Founder of Alibaba Group Jack Yun Ma was one of the main guests at SPIEF 2015. He spoke at the session «From IT to DT: A New Era for Commerce and Trade». Interestingly, the focus of his talk was more on people than technology.

Hope

I believe because of these young people the world is going to be growing faster. They breathe, they eat, they drink the Internet, and they are our hope. I believe because of these young people the world is going to be growing faster. And I think we should design a new rule for this new generation.

The most important thing about global trade

I believe next over twenty years the world trade should be focusing on small business. My belief and Alibaba’s belief is that global trade is not the power, the global trade is the right and the freedom of any business, and it should benefit the business of any size. So this is what we believe and we want to make sure that global trade really benefits because of the Internet.

Advice for the next generation

My advice to young people would be — do not conquer the world, serve the world. It is impossible to conquer the world. When you want to conquer the world, you will be in trouble. So I think if you want to change the world, change yourself first, change your behaviour and focus on the dream, you should do it not because your father wants you to do it, you should do it not because people think it is right, you should do it because you believe it works. And you cannot do it alone; you have to do it together with people. If you really want to do it, think about it clearly, and persist it.

Success

You should know that nothing can be successful next day. You have to think ’if I do it, is it possible I wait five years later, ten years later. So think about the future, remember the dreams. And work with a team. And also, do not worry about mistakes,

What doing business actually means

Doing business is like going to the battlefield. Those people who survive are the winners. So to learn how people feel is more important than to learn why people succeed. I think if you want to be successful, learn why people feel.

Behaviour

If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch a rabbit, change yourself but do not change the rabbit, stick to one rabbit first. That is philosophy.

Why he decided to appear at SPIEF

But my purpose of coming to Russia this time is I want to try to convince the young Russian people, I want to convince the Russian small business, using the Internet, using e-commerce to the other part of the world. Try to sell things everywhere in the world

Women and young people

The reasons that Alibaba grew is that we have women and young people, we rely on them. And the next ten years we have confidence in what we are doing. We will improve our e-commerce, we will improve our financial system to support small business, we will improve the logistic system to support small business, we will improve the data technology to support small business, we will help build up the cross-board thing. On the Internet nobody cares whether you are a man or a woman, they care whether you serve them well or not.

Role models

Always think that the best role models are the people you can feel, you can touch, you can communicate with. The role models are not only in the movies.

Pursuing your dream

I tell the people joining me not to work for me, but to work for their dream, because I work for my dream. So this is very important.

Mutual understanding

in China there is a saying: It takes you a thousand years’ effort to be on the same boat. And I think it takes ten thousand years together we are in the same company. So treat each other well.

The future

The future is always better. In ten years’ time there will be more successful Russian companies than today. Ten years later there will be more successful young people than today. The future is always better.

A full broadcast of the session: https://roscongress.org/en/sessions/ot-informatsionnykh-tekhnologiy-k-tsifrovym-epokha-novykh-vozmozhnostey-dlya-torgovli-i-kommerchesko/translation/