The night I wanted to give up

Photo: IC photo

Source: Zhenghe Island (ID: Zhenghe Island)

That night, everyone wanted to give up more or less.

Twenty-two years ago, when Ma Yun passed by the church and saw someone praying, he suddenly felt exhausted. He advised himself: give up and let people who have the opportunity do it.

That year, Ma Yun was 33 years old, started his second business, and was making Chinese yellow pages. Carrying a briefcase, he respectfully crowded at the door to promote his website to people in the office.

It is also the first commercial website in China.

Some people are rude, with an expression of disgust, "they don't look like good people at first sight" and slam the door.

In the taxi, Ma Yun burst into tears: I hope China people will succeed soon and can't delay any longer.

When I first entered the sea, it was even more terrible. Ma Yun, with his friends, pooled his money to set up a translation agency, ready to show his talents. They rented a small house, and their monthly income was less than that of 500 yuan, but they had to pay the rent of 1500 yuan, and they suffered losses for three consecutive years.

In order to keep the company alive, Ma Yun went to Yiwu to wholesale many gadgets in sacks, while accepting translation work and selling socks, underwear and flashlights at home.

"I have suffered from coldness and supercilious look."

For a long time, Ma Yun was regarded as a loser by others. I failed in the college entrance examination for the first time, and got the math exam 1. I still failed in the second college entrance examination, and I made progress in math. 19.

After failing the list, Ma Yun looked for a job everywhere. At that time, a four-star hotel in Hangzhou had just opened, and Ma Yun and his cousin applied for a job in the laundry room. They stood in the sun for two and a half hours, and their clothes were soaked to the skin before they got an interview.

Coming out of the hotel, Ma Yun couldn't hide his excitement. He did well in the interview and scored higher than his cousin. Finally, my cousin was admitted, but Ma Yun didn't.

The Hangzhou Police Department recruited people, and Ma Yun and four students took part in the recruitment. All four students received the employment notice, but Ma Yun didn't.

On another occasion, Ma Yun and his friends participated in the recruitment of KFC. 24 people signed up, 23 people were hired successfully, and Ma Yun didn't.

They just told Ma Yun: You didn't get the job.

Later, Ma Yun's father found someone to find a relationship and gave his son a part-time job in a publishing house. During that time, the neighborhood often saw Ma Yun riding a tricycle to deliver books to various publishing houses and printing houses.

Until one day, Ma Yun turned over a book and saw his chest boiling.

He grabbed the book "Life" written by Lu Yao and vowed that he must be admitted to the university in this life. This time, Ma Yun scored 89 points in mathematics and was admitted to the English Department of Hangzhou Normal University.

Many rejections and many failures, Ma Yun didn't want to understand why, but he kept saying: I never gave up. When he founded China Yellow Pages, Ma Yun was very painful.

At that time, China Yellow Pages improved and was acquired by Hangzhou Telecom. In everyone's eyes, this is a good thing, but it is torture for Ma Yun.

He hoped that China Yellow Pages could "spread China's trade and business information to the world". Unexpectedly, he accepted the merger, made big and small decisions, held back and argued endlessly.

Ma Yun watched, everything was getting farther and farther away from the goal, and asked himself whether it was time to give up.

At that time, he got a job as a translator and went to America on business. Near the residence is a church.

Ma Yun is not religious, and I don't know why. He came in wearing a strange tie and was playing Churchill's most famous speech, which was also his last speech in his life.

Ma Yun was shocked. He felt that Churchill said to himself over and over again: Never give up. Shua, he cried, and suddenly the whole person relaxed.

Up to now, Ma Yun thinks it is an act of God.

A year later, Ma Yun led a group of people to climb the Great Wall wearing cotton caps. It is very cold in winter in Beijing. One of them stood in the corner and suddenly shouted into the distance: Why! Why!

They stayed in Beijing for 14 months, worked hard, scrimped and saved, and didn't earn a penny.

On the night when he left Beijing for Hangzhou, Ma Yun invited everyone to dinner. He didn't say anything, and his heart was very uncomfortable. Finally, a group of people sang "True Heroes" and cried around Ma Yun.

The road is hard to walk, but it has stumped Ma Yun: "Today is cruel, tomorrow is even more cruel, and the day after tomorrow is beautiful, but most people will die tomorrow night.

This is a cruel life. Therefore, you must work hard today to face the cruelty of tomorrow; You must work hard tomorrow to see the sun the day after tomorrow. "

It was also this retreat that Ma Yun founded Alibaba in the lakeside garden with three bedrooms and one living room. At the most difficult time, each partner of 18 only got a symbolic salary from 500 yuan, but even this money was not available at one time.

Ma Yun runs around for financing and goes back to the company every day. He proudly said to Peng Lei: Today, I turned down another venture capital.

In fact, some investment institutions have invited Ma Yun out without even hearing the introduction: it's crazy to do e-commerce in China.

Years later, Peng Lei knew the truth: Ma Yun was rejected 37 times.

Later, Ma laughed at himself, was rejected, and became accustomed to it. Ma Yun said: I made countless mistakes. Today's Ali, in the previous 15 years, there were at least 100 disasters. Although I have serious internal injuries, I will always smile.

In the 38th bite, a man named Sun Zhengyi gave Ma Yun 6 minutes to introduce the project.

In these six minutes, Ali earned $20 million in life-saving money.

In the early years, some foreign media questioned Ali with a loud slogan, but he hasn't started to make money yet.

Ma Yun picked a corner of his mouth: Well, I want to change the world.

Once a 18 partner, it has now become an elite force of more than 100,000 people.

Ali, once rated as a fraudulent company by the media, has now become a giant with a market value of more than 460 billion US dollars and ranked seventh in the world.

The Ali model, which was once sentenced to death by various authoritative business schools, has been iterated for 30 years today and has grown into a forest.

On 20 18, ma yun gave a speech in Israel. He said emotionally: "When Ali was founded, we had nothing. No one believes that we can succeed. 19 years, the only thing we did right was never to give up. "

"In the past 19 years, Alibaba has experienced a lot. We have failures, setbacks and mistakes. I have said to myself, colleagues and friends more than 10,000 times' never give up'. "

That Churchill "inspired" Ma Yun, and now Ma Yun has told the world.

On the day of purchasing Volvo, in an office in London, England, the contract was piled up on the table for half a meter. Li Shufu kept bowing his head and signing one by one.

It was early spring at 20 10. It took Li Shufu half an hour to sign his name. After putting down the pen, he lay motionless on the desk. My assistant thinks that the chairman may be tired and needs to have a rest.

Until it was time to connect with Hangzhou headquarters, the people next to him had to wake up Li Shufu.

Li Shufu straightened up slowly, and before he could speak, tears flowed down like broken beads.

At that moment, many pictures came to his mind.

When he was going to buy Volvo, Li Shufu sent an English letter to the headquarters and replied, "Sorry, Volvo is not for sale."

Li Shufu refused to give up. He found that the CEO of Volvo will attend the Detroit Auto Show. Booked a plane ticket temporarily, and Li Shufu rushed to the United States. He also managed to get a 30-minute conversation through a public relations company.

After listening to Li Shufu's generous speech, the other party still said, "Sorry, Volvo is not for sale."

In the past three years, Li Shufu has heard countless rejections.

Just one hour before signing the contract, Li Shufu received a phone call from the relevant leaders, saying that he could not attend the signing ceremony. Li Shufu once spent a lot of time to invite them.

Li Shufu looked at the officials who took the floor temporarily and had mixed feelings for an instant. That man has refused several times.

A week before signing the contract, the entire Geely negotiation team was still worried that the project team might be dissolved at any time.

The situation was once deadlocked. At that time, Volvo's responsible person was so popular that he had to leave the table several times. Some Geely employees flew to London to help as planned, and just after they got off the plane, they received a text message: Don't come, we can't talk.

Everyone hasn't slept for days.

In order to adjust the time difference, an employee ran to the nearby financial street at 5 am and caught a glimpse of a short man in a suit. When they walked in, they found it was Li Shufu. He has been walking there for a long time.

No one knows what Li Shufu thinks after staying up for several nights.

In order to collect 865.438 billion yuan for the acquisition of Volvo, Li Shufu ran around for loans and got a rebuff. No bank is optimistic about this matter. Only Zhejiang Branch of China Construction Bank agreed to pay 200 million yuan.

The bank couldn't get a loan, and Li Shufu even told several entrepreneurs and friends about his financing plan. Some of them expressed interest, but the negotiations failed in the end.

Li Shufu even found a fund in Li Ka-shing, and the other party responded that he was not interested in cars.

After many twists and turns, Li Shufu docked with the Beijing Municipal Government. They decided to invest 3 billion yuan to support Geely's merger. Everything has been settled. Geely has rented the Beijing office and set up a company with a registered capital of 500 million.

"The intention contract and the framework were signed. When the money was really needed, suddenly, within a few hours, the whole situation changed."

The countdown to the signing of the contract has not yet arrived. All kinds of variables made Li Shufu unprepared. He flies back and forth in several cities every week and contacts officials at all levels, regardless of reason.

Finally, Li Shufu signed two life-long counter-guarantees, and finally borrowed 7 billion yuan from Chengdu municipal government, Shanghai municipal government and Daqing municipal government.

"I bet my life." Li Shufu said.

The assistant couldn't hide his excitement and said to Li Shufu, "Congratulations, Chairman, the Long March has finally come down."

Li Shufu was calm, without cheering or beaming. He just said, "We just took the first step."

Twenty years ago, Li Shufu left the profitable motorcycle factory to quit, secretly spent 654.38 billion yuan on automobile research, and almost went to jail.

Everyone laughed at him as a madman. At that time, he begged Vice Premier the State Council in tears: Please give us a chance to fail.

In 20 18, Geely invested 9 billion US dollars and became the largest shareholder of Mercedes-Benz. Li Shufu stood at the China Private Economy Forum and told everyone: I want China cars to travel around the world.

Some people say that the sorrow of entrepreneurs is that you are walking on thin ice and going bankrupt at any time, but you have to create a sense of security for others; You have no one to talk to and no one to help. You must pretend to be confident and strong to encourage others.

Real warriors often collapse and cry in the dark, but start again during the day.

Isn't that what ordinary people do?

Many times, there is no "giving up" option in the adult world.

Maybe life makes you desperate for a while, but there must be people in this world who are experiencing things you can't even imagine.

The day you don't like now may be a life that others can't reach on tiptoe.

Life is not easy, but it is never hard.

It's really no big deal to look back after everything has been overcome

So stick to it, you are not a failure, you are not alone.

References:

1. The night I want to give up (adults don't make any noise)

I want to go back to 1999. Do you have anything to take back? (Appendix)

3. New manufacturing era: Li Shufu and Geely and Volvo's super manufacturing (Wang, Liang Dongmei)

This is Ma Yun (Chen Wei)