He taught English before any of it. Jack Ma co-founded Alibaba in 1999 and turned it into one of the largest e-commerce and technology companies on earth, which made him the face the world recognised when it thought about China's internet boom.
The platforms did something specific: they put enormous numbers of small sellers in front of enormous numbers of buyers, and Chinese commerce rearranged itself around that. Singles' Day shopping volumes reached a scale nothing outside China has matched. The record-breaking listing made him globally famous.
He sold not technology but belief — that small businesses could reach the world through a screen.
As a communicator he was unconventional and very good — evangelising the idea that the internet would let small businesses reach the world, and getting quoted endlessly on ambition and resilience along the way.
Then he stepped back, and largely disappeared from public life. The regulatory climate had shifted, the listing of affiliated fintech firm Ant Group was halted, and the retreat followed. It is a career that shows both what building a technology empire in China can achieve and what it can cost.