Jack Ma's Emotional Farewell Video Is An Inspiring Message To All Entrepreneurs

As Alibaba co-founder turned 55 years old yesterday, and he stepped down as company chairman and retired.

As the e-commerce giant turns 20, he's handing over the reins to a hand-picked successor. Before that though, he took a little trip down memory lane to the birthplace of Alibaba.

In a video released to Alilbaba's social channels, Ma goes back to his apartment in Hupan Garden in Hangzhou. This is a sacred place among company employees, the birthplace of the Internet giant. Where Steve Jobs started Apple in his parent's garage, this is where Ma started Alibaba.

It was there in the late 1990s that Ma gathered 17 of his former colleagues and students, in order to start a new Internet company, one that would eventually grow to become a globe-spanning e-commerce giant.

"It was not easy," Ma says, looking at photos from that time. "So every time I come back here, I have an emotion that how could this happen. But we know, without these tough days, we can never be today."

"I remember exactly the first day when we came back. We take all the luggage, come here, and I told everybody 'this is the place we're going to work for a year probably. We're going to eat here, we're going to sleep here, we're going to work day and night here,'" he says in the video. "And we will probably achieve something or we will probably have to go out looking for jobs together."

Alibaba, almost 30 years apart

It's exactly that spirit of bold entrepreneurship that's made Alibaba the giant of industry it's become over the years.

The company also sent out to the city of Hangzhou, on behalf of the company. In it, Alibaba thanks the Chinese city in the form of a poem for being a hub of innovation, and the support it's shown them in the past.