15 of the best quotes from Jack Ma’s interview at Davos

Alibaba founder and chairman Jack Ma returned to Davos today for the first time in years for a chat. Interviewed by CBS’s Charlie Rose, Ma – chatty and eminently quotable as ever – talked about his early days as an entrepreneur, the origins of Alibaba, and some more contemporary issues as well.

Here are 15 of his best quotes:

Ma returned to many of his favorite themes, such as how the marketplace model that Alibaba uses with its many estores can enable small companies and merchants to do business online. He expects ecommerce to be totally mainstream soon so that the word doesn’t need to be used.

This is how he described Alibaba’s record-breaking IPO in which the company raised about US$21.8 billion.

He talked about rejection and early failures with school tests and finding his first job – including one as a server at a branch of KFC in his hometown, Hangzhou:

Ma emphasized the early challenges of building trust in ecommerce, especially in China. “How can you do things online unless you trust?” he asked. He then illustrated that by saying…

He said that a government could never create ecommerce, but he still feels “responsibility” to educate the government about how ecommerce can benefit people. Despite that, he’s not too keen on being called upon by them.