I'm so honored. I never expect there are so many people coming here to listen to my talk. And when I sitting there I feel so important. Thank you, thank you very much. Before my talk I would like to ask how many people here have used Alibaba services. Good, not many. [Laughs]. And how many of you here have never been to China? Never been, never been to China. Good, thank you very much.
Well, 20 years ago I came to America. My first trip to America, to Seattle. Before that I learnedso much about America, from my books, from my teachers, from my school, and my parents.And I think I know enough about America. But when I came to America I thought totally wrong.America is not what I learned from the books. And in Seattle I found the Internet, and then Icame back and tell my friends that I'm going to open a company called Internet. I invited 24 ofmy friends, had a two-hour discussion. And finally we had a vote. 23 of them against me. "Forget about it. There's no such kind of network called Internet. Don't do it." There's only oneperson who said "Jack, I trust you. I don't know what that is, but if you want to try it, go ahead,try it. Because you're still young." At that time I was 30 years old.
So I started my business, without knowing anything about computer, without knowing anythingabout business. I started my first company, my wife and I and a school mate. We borrowed[start] from US $1,000 we start the business. It was so difficult. I called myself like a blind manriding on the back of blind tigers. Jumping around for the past 20 years I survive today. Forthe first three years life was really bad. I remember I tried to borrow US $3,000 from thebanks. It took me three months asking any friends I know to borrow the money.Still failed, cozverybody said "Jack is telling a lie, because there's no such network called Internet in 1996."
So one day, later 1996, China was connected to the Internet. I invited ten media friends to myapartment. I want to tell them I'm not telling a lie. There is a network called Internet. Wewaited three hours and a half to see the first – to download the first picture. And people said "Isthat thing going to work?" And I say "Yeah, it'll work, but not today. In ten years it'll work." Butat least it proved that I was not telling a lie.
I remember when we tried to help our small business to sell online. Nobody want to sell becausenobody come to buy. So first week we have seven employees, we buy and sell ourselves. Thesecond week somebody start to sell on a website. We buy everything they sell. We have tworooms full of things we bought for New Year's, [all garbage] for the first two weeks. In order totell people that it works. It was not easy. Since 1995 to 1999 we failed. We go nowhere, ourbusiness, because nothing was ready. In 1999 I invited 18 friends of mine who came to myapartment. We decided to do it again. We call the name alibaba.com. And people say whyAlibaba? We believe Internet is a treasure island which opens sesame for small business. Andwe used Alibaba because it's easy to spell, easy to remember. And we want to focus on helpingsmall business.
Because at that time we see commerce [with the] American e-commerce they focus onhelping on big companies, they're focusing on helping big companies to save the cost. Webelieved China we don't have a lot of big companies, we have so many small business, andsmall business it's so difficult for them to survive. If we can using Internet as a technology tohelp small business it'll be fantastic. So we start to say if America is good at helping bigcompanies, just like America is good at making basketball we should play pingpong in China, weshould help the small guys. And we should not helping small guys to save cost, because smallbusiness know how to save the cost, but small business should learn how to make money. Soour business is focusing helping small business to make money online.
And we want to make the company last for 102 years. And people are curious – why 102years? Because Alibaba was born in 1999, last year we had – last century we had one year, thiscentury 100 years, next century one year. 102 across three centuries. We give a clear goal toany employees. Don't say we are successful, no matter how much money we raised, no matterhow much money we make, no matter how much we have achieved. Don't forget we want tolive 102 years. Now, 16 years passed, we have another 86 years to go. Because in next 86years, if any time we die we're never successful. When I heard this club is 108 years old I wassurprised and shocked. There's so much we can learn from that.
Well, today nobody believed that Alibaba could survive, because people say "You are [free],you're tiny" and, you know, and especially when we talk about – when we IPO'd people say "Ah,you are Alibaba, you are e-commerce. You're like Amazon." Because in American point of viewAmazon probably is the only business model for e-commerce. But no, we are different. Thedifference between us and Amazon is that we do not buy and sell, but we help small business tobuy and sell. We have 10 million small business on our site buy and sell every day. And we donot deliver our packages, although – ourselves, though we have more than 2 million people helpus to deliver over 30 million packages per day.
We do not own warehouses, but we manage tens and thousands of warehouses for other small,medium sized delivery companies. And we do not own inventories, but we do have more than350 million buyers. We have more than 120 million buyers coming to shop every day on oursite. And also, we sell – our revenue last – our sales last year were US$ 390 billion. And thisyear, possibly, we are going to be bigger than Walmart globally. And Walmart manage – thatsize of business have more than 2.3 million people; we grow from 18 people to today 34,000people.
And the difference between Amazon and us the other is Amazon is a shopping center. Becausehere e-commerce is commerce, in China e-commerce is a lifestyle. Young people, they usinge-commerce to exchange ideas, they communicate, they build up the trust, they build up arecord. It's just like Starbucks – you never go to Starbucks to test how wonderful coffee is. It'sa lifestyle. And this is how Internet e-commerce is changing China.
And what we felt proud of is not how much things we sell. I said this year we'll be bigger thanWalmart – yes, we are proud. We know in five years we will sell US$ 1 trillion. This is my goal,which we think possibly we will make it. We are proud of that but we are more proud becausewe create direct [and indirect] job, 14 million jobs for China. And we've created jobs in thecountryside. We created a lot of jobs for women. Over 51 percent of the power sellers on theInternet are women.
So we feel so proud of that. And people say okay, now Alibaba did that. What's your next?What's your future cause you are everywhere. We, 80 percent of the buy and the sell online arecreated by our company. Our future is that we have to focus on globalizing our business. It'snot only sell more things. We want to make, to globalize the infrastructure of eCommerce. WhyInternet eCommerce grow so fast in China than in the USA? Because the infrastructure ofcommerce in China was too bad. Not like here. You have [Click] Motors. You have all the shopsoffline, Walmart, Kmart, everything everywhere. But in China we have nothing nowhere.
So eCommerce in the US is a dessert. It's complementary to the main business. But in Chinait becomes the main course. We created the infrastructure. So we think if we globalize ourinfrastructure — the payment, the logistics center, the transparent platform all around theworld. Helping the small business around the world to sell everywhere. Help the globalconsumers to buy everywhere. Our vision is in ten years we will help two billion consumers inthe world to shop online anywhere in the world. You're shopping online with 72 hours you'llreceive the product. And anywhere in China you shop online, you will receive the productswithin 24 hours. And we think our globalization is still focused on helping small business. Andhelping them to do business in the most efficient ways. And we think that we will help anotherten million business on our eCommerce platform.
We will empower them. We'll give them the traffic. We'll give them the payment system.We'll give them the logistics system so they can do business anywhere easily and quickly. Andwe will help. We will have 40 percent of our business outside China. Today we only have twopercent of our business outside China. So people keep on asking, now you are big. You raisedthat much money. What's your play in America? People say well are you going to come? Whenare you going to come to invade America? When I going to compete with Amazon? When Igoing to compete with eBay? Well I would say we show great respect for eBay and Amazon.But I think the opportunity and the, the strategy for us is helping small business in Americago to China, sell their products to China.
Today in China, the middle class for China is almost the same as the American population.And we think in ten years it will be more than half a billion Chinese people will be middle class.The demanding for middle class, the demanding for good products, good service was sopowerful, so strong. And I think China today cannot afford the good products, good service tothem. And then next is that China has been focused on exporting in the past 20 years. And Ithink next ten, ten-twenty years China we should be focusing on importing. Chinese shouldlearn to buy. Chinese should spend the money. Chinese should buy a lot of things from globally.And I think that American small business, American branded products you should use theInternet, go to China.
Past 20 years big companies of America is already all over China. But it's the greatopportunity for using the eCommerce for small business to go to America. In the past yearswe have helped a lot of American farmers selling things to China. For example the Seattlecherries, you will never believe that the ambassador, the American ambassador to China, hecame to us say, Jack can you help us to sell the cherries in Seattle. I say how can we sellcherries? The cherries still on the trees. And we started place order, 80,000 families booked theorder. And when we got the order we ship, we pick up the cherries and ship to China within 24hours 80,000 families, 160 tons of cherries were sold. And last year we sold over 300 tons ofcherries. And I don't know what's this year about.
We also helped Alaska seafood. We helped Canada to sell the lobsters. The lobster we soldprobably ten years they cannot sell. And we also have a lot of American branded companiesusing our site to sell. Costco the company, they sold 600 tons of nuts on our site for the firstmonth. And for the first month they're using Alibaba 6.5 million US dollars. So I think if we canhelp to sell lobsters, if we can help sell the cherries, why we cannot help these small, mediumsize companies to China using our system? So this is what I want, and also I want to take oneday for example November, November 11th, the [Singles'] Day. We make that a shopping day.Last year for that day we sold 9.7 billion US dollars. And for the first minute shopping we have24 million people rushed in for the first minute. And this year we guess the number was scary,so my purpose coming here that we need more American products to China.
We have a hungry 100 million people coming to buy every day. So this is why we come here.We not come here to compete. We come here to bring the small business. My vision is that inten, twenty years anywhere you buy anywhere, sell anywhere. Philippine people can buysalmon on Norway. Norway people can sell things to Argentina. Argentina can buy and sell toChina. This is how the Internet is going to change. And lastly I want to say we have changedthe China. We feel proud of that, and we think that the change, the power of change is sopowerful. The first revolution of technology we have the, the organization of business called afactory. And had our first World War because of the strength of the arms and muscles. Thesecond revolution energy, we have the organization called companies, and have the secondWorld War.
This time Internet. The data, and I think we have a new business called platform. And thethird World War is going to happen. And this war is not between nations, this war we worktogether against the disease, the poverty, the climate change. And I believe this is our future.The human being, the nations shall unite together. Rely on the young people using not theguns, using computers, using the data to solve the human problem, solve the societyproblems. And this is what I'm passionate about. It's not about the money, it's about dreams.It's not only the technology change the world, it's the dreams you believe that change theworld. And we know the way, the way is not easy. As I was told in the past 20 years doingInternet business in China, today is difficult, and tomorrow is much more difficult. But the dayafter tomorrow is beautiful. Most people die tomorrow evening, if you don't work hard. Thankyou very much.
