Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.
I call Alibaba '1,001 mistakes.' We expanded too fast, and then in the dot-com bubble, we had to have layoffs. By 2002, we had only enough cash to survive for 18 months. We had a lot of free members using our site, and we didn't know how we'd make money. So we developed a product for China exporters to meet U.S. buyers online. This model saved us.
You should learn from your competitor, but never copy. Copy and you die.
When I am myself, I am happy and have a good result.
We should keep on going along the path of globalization. Globalization is good... when trade stops, war comes.
I don't want to be liked. I want to be respected.
Help young people. Help small guys. Because small guys will be big. Young people will have the seeds you bury in their minds, and when they grow up, they will change the world.
I'm not a tech guy. I'm looking at the technology with the eyes of my customers, normal people's eyes.
The very important thing you should have is patience.
The world needs new leadership, but the new leadership is about working together.
I try to make myself happy, no, because I know that if I'm not happy, my colleagues are not happy and my shareholders are not happy and my customers are not happy.
My job is making money, helping other people make money. I am spending money, trying to make sure more people get rich, because you cannot spend a lot of money, right? So my job is spending money, helping others. This is a headache.
I think globalization is a great thing. And now a lot of people complain about globalization; a lot of people don't like, you know, the globalize of the concept, the idea of the results. I think the globalization is a great idea and to create a lot of jobs.
My vision is to build an e-commerce ecosystem that allows consumers and businesses to do all aspects of business online.
I'm humble 'cause I think many years ago people say, 'Well, Alibaba's terrible company'. And I know we were not that terrible. We're pretty good; we're better than people thought. But today, when people have a high expectation on you, and I start to worry and nervous because we are not good yet.
I'm coming to this world not to work. I want to come to this world to enjoy my life. I don't want to die in my office. I want to die on the beaches.
Spending money is much more difficult than making money.
A trade war would be a disaster for the world. It's very easy to slip into a trade war.
I know nothing about technology.
Before I left China, I was educated that China was the richest, happiest country in the world. So when I arrived Australia, I thought, 'Oh my God, everything is different from what I was told.' Since then, I started to think differently.
