Ten Minutes That Mattered

As I sit in BMI's Edinburgh Airport lounge, waiting for my flight to Brussels, I came across a great snippet in Forbes under the heading 'Ten Minutes That Mattered'. Often in business and life, an important conversation, a made or missed connection, or even an intrusion of pure fate redirects our thinking and actions for years afterward. I have a few of those in my life, like the time my brother called me in Brussels to say 'Go see my friend the recruiter, she can get you to the US'...and she did, but with a detour that took me to FreeMarkets, the company that changed the world of doing business with invention of the online reverse auction for purchasing and strategic sourcing. Or the time my 8th Grade Football Coach, Greg Shields, marched on to the Volleyball court and yanked me out of practice to say 'what the hell are you doing messing about with a volleyball when you should be out on the football field hitting somebody?'. That started a 12-year football career that has taught me so many things about life and business that I can't imagine what would have happened if Coach Shields didn't care enough to barge in and break-up Volleyball practice. 

No, we all have Ten Minutes That Matter...tell me about yours?

Ten Minutes That Mattered: Alibaba's David Wei
Quentin Hardy, 12.17.09, 6:00 AM ET

BURLINGAME, CALIF. -

 Alibaba is a China-based Internet service for businesses to find and sell to each other. It has 45 million registered users, including 10 million overseas companies (1.9 million of those are in the United States.) David Wei, chief executive of Alibaba.com, talks about the conversation that took him into the digital world.

A few years ago I met Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.com. I was not a believer of online commerce at all. He asked me how long it would take my company, which was a Chinese version of Home Depot, to double annual sales to $2 billion. I said, if we made a $400 million to $500 million investment, and added 50 stores, 10,000 employees, maybe five years.

He said, "I probably need only five servers, 10 more people and several weeks." I didn't believe him, but I said, "Your forecast isn't that far away. Let's wait to see." And he did it in six weeks. Five, six servers, around 10 people.

So I'm thinking, "What am I doing, working for a dinosaur retailer, which may disappear in one decade or two?" It was a very short conversation, but a powerful one. Jack was trying to hire me, and seeing that changed my mind about joining him.

I had known him awhile. The first time I heard Jack talking about this was in the year 2000. I thought it was a little bit of B.S.-ing. Otherwise, I would be one of the founders of Alibaba. Then I heard this story in 2005. That time, I didn't think it was B.S. Just a little bit of crazy--obviously, it takes longer than that, and costs more, to double revenues. But over six weeks he proved it.

--Told to and edited by Quentin Hardy