Jack Ma started Alibaba with a group of his English students.

Although Jack Ma is commonly acknowledged as the company's creator, there are really 17 additional co-founders, which is a little-known fact. Ma started his first online business in Beijing. He accompanied 12 former coworkers on a trip to the Great Wall before departing for his hometown of Hangzhou. Ma made the decision to copy it online after being struck by the sheer number of messages that had been written on the stone.

In February 1999, Ma invited 17 colleagues—a mix of his former students, coworkers, friends, and like-minded businessmen—to his Hangzhou apartment to share his vision for a digital platform that would "revolutionize the Internet industry" and lay the groundwork for what would eventually become Alibaba. Later, Ma and his 17 coworkers launched Alibaba.com, a bulletin-board service that allowed Chinese businesses to showcase their goods to customers. He didn't initially put a lot of faith in his friends. He warned them that they would never advance to vice-president positions, just middle management jobs. Outside assistance would have to fill those jobs.

Ma later described that choice as his biggest mistake. Later, when the outside help had long since disappeared, his cronies were still there to fill those vice-president positions. One of the main driving forces for Alibaba's success is its 17 co-founders. All the difference was made by the diversity of each founder, who came from a variety of fields, including journalism, investment banking, web development, and education, among many others.