Jack Ma on failure, women and the secret sauce of success

In 1999 Jack Ma co-founded the Chinese behemoth Alibaba and there has been no looking back for the Chinese business magnate. The former English teacher has a fascinating success story which included several failures too. Here are some nuggets of Ma's wisdom

"When I hire people, I hire the people who are smarter than I am. People who four, five years later could be my boss. I like people who are positive and who never give up." Ma's words carry weight coming from someone whose net worth according to Forbes is $37.5 bn and who was rejected by Harvard, not once, but ten times.

This 54-year-old tycoon knows and appreciates the value of love. According to him good leaders have to develop different kinds of intelligence and LQ or love quotient is one of them. This, he says, would be the edge humans would have over machines. So, in order to be successful one should possess IQ, EQ and LQ.

"Your first job is your most important. Not necessarily a company that has a great name but you should find a good boss that can teach you how to be a human being, how to do things properly, and stay there. Give yourself a promise: I will stay there for three years." Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Ma stressed on the importance of the first job and what you learnt there. That was his one piece of career advice for young people entering the job market.

"If you want your company to be successful; if you want your company to operate with wisdom, with care, then women are the best," said Ma. Interestingly, Ma calls women the 'secret sauce' of the company's success. 37% of senior management in Alibaba are women

"Learn from your mistakes - no matter how smart you are you will learn from them. We must share the mistakes with others. Ma is a strong proponent of how one must not learn from successes but from others' failures. He has often cited his own examples of being rejected from Harvard and KFC to name a few

"In business, never worry about competition, never worry about the pressure. If you worry about pressure, don't be a businessman ... If you create value, there is opportunity. Today the whole world worries. That means there is great opportunity." He himself has never bothered about competition and competition has never kept him awake at night.

Success for Ma is dependent on different kinds of intelligence. According to him, "To gain success a person will need high EQ; if you don't want to lose quickly you will need a high IQ, and if you want to be respected you need high LQ - the IQ of love."