From our studios in new york, this is charlie rose. Jack ma founded alibaba 16 years ago. Today it is the largest Ecommerce Company in the world. 100 million buyers go to the site each day. Last year, transactions totaled 208 million. In september, alibaba went public. The ipo was the largest in history and made him the richest person in china. I spoke with jack ma on friday in davos, switzerland. Here is that conversation. How big is alibaba . How many come every day . How many people come in a week . How fast is it growing . We have over 100 million visiting our site, shopping our site. That is every day. We created 13 million jobs for china. And, we grow from 18 people to 30,000 people, in my apartment to four big campuses. Compared to 15 years ago, we are big. Compared to 13 years later, we are still big. How big will you be 15 years from now . 15 years ago i told my team that in the path to 15 years, we grow from nothing to this. 15 years later i want people to see no cap. It is already everywhere. I want 15 years ago that we talk about what is ecommerce . Why Small Business using ecommerce . I hope 15 years later people forget about ecommerce. Because they think it is like electricity. Nobody think it is hightech. This is something that i dont want 15 years later, we still walk on the street talking about why and how ecommerce can help people. Talk about the ipo. Did it exceed your expectations . It is a small ipo. The largest in the history. [laughter] we raised number two was a chinese bank. Thank you. I remembered 2001. We want to raise some for venture capitalists in the United States. We got rejected. I said we would come back raising more. [laughter] but, i think what we think more about is by 25 billion, how to spend the money efficiently. This is a lot of money. This is a trust from the world. Trust from those people. They want you to do better jobs. To help more people. They want a good return. So, i think if we have more pressure, because right now our market cap is bigger than ibm. Some days we are bigger than walmart. We are of the top 10 market Cap Companies in the world. I told my team and myself is that true . We are not that good. Because years ago, people said ali baba is terrible. Lets not make money. All the bad things. I told myself and people, we are better than we thought. I said we are not as good as people thought. Were just a company 15 years old. We are doing something that is not tried. You grew up in the 1960s. 1964. [laughter] that was the time of the cultural revolution. The end of the cultural revolution. My grandfather was a tiny landlord after the revolution he was considered a bad guy. So, i was i know how tough it was when he was killed. When i was a kid. You tried to get into three colleges. Each time they rejected you. I tried the examination that young people, if you want to go to university, have to take. I failed it three times. I failed for funny things. I failed a Key Primary School test two times. I failed three times for the middle school. You would never believe in my city, there is only one middle school. It lasted one year. It was transferred, because our graduates of our school, no middle School Acceptance because we are too fast. What effect did it have being rejected . I think we have to get used to it. We are not that good. Even today we have a lot of people reject us. I think when i graduate from university, before i for three years i tried the university. I applied for jobs. 3 times i was rejected. I went to one place they said no, you are not good. When kfc came to china. [laughter] 24 people went for the job. 23 people accepted. I was the one rejected. [laughter] and then later, five people were accepted. I was the last. Being turned down, rejected, i applied for harvard 10 times rejected. [laughter] 10 times eu wrote them and said he wanted to go to harvard. Yes. I told myself someday i should come teach there. [laughter] i think that can be arranged. Richard nixon came to china and tourists flooded the place. That is how you learned english. Yes. I dont know why, at 1213 years old, i fell in love with the language of english. There is no place you can learn english at that time. There were no english books. I went to the hotel, the hotel can receive foreign visitors. I showed them around as a free guide. They taught me english. I think that changed me. Im 100 made in china. And when people talk to me and say, how can you speak english like that . I think that was the nine years. These western tourists open my mind because everything they told me was so different from the things i learned from schools and from my parents. So, now i have a habit. Whatever i see, whatever i read, i use my mind. I think about it. Is that how you became jack ma . Jack, the name was given by a lady, a tourist. She came here and said maring is difficult to pronounce. So she said, do you have an english name . I said i dont. I asked, can you give me an english name . She said ok, my father was called jack. What you think about jack . I said good. [laughter] first visit to america . 1995. Yes. I came here for a project helping the local government building up a highway. You tried the internet. I tried the internet in seattle. In a building called the u. S. Bank. I dont know whether it is still there or not. But it was a building and my friend opened a small office only 10 bigger than this room. There were not many computers in their. In their in there. He said jack, this is the internet. I said i dont want to type because computers are so expensive in china, if i destroy, i cannot pay for it. He says just search it. He said, try beer. I didnt know how to spell it. I said, it is from germany. Beer is from the United States. Beers from japan. No beer from china. I said, type china. 1995. No data about china. I talked to my friend. Why not make something about china . We made a small, ugly looking page called something like, china , so shocking, we launched it in the morning. 12 30, i got a call, he said you have five emails. I said what is email . They were so excited. This is the first time ive seen a chinese website. Can we do something together . I said this is something interesting. We should do it. Why did you call it alibaba . Alibaba. When i started, i said we should have a global name. A name that is interesting. Yahoo . I was thinking, alibaba is a good name. I was in San Francisco that day. Waitress came. I said do you know what alibaba is . She said, yes. Open sesame. I said good. People know about alibaba. I think this is a good name. It started witha and so whatever you talk about, alibaba is at the top. You have said before that in creating alibaba you have to create trust. Yes. People in china are used to facetoface. How did you create trust . I think because we started with the internet, i dont know you, you dont know me. How can you do things online unless you are trusted . So, for ecommerce, the most important thing was trust. I think when i first went to the United States for raising money, and i talked to venture capitalists, a lot of them say jack, china howd you do business on the internet . I know that we have to trust the system. And the credit system. It is impossible to do business. In the past 14 years, everything we do is trying to build up the trust system. Well, charlie, i am so proud of us today. When i talk today in china people trust each other. The government, the people, and the media, everyone thinks this guy is cheating. Because of ecommerce, we finish 60 million transactions every day. People dont know each other. I dont know you. You dont know me. You wire the money to me. I dont know you. I give a person a package. I dont know him. He took something to sell across the ocean, and say this is the trust. We have at least 60 minute trust happening every day. You created an escrow account in the beginning. You keep the money until they got the product. And then you release the money. That is true. The Escrow Services of alipay. For the first of three years alibaba is just a marketplace for information. We talked a lot of times and dont do business. Because there was no payment. I talked to the banks. Banks said, no, this would never work. I dont know what to do. If i start a large payment system, it is the financial legal walls. If i dont do it, ecommerce goes nowhere. You have to have that. I went to a leadership discussion. It is about responsibility. After i listen to the panel i give a call to my colleagues. They say do it now, immediately. If there is something wrong, and the government isnt happy, if somebody has to go to prison jack ma will go to prison. Because it is so important for china, for the world to trust the system. If you do not do it, and do not do it properly, money wash, you will get sent to prison. I will send you to prison. That was it. People dont like it. So many people i talked to at that time they say this is a stupid idea. It is not as people use it. Now we have 800 Million People using alipay. It is now a part of alibaba. You have never gotten money from the Chinese Government. No. I wanted in the beginning. Later i didnt want it. If the Company Takes money off of the government pockets, that company is rubbish. Think about it, how can you make money from the customers and market . No money from chinese banks . No. At that time i wanted it. They had gone against me. I dont want it. [laughter] your relationship with the government. What is your relationship . Here is what some say. That you have existed in an environment that is not they have restricted competition for you. That is a good thing to do for a private company. Yes. I think the relationship with the government, for us is very interesting. For the first of five years, i have been working as a parttime job for a Government Organization called the ministry of foreign trade, in 1997 for 14 months. I learned you should never rely on a government to do ecommerce. I started a business and told my people, be in love with the government, dont marry them. [laughter] respect them. And a lot of people say the government officers are looking at the internet, does this and that. I think it is the opportunity, responsibility, talking to them. Tell them how the internet helps. You tell them i create jobs. Yes. A lot of people debate. A lot of people fight against them. In the first 12 years, anybody comes to my office, i sit and talk to them. How can we help the economy and create jobs . Why china will improve by the internet. I think because the internet at that time, if you can meet someone you have the chance. So today, im very talkative. This is why i talk to so many people. If the government comes to you and asks to do something for them. Normally, when the government says can you do this project, i say no. I can introduce some friends interested in doing that for you, but if they continue to want me to do it, i say i will do it but i dont want a charge. Dont come to me again. But recently, we have some government organizers. Every spring festival, the train tickets are so difficult hundreds and thousands of farmers in cities go to the hometown. When they order tickets on the whole system crashed. For five years. I told young people, go support them. Dont charge anything. I dont want to see millions of farmers go back to cities and they cannot go back to hometowns. It is not for money. It is something that is not for the government. It is for the millions of people that can buy tickets in the snowy night and dont have to wait. A oneway stop along the route to where you are, yahoo . They gave you they invested 1 billion. It turned out to be a good investment. Yes. You raise this money on your own outside of china with investors. Yes. I am very thankful for all the investors. 1999, year 2000, a lot of people say jack is crazy. He is doing something we dont understand. A lot of venture capitalists give you money, because there is an american model. But they say alibaba, we dont see this kind of model. And jack is crazy. A crazy guy. I remember in time magazine, they call me crazy jack. And i think crazy is good. We are crazy, but we are not stupid. [laughter] we know what we are doing, great if everyone agreed with me, we have no chance. The money we raised, we are thankful. Our investors make a lot of money. I feel proud and honored. As you know, issues have risen about privacy. Google and apple and questions of whether the government should have access to files. How do you handle that if the Chinese Government says, you know a lot about people. You have transactional relationships with lots of people. What do you say if they say, we want to see your files. So far, i dont have that problem with chinas government. If it is a criminal, we are worried. Then we work with them. The rest of that, no. We are a business. The data is precious. We dont know how. If we give to anyone, it is privacy issues. I think, just like hundreds of years ago people say i would rather put money under my pillow than in the banks. Now banks have to put their money much better than you do. Privacy issues, all of the securities today, we may not have the solutions. We dont have the answers. I believe our young people have the solutions. In the next 1015 years, there will be breakthroughs with that. I am fully confident on that. Your life is a testament to the idea that nothing is impossible. That if someone says no, you say it is just the beginning. Where does that come from . Well, at the beginning i never thought i thought when i was young, everything is possible. Now i know, not everything is possible. We have something we have to think about. You have to consider others, the customer, society, your employees, shareholders. So there are so many things that i think, if you continue to work hard, there is possibility. And, i just am an enthusiastic about what we are doing. At the beginning, i just want to survive. That was 2000. Yes. But later i think, so many peoples lives change. I was so excited. When the first of three years we made zero revenue. We are so excited to continue to work. I remember many times when i go to restaurants, someone came and i would try to pay the bill, and the owner would come and say sir, your bill is paid by someone. And a small note would say i am a customer of your group and i make money, and i know you dont make any money. I pay the bill for you. [laughter] i remember one thing. I was sitting somewhere, someone sends me a cigar. I dont smoke cigar. But there was a note, it said thank you, i am a customer. And i remember, i was at the shangrila hotel. Someone open the door for me the boy at the gate said thank you very much. My girlfriend makes more money than i do on your site. This is something that you now no know, if you dont do it, nothing is possible. The revenue comes through advertising and transactional fees. Most from advertising. Tiny. Tiny from advertising and transactional. We need we have more than 10 million Small Businesses selling our site everywhere. The transactions we have, tiny. Second after walmart, i remember one of the guys from walmart five years ago said jack, you are doing a great job. I said in 10 years we will be better than walmart. He said young man, you can have of that. I said, 10 years we will be bigger than walmart on the sales. If you want to have 10,000 new customers, you have to build a new warehouse. For me. It is to servers. Where you going . What does jack want . We are an internet company. We happened to be in china. We have the same entrepreneur spirit like every great entrepreneur in the world. I remember the day when i started alibaba. We were helping Small Business do it easier. Today, so many minutes of Small Business using our platform to sell things. Over 300 Million Consumers buy things from our site. Cheapest, efficient. I think about how we can make alibaba a platform for global Small Business. My vision is that if we can help Small Business sell things to argentina, argentina consumers can buy things from switzerland. We can build up, which i call wto. Wto is a great thing. It has Big Companies across the nation. I hope that we can serve 2 billion consumers. 2 billion consumers. We can help 10 million Small Businesses outside of china. Outside of china . Outside of china. Because we have American Farmers in washington state, almost 300 tons of cherries to china last year. Cherries. An investor came to me, can you help us sell cherries in china . I said, why not . Lets try it. When we order, when we start to sell cherries, they are still on the trees. We started a preorder. 18,000 families order cherries online. We pick up the cherries, send them the china. Within 48 hours, we sell them. The consumers are so happy. We had a lot of complaints, saying why only 100 . They wanted more. So we had costco, we sold 300 tons of nuts to china. So, we are also selling alaskan seafood to china. So if we can sell things to china if we can sell seafood or cherries, why cant we help american and european Small Businesses sell to china consumers . China needs that. That is what i want to do. 2 billion consumers in china asia, developing nations. How we can let them buy things globally . When you look at international markets, you are doing well in russia. How well . Pretty good in russia. We did pretty good in brazil. Russia now, if we are not number one may be the number two or number three we had a campaign. The campaign is that russian girls and boys want to buy from china. How many days are russian girls placing order and receive the product from china . Two years ago, after the campaign, we didnt in we did it in one week. We crashed the system and russia. In russia. You were seen in hollywood. What are you doing in hollywood . I like the hollywood innovation, the digital. I learned so much about the hollywood movies, especially forest gump. You love forest gump. Why do you like chem him . Never gives up. People think he is down. But he knows what he is doing. I was feeling depressed the day in 2002 or 2003, earlier than that. I was depressed when i could not find a way for the internet. Then at my friends, i watched forest gump. When i saw him, just a guy believe what youre doing, love what you are doing. And life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you can get. I never knew i would be here talking to you, talking to charlie rose. I never know. Today i made it. I told my people in my apartment 15 years ago, guy