BEIJING (AP) — Even before Alibaba went online, its founder talked about making the fledgling e-commerce company a global player.

At Alibaba Group’s first staff meeting in 1999, a video shot by an employee shows Jack Ma rallying a workforce of 17 of his friends. They met in a cement-floored apartment in Hangzhou, a city southwest of Shanghai, at a time when few Chinese were online. Ma was an English teacher with no training in business or computers.