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"In the beginning I just wanted to survive. For the first three years, we made zero revenue. I remember many times when I was trying to pay up, the restaurant owner would say, 'Your bill was paid.' And there would be a note saying, 'Mr. Ma, I'm your customer on the Alibaba platform. I made a lot of money, and I know you don't, so I paid the bill.'"
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Exlpore more Entrepreneurship quotes
"People have come to the erroneous conclusion that if they're not willing to start something separate, world-changing, and risky, they have no business starting anything. Somehow, we've fooled ourselves into believing that the project has to have a name, a building, and a stock ticker symbol to matter."
"Starting and profitably running a business is not just some achievement, it is heroism."
"Start lifting your brand off the ground with an excelling mentality becoming best at what you do. You can't afford to be an average person although you may have begun from a level below average."
"Make no mistake: if you want to make it as an entrepreneur, you simply can't do it on your own. This is a nonnegotiable!"
"Entrepreneurs pay the price of a road less traveled, while everyone else takes the freeway and perpetually misses their own exit."
"Entrepreneurs don't ask for permission. They act per a mission."
"Being an entrepreneur is like being a pirate. Go for the booty and discover new, uncharted lands."
"Being an entrepreneur is like eating glass and staring into the abyss."
"If you keep your eye on the profit, you're going to skimp on the product. But if you focus on making really great products, then the profits will follow."
"Your dreams can earn you money and provision when you don't only have fans, but customers."
Explore more quotes by Jack Ma
"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."
"I flunked my exam for university two times before I was accepted by what was considered my city's worst university, Hangzhou Teachers University. I was studying to be a high school English teacher. In my university, I was elected student chairman and later became chairman of the city's Students Federation."
"When we started the e-commerce, nobody believed that China would have e-commerce because people believed in 'guang-shi,' face-to-face, and all kinds of network in traditional ways. There's no trust system in China."
"As a company, we have to be very transparent. We are in a business very related to finance, and I want this company to last long, and I want this company to be audited by everyone."
"The world is getting so small. Young people are mobile; they want to travel around the world. When you travel around the world, you exchange culture, you want to make friends, you want to exchange things."
"Trust the young people; trust this generation's innovation. They're making things, changing innovation every day. And all the consumers are the same: they want new things, they want cheap things, they want good things, they want unique things. If we can create these kind of things for consumers, they will come."
"On privacy issues, it's just like hundreds of years ago when people said, 'I would rather put my money under my pillow than in a bank.' But today, banks know how to protect money much better than you do. Today, we may not have the answers to privacy issues, but I believe our young people will come up with the solutions."
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