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Starting my own business was kind of a wakeup call in a number of different ways. I had to meet a payroll every week, and we had to satisfy customers, and we had competitors that we had to compete with in order to have those customers come into our stores, and we had to compete with other employers for our employees.

We need to take excellent care of our customers, and do so at a profit.

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.'

I decided very early on that the way to make a difference in my life and in other people's lives was to give them services and products that are actually for the many and not for the few.

Be dramatically willing to focus on the customer at all costs, even at the cost of obsoleting your own stuff.

I don't think anybody ever started a great business because they wanted to make a little more cash. They had a dream. They wanted to better their life.

I became very attentive to customers because I was desperate not to have people leave and never come back.

I bought a restaurant - that was pretty expensive.

The reason I grew so fast in the supermarket business, without help of the banks in those days, was through my vendors. I convinced my vendors, the companies I was doing business with, if I did more business, they would do more business.

The most disappointing businesses, for me, are the ones where the people flat-out lie. I had one in Queens where I gave them a couple hundred thousand dollars and they started spending it on themselves.