Alibaba has become a behemoth in the e-commerce world, and the story behind the founder is quite the inspiring tale.

Jack Ma, who is now chairman of the massive company, started out as a school teacher in China, teaching English for $12 a month at a local university.

During China’s export boom, Ma ended up starting a translation company, which would ultimately lead him to visiting the United States for the first time in 1995 where he discovered the Internet.

Inspired, Ma returned home and in 1999 he decided to take on one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the world, eBay, and gathered 17 friends into his apartment. The team set to work building their own online marketplace which would eventually become Alibaba.com.

The full story is quite inspiration, and you can read the full breakdown of Ma’s career steps on Business Insider.