Creating trust was essential for Alibaba's success, especially since people in China were used to face-to-face transactions. In today's world, trust is lacking among people, governments, and media, but e-commerce facilitates 60 million transactions daily, creating a system of trust despite the anonymity between buyers and sellers.

After attending a leadership discussion at Davos, I decided to launch our payment system immediately, understanding the importance of building trust for the future of e-commerce in China and globally.

Many people thought my idea for Alipay was foolish, but I believed that as long as people used it, it would succeed. Now, we have 800 million users, proving that the idea was not stupid.

We built an integration with Alipay because we recognized its potential, even if businesses initially didn't see its relevance.

Fifteen years ago, I told my team that I wanted Alibaba to be so ubiquitous that people wouldn't even think about it as e-commerce, just like they don't think about electricity.

I believe in being comfortable with criticism; our customers clearly wanted e-commerce, and I had the conviction to push for it despite challenges.

I realized that to build a trust system in e-commerce, we needed to create an escrow account to hold payments until the buyer received their product, ensuring security for both parties.

After selling PayPal to eBay in October 2002, I recognized that the consumer internet was just beginning, contrary to the belief that it was over, and I decided to pursue the LinkedIn idea.

We realized that if PayPal failed, it would create a massive loss of over $200 million in venture capital, so we decided to pitch our best ideas to each other, including an early version of LinkedIn.