The Stories You Remember Aren’t the Ones With a Moral
Jack Ma once shared this experience in a speech: “Back then I wanted to hire a vice president. The company only had five million dollars in total funding, and the first thing he said was, ‘The marketing budget this year — we’ll definitely need at least fifteen million dollars.’ That was because he had previously been managing an annual budget of forty million dollars at a multinational corporation. At my company, the most I could give him was half a million dollars a year. He said half a million wasn’t even enough for a single ad, but I felt half a million was enough for ten ads. It’s a different way of thinking. You should use the right people for the stage you are at, and find people based on your actual needs. Never, ever make the mistake of bringing in a bunch of ‘top guns’ when your company is still small. The company’s own operational mechanisms and management capacity are like a tractor, and the top executives you bring in from big companies are like the engines of a Boeing 747. Once you install those engines, the moment the motor starts, the tractor will be torn apart. So you have to be very careful with team selection; don’t blindly pursue a star‑studded lineup. If you absolutely must bring in a high‑level player, you first need to recalibrate their mindset.
