I sensed my chance and embraced the telecom business. I started marketing telephones, answering/fax machines under the brand name Beetel, and the company picked up really fast.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was very lucky. I started my own commercial company.
Basically, I left Northern Telecom after 7.5 years of being in one company after school. And then, I ended up in a series of start-ups. The first of those was a company called Sitech, and they were in local area networks.
When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.
I've always had a passion for technology, photography, startups, and connecting people. Bringing those aspects together made me successful.
I was working at a phone company. I got tired of my life and wanted to change it, so I did.
We must get into the picture business. This is a new industry and a gold mine. it looks like another telephone industry.
When I came into the business, things changed a lot, and my life was in a real state of flux.
I was really ambitious, so I was innovative. I was one of the first DJs to do live calls, 'cause I found this phone device that would pick up other people's voices.
My dream was to set up my own e-commerce company. In 1999, I gathered 18 people in my apartment and spoke to them for two hours about my vision. Everyone put their money on the table, and that got us $60,000 to start Alibaba. I wanted to have a global company, so I chose a global name.
I was fascinated with the phone system and how it worked; I became a hacker to get better control over the phone company.