Jack Ma

📍Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China

“Jack Ma grew up in Hangzhou, the old capital of the Southern Song dynasty on West Lake, and as a boy he practised his English by guiding foreign tourists around the city for free. He has often spoken about how familiar rejection became: he failed the national university entrance exam more than once, and he has said he was turned down for around thirty jobs, including one at a new KFC in Hangzhou, and rejected by Harvard ten times. He eventually trained as a teacher and taught English at a university in Hangzhou for several years. On a trip to the United States in 1995 he tried the internet for the first time, searched for beer and then for China, and found almost nothing Chinese. He saw an opening, and in 1999 he founded Alibaba with seventeen friends in his apartment in Hangzhou, which remains the company's home city.”

Sources: Clark, D. Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built (2016), Ecco Press; Ma, J. various speeches at World Economic Forum and Alibaba investor days; Tian, H. Jack Ma and the Making of Alibaba (2017)