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Yet Jack’s first effort to tap into Zhejiang’s entrepreneurial fizz was not a success. In 1994, his Hope Translation venture had gotten off to a troubled start. While his monthly office rent was almost $300, his first month’s income was just over $20. Hope may spring eternal, but cash is king. Jack was facing a crunch. To support his venture, Jack started peddling goods on the streets of Hangzhou, including some he sourced from Yiwu. His translation company also became a trading company.

Hope Translation Agency started to sell gifts, flowers, books, and even plastic carpet, a range of items that foreshadows Taobao. Jack recalled, “We did everything. This income supported the translation agency for three years until we started to make ends meet. We believed that as long as we kept doing it, we would definitely have a future.”

But it was becoming clear to Jack that translation services alone were not going to sate his entrepreneurial ambitions. Soon an unexpected journey, which looked at first like a disaster, was about to give Jack a lucky break.

With his reputation as an expert English speaker growing from his popular evening classes and his Hope Translation venture, Jack was asked by the government of Tonglu County—some fifty miles to the southwest of Hangzhou and later home to the Tonglu Gang of logistic companies—to assist as an interpreter in helping resolve a dispute with an American company over the construction of a new highway.

In 1994, the company had proposed to invest in a new highway to be built from Hangzhou to Tonglu. After a year of negotiations, no agreement had been reached, and the initial funding promised by the partner in the United States had not materialized. Jack was tapped to find out what was going on, and hopefully end the deadlock.

First Jack traveled to Hong Kong, where he was told that the company’s funds were held in the United States, so Jack embarked on his first trip there. He would stay for a month. His mission for the Tonglu government was a failure. But the trip would give him his first exposure to the Internet, and he would return to China a changed man.

Excerpted from page 63-64 of ‘Alibaba: The House that Jack Ma built’ by Duncan Clark