“Fifteen years ago I only earned, like, $20 a month.”
— Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, which began trading today on Wall Street and is now worth about $230 billion. Ma told CNBC he got his inspiration from America after visiting Silicon Valley (and cited the fictional Forrest Gump as his hero). Ma started the Chinese e-commerce giant in 1999 in his apartment, with 17 co-founders. As for what his plans are in the United States — his company has been investing in American companies such as Lyft and ShopRunner — he was asked by Bloomberg whether he would consider buying Yahoo, which owns about a 23 percent stake in his company. “I don’t know if they would sell,” he said. “No.”
Photo: Alibaba Group founder and Executive Chairman Jack Ma smiles before an IPO road show at a hotel in Hong Kong on Sept. 15, 2014. (Vincent Yu/Associated Press)
