非常荣幸，从来没想到会有这多人来听我的演讲。

　　I’m so honored. I never expect there are so many people coming here to listen to my talk.

　　我站在这里的时候，感觉自己如此重要，如此责任重大。谢谢你们！

　　And when I sitting there I feel so important. Thank you, thank you very much.

　　正式开始演讲之前，我想请问一下在座有多少人在使用阿里巴巴的服务？好的，不是非常多。那么，你们当中有多少人从来没有去过中国？好的。

　　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.

　　20年前，我第一次踏上美国，美国之旅的第一站是西雅图。来到美国之前，我从课本、老师、学校和父母那里了解美国，我以为自己已经非常了解美国。但是，当我踏上这片土地的时候，我才发现我完全错了，美国这个社会和我从课本学到的根本不一样。在西雅图，我平生第一次认识了互联网。

　　Well, 20 years ago I came to America. My first trip to America, to Seattle. Before that I learned so 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.

　　回到中国之后，我告诉朋友们，我打算开一家互联网公司。我邀请了24位好友，讨论了两个小时。到了最后，还是没有人理解我想要做的东西，我们进行了投票，23人选择反对。我的朋友们劝我说：“忘了它吧！根本就不存在这么一个叫做互联网的东西，千万不要去尝试。”只有一个人对我说：“马云，我相信你，虽然我不知道你想要做什么，如果你想做，就大胆去做吧，因为你还年轻。”那年，我30岁。

　　And then I came back and tell my friends that I’m going to open a company called Internet. I invited 24 of my 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 one person 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.

　　没有任何的计算机知识、商业知识，我开始了创业之路。我开办了第一家公司，和我的妻子，还有一位同学。我们东拼西凑了1000美元，创业之路非常艰难。当时，我觉得自己是骑在盲虎背上的盲人（成语：盲人摸象，又骑虎难下）。20年风雨过去，我存活了下来。但是创业前三年，生活真的非常糟糕。我清楚地记得，我想向银行贷款3000美元，这花去了我整整三个月时间，我动用了所有的关系，还是没拿到贷款。每个人都认为马云在撒谎，因为1996的时候他们不相信有互联网这个东西的存在。

　　So I started my business, without knowing anything about computer, without knowing anything about 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 man riding on the back of blind tigers. Jumping around for the past 20 years I survive today. For the first three years life was really bad. I remember I tried to borrow US $3,000 from the banks. It took me three months asking any friends I know to borrow the money. Still failed, coz everybody said “Jack is telling a lie, because there’s no such network called Internet in 1996.”

　　有一天，1996下半年，中国正式接入了互联网。于是，我邀请了10位媒体朋友到我家里来，想告诉他们我没有撒谎，确实存在互联网这个东西。为了下载一张照片，我们当时花了三个半小时。大家说，“那东西真的能行得通吗？”我说，“是的，行得通的，不是现在，是在未来十年之内。”不管怎样，这至少证明了我没有撒谎。

　　So one day, later 1996, China was connected to the Internet. I invited ten media friends to my apartment. I want to tell them I’m not telling a lie. There is a network called Internet. We waited three hours and a half to see the first – to download the first picture. And people said “Is that thing going to work?” And I say “Yeah, it’ll work, but not today. In ten years it’ll work.” But at least it proved that I was not telling a lie.

　　我还记得，当我们尝试帮助小公司在网络上销售产品，但是没有人愿意来，因为还没有人在网络上买东西。所以在第一周，我们的7个员工自己去买，自己去卖。到了第二周，有人开始在我们的平台上卖东西，我们买光了他出售的所有商品。我们有两个房间，堆满了我们那两个星期买的东西，而且是没有什么用的东西。这只是为了告诉大家互联网是行得通的，但这并不容易。1995年到1999年这期间，我们的创业失败了，没有一样条件是成熟的。

　　I remember when we tried to help our small business to sell online. Nobody want to sell because nobody come to buy. So first week we have seven employees, we buy and sell ourselves. The second week somebody start to sell on a website. We buy everything they sell. We have two rooms full of things we bought for New Year’s, [all garbage] for the first two weeks. In order to tell people that it works. It was not easy. Since 1995 to 1999 we failed. We go nowhere, our business, because nothing was ready.

　　到了1999年，我邀请18个好友到家里，我们决定再一次尝试，并且把网站命名为alibaba.com。人们问为什么叫阿里巴巴？我们希望互联网就如同一个宝库，可以让小企业芝麻开门。另外，这个名字容易拼写，也朗朗上口。我们想做的事情，是帮助小企业。

　　In 1999 I invited 18 friends of mine who came to my apartment. We decided to do it again. We call the name alibaba.com. And people say why Alibaba? We believe Internet is a treasure island which opens sesame for small business. And we used Alibaba because it’s easy to spell, easy to remember. And we want to focus on helping small business.

　　当时我们注意到美国的电子商务致力于帮助大公司，帮助他们节约成本，而当时中国没有那么多的大公司，而是有很多的小企业，对于他们来说生存是如此艰难，假如我们能够用互联网技术来帮助这些小公司，这会非常有意思。

　　Because at that time we see commerce [with the] American e-commerce they focus on helping on big companies, they’re focusing on helping big companies to save the cost. We believed China we don’t have a lot of big companies, we have so many small business, and small business it’s so difficult for them to survive. If we can using Internet as a technology to help small business it’ll be fantastic.

　　美国习惯于帮助大型企业，这就好比美国人擅长于打篮球；而在中国，我们应该会去打乒乓球，去帮助那些小公司。我们需要做的不是帮助小公司去节约成本，因为他们知道如何节约成本，他们需要学习的是如何赚钱。因此，我们的业务一直专注于帮助小企业在网络上赚钱。

　　So we start to say if America is good at helping big companies, just like America is good at making basketball we should play ping-pong in China, we should help the small guys. And we should not helping small guys to save cost, because small business know how to save the cost, but small business should learn how to make money. So our business is focusing helping small business to make money online.