The Lakeview Apartment: 18 Founders and the Birth of Alibaba's Culture

In the spring of 1999, the wind coming off West Lake in Hangzhou still carried a chill. The lights in a modest apartment always came on early, around five or six in the morning. The floor was covered with a few hastily bought mats, and stacks of cheap folding chairs were piled in a corner. Someone would bring a pot of freshly brewed Longjing tea from the kitchen, the leaves swirling in the simple glass cups.

If you only had a small apartment, eighteen people willing to pull all-nighters with you, and a future that even you couldn't see clearly, what would you establish first? The product? Salaries? Or the rules of the game?

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What you'll learn from Jack Ma's story:

• From Chaos to Order: How to use a single whiteboard to establish the team's "lowest common denominator" at a point of total uncertainty.
• Culture is Behavior: How to translate abstract slogans like "Customer First" into concrete actions that can be executed and checked daily.
• The Hiring Standard: In the early days, how to find fellow travelers who are "willing, able to learn, and able to endure," rather than perfect employees with flawless resumes.
• Rhythm and Morale: How to use a weekly "declarable small victory" to hedge against vast, long-term uncertainty.

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The First Night: Three Lines on a Whiteboard

"We're going to build something that makes the world know the name 'Hangzhou'."

One evening, a dozen or so men and women were crammed into the apartment's living room. Among them were former students of Jack Ma's, old colleagues who had followed him after a previous failed venture, and technicians introduced by friends. There were two plates of cookies and a bag of oranges on the coffee table, but no one touched them. A silence, mixed with anticipation and anxiety, filled the air.

Ma picked up a marker and, one stroke at a time, wrote three lines on the whiteboard. He wrote slowly, with so much force that the pen tip squeaked against the board:

Customers First Employees Second Shareholders Third

"This order can never be wrong," he said, putting down the pen and looking around at everyone.

"Why aren't shareholders first?" someone finally couldn't resist asking. In the dot-com bubble era, it was a perfectly normal question.

"Because without satisfied customers, we won't earn a single penny. Without a united team, we can't serve our customers well. Only when we have customers and our team, will the interests of the shareholders naturally follow," he paused, his tone growing heavier. "We are going to build a company that can last for 80 years, not one that just wants to make a quick buck and run."

The room was quiet for a few seconds. Some people nodded; others were still frowning in thought. Finally, he picked up the pen again and traced over the three lines, as if to carve them into the whiteboard itself.

Flower Names and Folding Chairs

Two other seemingly small but profoundly influential things were decided that night:

• Everyone had to choose a "flower name" (花名) from a martial arts novel. He started with himself, choosing "Feng Qingyang." Regardless of future titles or seniority, everyone in the company would address each other by their flower name.
• The office would use folding chairs instead of proper office chairs. They were light, cheap, and could be quickly stowed away. They were used for meetings during the day and coding at night, a constant reminder that they were still in startup mode.

"The flower names are not for fun," he explained. "This is a way to flatten power. I hope that one day, a brand-new employee will dare to point at 'Feng Qingyang' and say, 'I think your idea is wrong.'"

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A Week of Hiring: Finding People Who Were "Willing, Able to Learn, and Able to Endure"

"We have no social insurance and no air conditioning right now."

From the next day on, Ma spent almost all his time interviewing people. The small apartment living room became a temporary conference room. Resumes were spread out on the dining table, and an old fan creaked in the corner, futilely stirring the stuffy air.

He was brutally honest with every interviewee: "We can't offer high salaries right now. We don't have social insurance. We don't even have proper air conditioning. But I can promise you that you will be part of a project that will completely change the value of every line on your resume."

Most candidates hesitated and left. But there were always a few whose eyes would light up. The ones who stayed included programmers, foreign trade translators, and some young people who knew nothing but were quick learners with a fire in their eyes.

Three Soul-Searching Questions

It's said that in every interview, he would ask three questions that seemed unrelated to the job:

1. Are you willing to work for 30 days straight and potentially see no results?
2. Are you willing to unreservedly teach what you do best to your colleagues?
3. When you encounter an unreasonable customer who is yelling at you, what is your first reaction?

"We are hiring fellow travelers, not perfect employees," he told the early team members. "Skills can be learned, experience can be gained. But whether a person is fundamentally 'willing, able to learn, and able to endure' is more important than anything else."

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The "House Rules" on the Refrigerator Door

How to make "Customer First" more than just a slogan?

He demanded that the team translate these values into "actions" that could be performed every day. He had this "action list" printed and stuck to the kitchen refrigerator with a magnet:

How do we practice "Customer First"?

• On all external calls, you must first listen to the customer's problem before talking about your product.
• When any customer visits, you must serve them a cup of tea within five minutes and have a demo link ready.
• Before the end of each day, one difficult customer problem from that day must be publicly dissected in the internal group chat.

How do we practice "Employees Second"?

• A new hire must be assigned a "Shifu" (mentor) for their first week.
• The daily stand-up meeting must begin by "praising a colleague for one small thing they did well yesterday."
• If someone is working late into the night, others must proactively ask "do you need help," or at the very least, stay to keep them company.

These rules, which read like "house rules," truly became the law of the land in that small apartment.

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The Rhythm of a Day: From 7:50 AM to 11:10 PM

Taming Uncertainty with a Schedule

To get this diverse team operating on the same rhythm, a strict daily schedule was also posted on the refrigerator:

• 07:50 Open the doors, air out the room, brew the first pot of tea for the day.
• 08:30 Morning meeting, strictly 15 minutes, covering only three things: what was completed yesterday, what is the goal for today, what help is needed.
• 09:00 - 12:00 Deep work time. No idle chat allowed.
• 12:00 - 13:00 Simple lunch (mostly instant noodles + sausage). Everyone takes turns washing dishes.
• 13:30 - 17:30 Customer outreach or product demo time.
• 18:30 Evening review, 20 minutes, discussing only one problem encountered that day.
• 19:00 - 23:00 Second round of development and follow-up emails.
• 23:10 Put away the folding chairs, clear the tables, turn off the lights.

"We must compress the immense uncertainty into controllable time blocks," he said, pointing to the A4-printed schedule.

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The First Overseas Inquiry: A "Hello" from Afar

"Is anyone there?"

One night at 11:30 PM, a new email popped into the inbox. The sender's address was from overseas. The subject and body were extremely short, just one sentence:

"Is anyone there?"

He immediately replied: "We are here."

After a moment's thought, he added: "How can we help with your sourcing needs from China?"

The next morning, the sender replied with a simple but real list of procurement needs. The entire team huddled around the small computer screen, like a family gathered around a pot of freshly cooked, steaming congee.

In that moment, everyone understood more profoundly that what they were building was not a website, but a connection.

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Bringing it Back to You: Supporting Your Grand Ambitions with "House Rules"

If your venture is also in that "small apartment stage," here are three small things you can do today that will have an immediate impact:

1. Write down your "Customer-Team-Shareholder" order on a whiteboard. Then, discuss the "action version" of this order with your partners.
2. Establish a weekly "declarable small victory" for your team. Use it to maintain morale and calibrate your rhythm.
3. Post your own ten "house rules" on the back of your office door. And start following them strictly, starting tomorrow.

When the distant destination is still unclear, these simple "house rules" that you can hold in your hand are the most solid support you and your team have to keep going.

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Key Takeaways

1. Establish Order Before Seeking Speed: Use a non-negotiable lowest common denominator (like "Customer First, Employees Second, Shareholders Third") to unify thought and action, giving your resources and rhythm a "track" to run on.
2. Culture Must Be Written as Executable Actions: Translate abstract values into a concrete, executable, and reviewable list of daily behaviors. This turns culture from a slogan on a wall into muscle memory.
3. Hedge Uncertainty with Small Wins: Set a specific, achievable "small goal" each week. This allows the team to continuously see their own progress, which is the best way to maintain morale during a long startup marathon.
4. Flatten Power to Let Information Flow: Through practices like flower names, short meetings, and public reviews, break down hierarchy, allowing information to flow faster and decisions to be made closer to the front lines.