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.

When I started Alibaba, banks were skeptical about our payment system, claiming it would never work, but I knew that without a payment solution, e-commerce would not succeed.

Airbnb's founders realized the importance of facilitating payments after a personal experience highlighted the need for a secure transaction process.

When redesigning a checkout system, I learned valuable insights by observing users interact with checkout processes on other platforms like eBay and Amazon, rather than just our own product.

Incorporating human oversight builds trust, especially when agents perform explicit actions like sending payments or approvals.

We shifted our mindset from distrust to trust, verifying the integrity of transactions rather than assuming everyone is bad.

Designing for trust is crucial for companies, especially when introducing new experiences like staying in someone's home.

To gain the trust of early customers, we initially targeted fellow companies in Y Combinator who were also new and had never paid themselves, which was a strategic move to build our initial customer base.