Start-up with No money, No knowledge, No plan

One of the an interesting speech by Alibaba Founder, Jack Ma, tells a story to Stanford grads that his philosophy that made him this far is

1. No money, with only 50,000 RMB (250,000 THB) when he set out the start-up. Unlike many other family-rich-start-up, which they have lots of money to spend. Having no money gave him a chance to be creative on how to spend the money wisely.

2. No knowledge about technology, Jack Ma never write a single line of code, and he takes it as an advantage because he now can test the system like the consumer.

3. No plan, he was being agile in his way to tackle things because he hardly thought the company would come this far. The key to success is the adaptive leadership that he used along the road of start-up.

Of course, his company now have all three things but the core values is still the same. The company has more money but it’s being spent carefully. Alibaba also have people who do technology driven but they all will be based on the clear vision from business. He still has no plan as a CEO but the planning at the operation level is still needed. Agility is what make Alibaba success.