AFRICANGLOBE - Before I founded Alibaba, I invited 24 friends to my house to discuss the business opportunity. After discussing for a full two hours, they were still confused — I have to say that I may not have put myself across in a clear manner then. The verdict: 23 out of the 24 people in the room told me to drop the idea, for a multitude of reasons, such as, “You do not know anything about the Internet, and more prominently, you do not have the start-up capital for this”, etc, etc.