NVIDIA

“One of the weak signals that he intercepted years ago was a wonky, but exciting development in machine learning that kept popping up in T five T emails. Jensen decided that NVIDIA needed to invest more in tools for accelerating workloads on its GP use. This is…”

“So at this point in the company history, Jensen has to lay off. He has to do mass layoffs. He goes down from over a hundred employees to down to 40.”

“As NVIDIA increased spending on CUDA, the global financial crisis destroyed consumer demand, and NVIDIA's stock price fell by more than 80% from October, 2007 to November, 2008.”

“It took four years and the company invested so much in converting its GPUs for CUDA compatibility that its gross margin fell from 45% to 35%.”

“Jensen's working for LSI. Okay. He goes to the CEO, Wilfred Corrigan, and he's like, Hey, I'm going to leave. I'm going to do this business with Curtis and Chris. And what is LSI CEO? The first thing he says, can I invest?”

“And yet the end of the meeting, Sequoia decides to invest. And there's a great quote on Don Valentine in this. He goes, against my better judgment, based on what you just told me, obviously it's a crappy pitch. I'm going to give you my money. But if you lose m…”

“Whiteboarding forces people to be both rigorous and transparent. It requires them to start from scratch every time they step up to the board and therefore lay out their thinking as thoroughly and clearly as possible. It becomes immediately apparent. When someo…”

“Jensen shows up to this party at Nvidia. It's a party for new hires. Introduce this guy named Peter Young. Jensen already knew who he was. He says, you're Peter Young. You've been here for a year from Sony PlayStation. And then you worked at three DFX prior to…”

“Jensen would reprimand subordinates who set goals. I referred to what the company had already done before, or what the competitors were doing at that moment. As he saw it, he needed to prevent that kind of eternal rot. That he observed at other companies.”

“People who train for the Olympics grumble about training early in the morning too. Jensen was sending a message. Long hours were a necessary prerequisite for excellence.”

“Jensen has a great line in the book. He says, I don't like giving up on people. I'd rather torture them into greatness.”

“Jensen saw that Nvidia could stop throwing away parts that failed quality tests. They failed quality tests. If you're building a Ferrari, but not if you're building, you know, a Ford fusion, right? So true. These parts were not suitable for the company's Ferra…”

“NVIDIA would split the design team into three groups. The first would design a new chip architecture while the other two worked in parallel to the first to develop faster derivatives Based on the new chip. What is that? Why? Why would you do that? Because this…”

“He's insistent on a flat structure says he steadfastly refused to change his management philosophy. Even when new board members joined and recommended that he hired chief operating officer to reduce his administrative burden. No, thanks. He replied.”

“Jensen organized NVIDIA's employees into groups centralized by functions, sales, engineering, operations, and so on. They're treated as a general pool of talent and not divided by business units or divisions.”

“Jensen's communication style, blunt, concise, and direct. He says over and over again, he believes in direct, truthful, blunt communication. We're not worried about people's feelings. We're putting the work above everything else.”

“But an ECOS machine cost a million dollars and would cut NVIDIA's runway from nine months down to six months. But Jensen realized it would speed up the testing process by significantly more time.”

“The company's organization is like a race car. It has to be a machine that the CEO knows how to drive.”

“If you're working on something you care about, don't avoid conflict. Confrontation. You actually seek conflict.”

“We don't have a culture of going after market share. We would rather create the market.”

“Strategy. Isn't what I say. It's what they do. Jensen said, that's a good line strategy. Isn't what I say is what they do. So it's really important that I understand what everybody is doing.”

“We learned it was better to do fewer things well than to do too many things. Nobody goes to the store to buy a Swiss Army knife. It is something that you get for Christmas.”

“And he says, as a result of this experience, I don't get scared often. I don't worry about going places I haven't gone before. I can tolerate a lot of discomfort.”

“Jensen will review the list of top contributor candidates and give out special one-off grants of stock that vest over a four-year period.”

“You could really summarize it by one of my favorite maxims in the history of entrepreneurship, and that is excellence is the capacity to take pain.”

“Jensen does not believe, you know, there's this maximum like praise publicly, criticize privately. No, he does not. He criticizes publicly so that the entire organization can learn from a single person's mistake.”

“Jensen decree that NVIDIA would have to develop their driver software for the Riva one, two, eight before the prototype chip was completed. This was a reversal of the customary process. This would say shave nearly a year off the production timeline.”

“These traits may even seem contradictory, but I would just say that this combination of traits I'm about to describe to you is very common. For a lot of history's greatest entrepreneurs. And as a result of the podcast, I get to meet a lot of world-class entrep…”

“Jensen was sitting towards the front row. And it's not like he hired somebody to take notes on. He's sitting there taking notes, showing up himself and trying to observe, absorb all the recent developments in artificial intelligence.”

“Jensen has run NVIDIA for over three decades. And the way he's done that is he manages the company directly. He involves himself to reap deeply in product decisions, sales, negotiations, investor relations, and more.”

“Strategy is not words. Strategy is action, Jensen said. We don't do periodic planning. The reason for that is because the world is a living, breathing thing. We just plan continuously. There is no five-year plan.”

“Jensen's famous or infamous, the fact that he has 60 direct reports and he refuses to do one-on-one.”

“So the speed of light means that you have to take every single project inside of your company. You break it down into its component tasks. And then each task must have a target time to completion that assumes no delays, no cues or no downtime. Why? Of course y…”

“Jensen was a big proponent of public criticism, talked about the fact that you should criticize publicly because it should be a learning experience for the entire company. If you criticize privately, only you and that individual employee actually learned the l…”

“One example earlier in their history says that each monthly company meeting Jensen would say we're 30 days from going out of business.”

“We build Ferraris. All of our chips were designed for the high end, the best performance. I don't want to let someone come in and be the price leader, lock me out of the bottom, and then climb their way to the top.”

“Jensen wants the whiteboard to be used as the primary form of communication in meetings.”

“You have to allow yourself to be obsessed with your work. I work every day. There's not a day that goes by that I don't work. If I'm not working, I'm thinking about working. Working is relaxing for me.”

“He said that Nvidia would be a unique semiconductor company where products average selling prices rise. We are going to be the only guy where ASPs go up over time when everyone else's ASPs will go down, he said.”

“Jensen believes in direct, blunt communication. Jensen's emails are short and sweet, like a haiku.”

“Every day he would read about a hundred top five emails to get a snapshot of what was happening within the company.”

“The company invested so much in converting its GPUs for CUDA compatibility that its gross margin fell from 45 to 35%. At the same time it's increasing its spending on CUDA, the global financial crisis destroyed consumer demand And Nvidia's stock fell by more t…”

“The top five emails have become his preferred method of flattening hierarchy strategy. Isn't what I say. It's what they do. Jensen said. So it's really important that I understand what everybody else is doing.”

“Each project must be broken down into component tasks, and each task must have a target time to completion that assumes no delays, no queues, and no downtime. This sets the theoretical maximum, the speed of light, that it is physically impossible to exceed. We…”

“Jensen is the longest running founder CEO of a tech company in the world.”

“One of the weak signals that he intercepted years ago was a wonky but exciting development in machine learning that kept popping up in the emails. Jensen decided that Nvidia needed to invest more in tools for accelerating workloads on its GPUs.”

“Jensen can also reach down into the organization at any time and award stock directly without waiting for an annual compensation review.”

“We don't do a periodic planning system. The reason for that is because the world is a living, breathing thing. We just plan continuously. There's no five-year plan.”

“Under the mission is the boss philosophy, Jensen would start every new project by designating a leader, which he calls a pilot in command. That pilot in command will report directly to Jensen. We always have a pilot in command for every project. Whenever Jense…”

“At the time he just said this, he's telling his company, we're gonna go kill Intel. At that time, Intel was 860 times larger than NVIDIA in terms of revenue.”

“I have a very clear priority list and I start from the highest priority work first. Before I even get to work, my day is already a success. I've already completed my most important work and can dedicate my day to helping others.”

“Colleagues call him Professor Jensen for his ability to explain complicated concepts on the whiteboard in a way that just about anyone can understand.”

“When an employee starts rambling, Jensen will say Lua. Lua is a warning sign that Jensen's patience is growing thin. When he says it, Jensen wants the employee to stop and do three things. Number one, listen to the question. Number two, understand the question…”

“Where there are no customers. There are also no competitors. That is a zero billion dollar market. Something that barely exists, maybe doesn't exist at all, but one day we'll be giant.”

“Nvidia could create a whole new derivative product line that could turn a profit without the expensive and time consuming process of research and development. That line would serve as defense against competitors for whom the low cost chip Was the main product.…”

“Jensen has 60 direct reports and he doesn't do one-on-one meetings.”

“I give feedback in front of everybody. Feedback is learning. For what reason are you the only person who should learn from this? We should all learn from that opportunity. I don't take people aside. We are not optimizing for not embarrassing somebody. We're op…”

“Of all the things that I value most about my abilities, intelligence is not top of that list. My ability to endure pain and suffering, my ability to work on something for a very, very long period of time, my ability to handle setbacks and see the opportunity j…”

“Jensen organized his employees into groups centralized by function. So like sales, engineering, operations, and so on. They were treated as a general pool of talent and not divided by business units or divisions. We take the people that we have, and we're able…”

“Jensen had steadfastly refused to change his management philosophy, even when new board members joined and recommended that he hired a chief operating officer to reduce his administrative burden.”

“There's a line from the founder of Nvidia, Jensen Wong. He said that he doesn't like to give up on people. He'd rather torture them into greatness.”

“Think about in Jensen's case. He's been running a company for 33 years. It wasn't 10, in NVIDIA's case, it wasn't the value came 10 to 15 years into the company. They came 25 to 30 years into the future.”