Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. His parents were traditional musician-storytellers. At an early age, Ma developed a desire to learn English so he rode his bike each morning in order to go to a nearby hotel and converse with foreigners. He would guide them around the city for free in order to practice and improve his English.[5] He did this for nine years. He became pen pals with one of these foreigners and she was the one who gave him the name "Jack", because his real Chinese name was too difficult to pronounce.
Later in his youth, and although he failed the university entrance exam three times,[6] Ma attended Hangzhou Teacher's Institute[7] (currently known as Hangzhou Normal University) and graduated in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in English. While at school, Ma was elected student chairman.[8] He became a lecturer in English and International Trade at the Hangzhou Dianzi University and went on to further education at Beijing-based Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), founded in 2002 by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing, graduating in 2006.[9]
At first he started building websites for Chinese companies with the help of friends in the US. He has 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.... We drank, watched TV and played cards, waiting. But I was so proud. I proved (to my house guests that) the Internet existed."[10]
At a conference in 2010, Ma revealed that he has never actually written a line of code nor made one sale to a customer. He encountered a computer for the first time at the age of thirty-three.[4]