Kong dollar is an additional 1 billion Hong Kong dollars. So, if they raise the issue price to HK$24, they will receive HK$12 billion. That very evening, Ma Van convened a meeting within the company, telling everyone that they must learn to say no to temptations, because greed will pay the price. They finally priced the issue at HK$13.50.

Alibaba's opening price on the first day was 30 Hong Kong dollars, when it ended the trading session it was 39 Hong Kong dollars, skyrocketing to 192.59%. Two months after going public, the maximum price reached 41.8 USD. Alibaba quickly became the new king of stocks on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, becoming the best money-making internet company in China that the media competed for coverage. Having achieved such great success, Ma Van still remained extremely humble. In an interview, he said:Success is absolutely not thanks to Ma Van alone. Several thousand people devoted and persevered for this goal for eight long years. Throughout China's internet industry, there have been many e-commerce and B2B platforms that have collapsed. Our timing is very good, sometimes luck is also very important. Our company is a very lucky company. Our success is absolutely not due to our hard work, nor is it because we are smart. Of course we are also industrious, we are also very smart. But we also need luck, we also have to pay the price. Of course, today we still cannot say we are successful, we are just on a new level.

Regarding B2B listing on the stock exchange, Ma Van once expressed: This proves that my judgment that year was not wrong, B2B can not only become a form of commercial model, but also a This type of commercial model may represent future trends. I think that a single B2B listing on the stock exchange still has differences compared to an entire corporation listing on the stock exchange, especially when China's e-commerce industry has just started, and needs to go through many years of experience. through a construction process lasting 3 years, even 5 years. I think that if the whole corporation goes public at the same time, it will not only be the pressure from the capital market, or the motivation of employees, but also external factors, all All of these things will be detrimental to the development of the entire e-commerce market. After B2B goes public, other companies will likely have a relatively good development space and capital space. B2B listing on the stock exchange is also in our plans. Just a few years ago we did not want to list, but now we think the time is ripe. If we grasp a ripe opportunity to go public, we will be able to have a relatively large influence on, or help both the e-commerce market and the Chinese internet market move forward.

Choosing Hong Kong to list stocks has extremely important significance. The Hong Kong exchange can demonstrate the value of Alibaba, which can send a signal to all high-tech companies across China, across Asia, and around the world: Hong Kong is not Not inferior to Nasdaq, although Nasdaq is also a very good place to attract capital. At the same time, Hong Kong can also prove its capabilities through Alibaba's listing on the stock exchange.

NEW PERSPECTIVE ON STARTING A CAREER

Pragmatic trade model

When Ma Van was passionately lecturing on the set of Win in China, in fact perhaps I and many other Chinese audiences still did not know what kind of company Alibaba was. In my mind, Alibaba is an internet company, a high-tech company, a company that makes money online.

In 2009, when I visited the office building of B2B professional company Alibaba in Hangzhou's Xinjiang area, I was really surprised. Each floor is occupied by telemarketing staff. It was a weekend. Even if the seats were empty, you could still imagine the grand scale of the building. this place. Each person's seat only fits in a small box, the equipment for each employee is a headset with a microphone attached like the host's. In this office with so many telemarketers, there are signs marking them as sales role models, others as sales champions of that day or that month, and even others. the embroidered flags that we often see, and also the martial arts-style markings. Based on the introduction of Alibaba's PR staff that day, the voices of these sales staff when talking on the phone are very soft, they have all been trained, if you let them speak at a normal volume. It is impossible to conduct many phone calls in a crowded office like this.

At that time, the product that these employees called to market was Chengxintong, of course they also sold international membership services. When I walked around a few floors and admired the view, I really understood what Alibaba's revenue was based on.

In the first half of 2007, Alibaba's total revenue was 958 million yuan, pre-tax profit was estimated at 400 million yuan, net profit was 295 million yuan, net profit was 30.8%. Before being separated from the group, the profit growth rate of Alibaba's B2B business always remained at more than twice a year. In 2005, Alibaba company's pre-tax profit was 103.4 billion yuan, an increase of 2.63 times compared to 28.5 billion yuan over the same period last year; Pre-tax profit in 2006 was 291.4 billion yuan, 2.82 times higher than the same period last year.

Data in the Alibaba company prospectus clearly states that, as of June 30, 2007, the number of registered users has reached about 255 thousand people. The growth rate of the number of registered users and the number of paid members in 2005 of Alibaba was 83% on average. Alibaba's 2006 growth in the number of registered users and paid members was 83% and 55%, respectively.

One thing is the sales revenue of internet products, another thing is the number of registered members, also known as users, plus Alibaba's brand, all of these factors have led to the issuance of shares. Alibaba's polls in Hong Kong became unprecedentedly bustling.

In retrospect, many companies despised this method of telemarketing, and also despised its sales method, saying it was outdated and cheap. This is similar to how many people in the Chinese marketing field once laughed at Su Ngoc Tru hiring someone to paint the advertising slogan Give gifts, give away platinum cards on the houses of households located near the train line. In fact, it doesn't matter whether it is high level or low level, as long as the goal is achieved it will be high level, if the goal is not achieved then it will be low level. In the marketplace, the tactics used must be practical, as long as they do not violate the law. If you do not keep a pragmatic mindset, the goal will be difficult to achieve.

To tell the truth, when standing among the long working cubicles as far as the eye can see, it will be difficult for you to imagine the connection between this place and Ma Van, but it is this sales collective that has brought a positive source of revenue. a positive source of profit for Alibaba.

The ability of an entrepreneur to grasp the opportunity to go public on the stock exchange

In January 2007, during a conference in Davos Switzerland, Ma Van revealed that Alibaba needed to consider going public. After listening, I remember reading a news report saying that Alibaba will temporarily not list on the stock exchange. When leaving Davos, he said one sentence: the economic crisis is about to happen. This judgment was mentioned at that conference in Davos, but not many people paid attention, because it was just one of the multidimensional judgments related to future economic development. I myself don't have my own company, so I don't pay attention to the impact of this. However, Ma Van remembered very clearly, he closely connected this judgment with the company's listing on the stock exchange. A company that wants to list on the stock exchange will normally have to prepare for half a year or more. From the first half of 2007 until Alibaba listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange in October 2007 has only been a few months, so perhaps After returning from Davos, he immediately began preparing to bring B2B operations to the stock exchange.

In 2008, when the world economic crisis was approaching, we were surprised to discover that if Alibaba were just a few months late, there would be absolutely no chance of going public. Indeed, it is difficult for us to clearly describe the benefits of B2B operations going public to the stock exchange for Alibaba Group, but during the world economic crisis, attracting a Such a large amount of capital has exerted a tremendous effect on the development of Taobao and Alibaba's later cloud computing deployment process.

The role of a company founder is like a captain, when there will be storms ahead on the sea, when to avoid, when to wait bravely, the ability to predict the times. This important point depends entirely on the experience and talent of the captain. Ma Van not only once said that Davos is a school, and all the forums in the Davos conference will never talk about specific issues, but will all raise judgments related to the two -What could happen to the world in the next 3 years? At Davos, I often saw that even while sitting in the hall, Ma Van would quietly call straight to Hangzhou. Basically, he always immediately applies the knowledge he has just learned.

An entrepreneur needs to understand the relationship with investors, must understand the development direction of the business, must know how to lead a team, must know the situation clearly, and must also have an awareness of the future. hybrid. We can imagine that if Alibaba missed the opportunity to list on the stock exchange in 2007, what would they do now? One thing that can be affirmed is that the price Alibaba has to pay on its development path will be much greater.

THE BIG VISION OF THE TIME

Becoming a symbol, he also began to quiet down

At the end of 2007, the Asian version of Fortune magazine chose Ma Van as its cover character. In a cover story called The Tao of Jack, Fortune magazine hailed him as China's Internet King, saying "he drove and launched the IPO (32 ) hottest internet company since Google was founded, beating eBay, linking with Yahoo to build China's largest online trading market. Ma Yun is also the first Chinese businessman to be featured on the cover of Fortune magazine.

In terms of market value alone, since Alibaba B2B was listed on the stock exchange, Ma Van is indeed known as China's internet king.

On the first day of listing on November 6, 2007, Alibaba's market value reached an astonishing figure: $26 billion, equivalent to the total market value of Sina, Sohu, Netease, and Ctrip. and SNDA combined. The market value of Tengxun, Alibaba's biggest competitor, also just surpassed tens of billions of dollars in 2007. Alibaba also jumped to become one of the five largest internet companies in the world, ranked only after Google, eBay, Yahoo and Amazon.

Ma Yun's three achievements before the BAT era were completed: acquiring Yahoo China in 2005, defeating eBay China in 2006, landing on Nasdaq and ranking fifth in the list of major internet companies world's best in 2007. It is said that in a meeting of senior leaders held right on the listing day, he announced a new goal: Within 3 years, Alibaba must become a company with market value. 100 billion dollars, making it into the top 3 largest internet companies in the world.

Regarding listing on the stock exchange, there is a very interesting story that Ma Van once told me. This story is related to something he values very much, which is promise: In 2007, I started thinking about IPO in February and March, by July and August, I was very impatient. : must hurry, faster, as quickly as possible, something is about to happen, it must be posted immediately! I said that no matter what, by November I must be listed on the stock exchange. And then finally, through many impossible situations, we completed the listing arrangement on Monday, November 5. I said, that's good. But suddenly I remembered something: On November 5, I accepted Ms. Liem Tung's invitation to attend a lecture in Taiwan. I agreed to give this lecture to him at the APEC conference a year earlier. At that time I refused, but he said he had invited everyone. So I had to postpone it one day (November 6). All the lawyers hate me to death, saying that I've stopped pushing, and now they're asking for a postponement. I said I had to go, because I had already accepted the offer. As a result, when I went to Taiwan that day, stock prices plummeted miserably that day. And after returning to Hong Kong, on the second day of listing on the stock exchange, the whole stock market started to rise again, and we just went up. This is an interesting story related to the promise.

During the announcement ceremony held on the day he listed on the stock exchange, Ma Van said that this announcement ceremony would be the last time he accepted an interview within the next year. Later, when participating in two IT conferences co-organized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the State Council Information Technology Work Office and CCW Media Group, he said: I don't want to answer Interview within a year. In the last two years I have told too much, and people still don't believe it... We all need some quiet time to work, because to get to this day, China's internet has changed. I have to go through a lot of challenges, and if I want to continue to move forward, it's even more difficult to step steadily... So today I want to talk a little less, do a little more, in order to build a real foundation. Good.

Related to Ma Van's quietness, there is a more strange story: In the early summer of 2008, Ma Van came to stay for 3 days on Bach Van Quan mountain in Chongqing. During those three days, Ma Van restrained himself and did not say a word. The thing he did the most in those 3 days was copying and writing scriptures. After that, the story Ma Van forbidden language started appearing on the news.

In contrast to Ma Van's silence towards the public is the passionate discussion of public opinion towards him. On January 27, 2008, at the Shanghai City Political Consultation Conference, Shanghai City Party Secretary - Du Chinh Thanh asked: Why wasn't a person like Ma Van born in our place? me? Perhaps more or less, it is because we ourselves have some problems." Next, it was the turn of the Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee - Uong Duong to lead the group to visit Alibaba. Why don't other places produce a talent like Ma Van? This has become one of the questions that makes people ponder the most in 2008.

Since then, Ma Van has become a symbol in the eyes of the public, books with topics about him appear in bookstores, and almost every media outlet also begins to want to interview him. crazy way.

MILLIONAIRE - 18

2008: Building cloud computing

"People always say that Alibaba's technical aspect can be said to be the worst in the Chinese internet industry. Baidu's Ly Ngan Hoanh understands