Jack Ma, of Alibaba, one of the most powerful moguls in the world - gave the keynote at CSCW.

when he was young, applied 30 jobs - all rejected him.  apply a waiter job, rejected.  applied to be a police officer - rejected.  applied at KFC - rejected.  failed university exam 3 times, last time passed, but score so low, only one teacher training school accepted him.  first job after university, $10 USD per month.  gave his word to university president that he would stay in his first job for at least 5 years.  Got $500 USD/mon job offer, turned down - must stick with commitments.

started company at 30 - saw the potential of Internet - never touched keyboard until 30.  searched china - nothing showed up.  put up first chinese web site.  initial biz model create web sites for chinese companies, but china was not connected to the internet yet.  invited media - 3 hrs to download the first web page.

thousands of reasons his company was a bad idea - things didn't work, chinese censors, slow network, etc.  never complaint about anything - never!

an elephant cannot kill an ant.  China TeleCom started competing w/ his company (when his company had 2 people).

focus on small companies, help small companies to succeed.  they don't make as much money as gaming, search, etc; but their vision is to help people - help the small guys to succeed - help them to lead better lives.  profit is the side effect - focus on solving a big problem to improve people's lives and the money will take care of itself.

then took on eBay (but an elephant cannot kill an ant) - everyone thought he would lose (when eBay had 95% market share, his company had 7 people, now market cap larger than eBay, created 1.5M jobs in China).  eCommerce in the US is dessert, but in China, since infrastructure is so bad, they are more needed.  goal is to be bigger than Walmart in 7 years.

be thankful of who helped you - his company is still based in Hangzhou (even when other cities are luring him) - but Hangzhou helped him when he was small.