people went for the job . Twenty-three were accepted . I was the only guy they rejected ..."
But an undeterred Ma was planning on creating an empire of his own making , and during these turbulent times , set up a number of enterprises . In April 1995 , Ma finally found the winning formula . He and his friend He Yibing ( a computer teacher ) opened the first office for China Pages ( a company that created websites for US companies ), and Ma started his second company .
By May of that year , they registered their first domain - chinapages . com in the United States . Within three years , the company had made 5,000,000 Renminbi - the equivalent to US $ 800,000 .
After that , Ma began building websites for Chinese companies with the help of friends in the US . Describing the moment when the first site went live , he recalled , " The day we got connected to the Web , I invited friends and TV people over to my house - and on a very slow dial-up connection . We waited three and a half hours and got half a page . We drank , watched TV and played cards , waiting . But I was so proud . I proved the Internet existed .”
Stratospheric success From that point on , Ma ’ s upward trajectory has been stratospheric . He founded Alibaba - and later co-founded Yunfeng Capital , a private equity firm , with equal success . Next came the fintech empire for which he is most famous - Ant Group .
Today , the name Jack Ma is synonymous with the words ‘ business ’ and ‘ billionaire ’. He is the third richest man in China and has an estimated personal fortune of US $ 51bn .
fintechmagazine . com 19