became a lecturer in English and international trade at Hangzhou Dianzi University. Ma also claims to have applied to Harvard Business School ten times consecutively, only to ended up being rejected every time in spite of his persistent efforts. Business career Early career According to Ma's autobiographical speech, after graduating from Hangzhou Normal University in 1988, Ma applied for 31 different odd jobs and was rejected for every one. "I went for a job with the KFC; they said, 'you're no good, Ma told interviewer Charlie Rose. "I even went to KFC when it came to my city. Twenty-four people went for the job. Twenty-three were accepted. I was the only guy [rejected]...". During this period, China was in its first decade of Deng Xiaoping's Chinese economic reform. In 1994, Ma heard about the Internet and also started his first company, Hangzhou Haibo Translation Agency (, ). In early 1995, he went to the US on behalf of the municipal government with colleagues who had helped introduce him to the Internet. Although he found information related to beer from many countries, he was surprised to find none from China. He also tried to search for general information about China and again was surprised to find none. So he and his friend created an "ugly" website related to China. He launched the website at 9:40 AM, and by 12:30 PM he had received emails from some Chinese investors wishing to know about him. This was when Ma realized that the Internet had something great to offer. In April 1995, Ma and He Yibing (a computer teacher) opened the first office for China Pages, and Ma started their second company. On 10 May 1995, they registered the domain chinapages.com in the United States. Within three years, the company had made 5,000,000 Renminbi which at the time was equivalent to USD $800,000. Ma began building websites for Chinese companies with the help of friends in the US. He said that "The day we got connected to the Web, I invited friends and TV people over to my house", and on a very slow dial-up connection, "we waited three and a half hours and got half a page", he recalled. "We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. But I was so proud. I proved the Internet existed". At a conference in 2010, Ma revealed that he has never actually written a line of