Jack Ma

What failed

He failed the national university entrance exam twice — the first time with a maths score of one — and passed on the third attempt, into a local teachers' college. He has said he applied for thirty jobs and was rejected by all of them, and that when a fried chicken chain opened near him twenty-four people applied, twenty-three were taken on and he was the one who was not. Then he built one of the first internet companies in China, was pressured into a joint venture with the state telecom company in 1996, and lost control of it. He went to Beijing to work for a government-backed agency and lasted fourteen months.

What happened next

In February 1999 he gathered seventeen friends in his apartment in Hangzhou and started again. Alibaba's stock market listing in 2014 was the largest in history at the time.

The point

Here is the part nobody quotes. Alibaba's registration statement filed with the American regulator on 6 May 2014, signed by Ma himself and carrying liability under the Securities Act, says of his life before Alibaba only that he graduated from Hangzhou Teacher's Institute with a major in English language education. No exam failures, no rejections, no lost company. The failures are what he says on stage; the filing is what the company puts its name to. Both are him.