8 ms·

Nvidia Wouldn't Exist If CEO Could Turn the Clock Back 30 Years

110 points by belltaco 3y ago

MuffinFlavored 3y ago
> He told the interviewers that the "superpower of an entrepreneur" is facing enormous tasks and asking themselves, "How hard can it be?" I get how it could be possible to be stuck can be on the hamster wheel asking yourself this question over and over for a lifetime chasing fulfillment. However, the guy is worth $35b+... > If the above sounds somewhat negative, Huang's tone in this part of the interview isn't really regretful but more like an impassive observer. He wouldn't willingly follow the whole journey again, saying, "I think it's too much. It is just too much." He references feelings like pain, suffering, shame, and embarrassment. I don't doubt there was fear of failure along the way/close calls, lots of risk and potential/actual cases for shame, etc. I just don't get why he isn't speaking from a position of fulfillment... it's ironic obviously. Why discuss shame when you have so much success to point to? Then again, if he would've said "There were times I felt shame along the way but overall it's been amazing and I'd totally do it again", we wouldn't be here reading the article/headline/comments about it...
- m_mueller 3y ago
  Maybe there is still more of his East Asian cultural roots in him than people think? It can basically just be part of being politely humble in those sensitivities. Glorifying oneself or one’s in-group is generally not well accepted across East Asia afaik.
  - MuffinFlavored 3y ago
    > It can basically just be part of being politely humble in those sensitivities. Saying "if I could take it all back and undo all of the success I've achieved and lives I've touched, I wouldn't do it because it wasn't worth it" seems a bit more than politely humble to me.
  - tw04 3y ago
    Have you not followed nvidia? He literally makes himself the center of attention at all times. Any new announcement features a video of him making the announcement. They’re more CEO focused than Jobs lead Apple was.
    - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
      Seems silly to pay a talking head to do the communication, when you have the author itself to communicate the message. And if the author is particularly respected and well spoken, even more silly to not squeeze that asset for all its juice
- bobthepanda 3y ago
  Is success necessarily happy or fulfilling? There’s a lot of evidence that this isn’t the case.
  - armada651 3y ago
    Indeed, to achieve that kind of success sacrifices have to be made along the way; whether in health, friendships or your morals. Some of those choices you may not have been willing to make looking back knowing the full consequences of your actions.
    - Horffupolde 3y ago
      Not really. Perhaps he would have sacrificed those anyway at any other job. So he became such CEO regardless.
- wayfinder 3y ago
  Reading between the lines, he’s saying his personality isn’t the type to work super hard to make super money. In other words, maybe he could have just been a high level engineer making $300k somewhere and been super happy minus the stress of creating Nvidia. It’s not a general statement. He’s not giving advice.
- yowlingcat 3y ago
  That's a lot of words to express "cognitive dissonance." I'm pretty sure you know exactly why "he isn't speaking from a position of fulfillment" -- you know very well that he is a human being much like yourself, and despite "the guy is worth $35b+" he puts his pants on one leg at a time much like yourself. Your problem is you cannot conceive that once upon a time he had no more than you. But now he is in a different place. Can you not conceive how and why you would get there yourself? Because if you did, I'm pretty sure you'd phrase this comment in a different manner.
  - musicale 3y ago
    > he puts his pants on one leg at a time much like yourself Who are these people who don't know how to put on pants while sitting on a floor/bed/chair/etc.?
    - yowlingcat 3y ago
      > Who are these people who don't know how to put on pants while sitting on a floor/bed/chair/etc.? That is a great point about the neologism. If you're sitting down you can put your pants on two legs at a time. However, there's something quite "everyman" about putting your pants on standing up, because you can do it anywhere. Inside a bathroom? One pants leg at a time. Getting kicked out of someone else's home barely clothed because "someone else" got home? One leg at a time, albeit at a quicker pace. True, putting on pants two legs at a time from a sitting position is ideal, but it is a luxury.
      - musicale 3y ago
        > Inside a bathroom? One pants leg at a time I imagine one might be in a sitting position there as well.
        yowlingcat 3y ago
        If you're inside a private one? Absolutely. Inside a stall? Danger ahoy. Don't ask me how I know.
- arp242 3y ago
  > However, the guy is worth $35b+... That on its own seems like a very mixed blessing. On one hand, you never have to worry about money. On the other hand, you will always have to worry about your money. Either way, essentially what he seems to be saying is that it wasn't really worth it. After all, $35b isn't really what makes life worth living for most of us.
  - 9991 3y ago
    ??? I have less than a billion dollars, and yet I worry about money a lot. Curious.
    - snovv_crash 3y ago
      So you think if you had a billion dollars you'd worry about money less? You'd just worry about different aspects of money. How not to lose what you have, how you will be constantly approached by grifters, how to keep yourself and your family safe. Different issues, but still worry and still about money. IMO once you're past a certain level it's a lot more about mindset than about what you actually have, right up until you truly stand out from the crowd.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Do you think you can "just" live a normal life with a billion dollars? Being poor sucks and being rich is nice, but being ultra-rich like that is a bit like being a popstar, where things like going out to a shopping centre or having a normal social life become impossible.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
andrewstuart 3y ago
When billionaires tell you wouldn't do it if they had their time again, I'm like "yeah whatever".
- blitzar 3y ago
  It is always some variation of - "If I had my time again, I would buy a small house in a small town, have a family and mow lawns for a living" Cash out your XXbn and buy your dream house already!
MrLeap 3y ago
This was a reply to another comment on how uncanny it is that gaming hardware allowed the current machine learning advancements. It was deleted before I finished writing, but I'm not letting that stop me from sending this anyhow. Creative immersive experiences, across the history of computing, are computationally expensive. The better computing gets, the more (visually at least) immersive the experience. The search for photo realism is an asymptotic search to compute a convincing simulacrum of reality. So much human nature drove the tip of that spear forward. Immersion itself implies some kind of tricking of the consciousness, blending the familiar with the novel. Instructions and ideas piped into a machine that generates images. GPUs are specialized in parallel computation because that's precisely the architecture that best performs the multi-modal magic trick. It's surprising to me how incredulous people seem about the possibility of creating a sentient machine that is fed off a large enough diet of human written material. Language is crystalized consciousness. It's the primary medium we use to communicate our inner experience to the outside. What other fuel would you use?
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  I wonder what would have happened if 3dfx had survived. It ultimately had its assets acquired by nvidia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx
  - galeos 3y ago
    I've often wondered this. Would be interesting to see how useful that 3dfx IP ended up being? When I was a teenager I tried to get my parents to open a brokerage account so I could buy some 3dfx stock as I was so excited by what they were doing.
  - fastball 3y ago
    They failed because they were out-competed. Not really sure how the timeline would be much different if they'd managed to hang on a little longer.
- growingkittens 3y ago
  My language skills are damaged by a childhood brain injury. I think in pictures; I remember information with emotions, music, movement, and basically anywhere my brain could stuff information. Words are ephemeral, I often forget the beginning of a sentence by the time I reach the end. The human brain is so much more than language.
IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
Some of the commenters to the article state "if it's so bad, why did you not retire 3 years ago and live well" The commentary is missing the context of the sunken cost problem. This CEO, like many others, already paid his dues. He's missed many bdays, wrecked his health, and lost relationships. And now he gets to enjoy the benefits of the hard work, with the company is firing in all cylinders. Walking away now would mean all the sacrifice was for nothing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- frozenport 3y ago
  Except its all bullshit because the dude hasn't obviously lost anything. He's got a family friends, and one of the world's largest and most succesful companies.
  - junon 3y ago
    Missing the point entirely.
- Horffupolde 3y ago
  It’s not that. Someone willing and able to become such CEO will do it and keep doing it regardless.
  - joecot 3y ago
    If you spent 30 years struggling, and now everything's running well, do you really step away in the hopes that the next person doesn't immediately bring it crashing down? Because the fastest way to destroy a company is the wrong CEO.
    - KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
      Do you build companies for money, fame, or change? You have to be honest with yourself. Not everybody builds companies for fame or change, otherwise acquisitions won't be a thing.
VirusNewbie 3y ago
The commentary doesn't seem to match what Jensen is saying.
01100011 3y ago
Most of my accomplishments were things that I threw myself into without thinking and then figured out how to dig myself out. It's hard advice to give to someone else but it has worked for me.
- saiya-jin 3y ago
  Without thinking may be a stretch but for sure any big accomplishments require 'go for it' attitude, and normally there is no way to properly prepare yourself for unknown unknowns and assess risks correctly without previously walking similar/same path.
EdSharkey 3y ago
Bullcrap. This is just a demoralization play from an ubermensch who doesn't want young bucks trying hard like he did and perhaps giving him and his friends some competition/grief. No one knows what they're doing when they are just starting out. This is just dumb.
- TechnicolorByte 3y ago
  There it is: the least charitable comment I’ve ever come across on HN.
  - EdSharkey 3y ago
    Billionaires don't care about you. Scariest creatures on this planet. Tell me why the controllers need my charity? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aiFp-XqV_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aiFp-XqV_M
huijzer 3y ago
I can highly recommend listening the full interview at Acquired. I found that Jensen sounded refreshingly honest in the interview. YouTube: https://youtu.be/y6NfxiemvHg?si=FpfBRSVNRQk8ebjb https://youtu.be/y6NfxiemvHg?si=FpfBRSVNRQk8ebjb Spotify: https://spotify.link/kP791sg35Db https://spotify.link/kP791sg35Db
- ksec 3y ago
  It is a great interview. Unfortunately Nvidia or Jensen is possibly the top 10 most disliked person / Company on HN. ( Just look at the comments )
- consumer451 3y ago
  Second this. It is really easy to get disheartened by modern C suite culture and the players. This interview showed the other side. A great thinker and leader who appears to deserve any accolade bestowed upon him.
  - huijzer 3y ago
    > A great thinker and leader who appears to deserve any accolade bestowed upon him. Why so binary? Like any person, he's probably great but also in some parts not.
    - consumer451 3y ago
      Fair point. Not trying to hero worship here. But have you listened to that interview? It was just refreshing compared to normal CEO speak / mythology / ego.
didibus 3y ago
What exactly is hard? Anyone listened to the full interview and knows? Is it just the stress of it all? Negotiating the deals, worrying you're going to lose it all, all your money, and be left with nothing?
extragood 3y ago
I went to a talk by PayPal founders - Peter Thiel and Max Levchin - more than a decade ago (before I had any opinions about the former), and they essentially said the same thing. And from what I see in the comments here, a lot of people are misunderstanding the point. If Jensen, Thiel, or Levchin fully understood the challenges they'd face to get their companies off the ground, they would never have pursued it. That's not to say they regret the results. For better or worse, they all persevered, and so it's easy for us to say, well yeah, obviously that was the right move. Because PayPal and Nvidia are obvious slam dunks in retrospect. But none of us have been there, as pioneers of the unproven, and it's the height of arrogance to contradict that.
- RCitronsBroker 3y ago
  ya, well, it didn’t rattle Thiel enough not to create the abomination he called palantir afterwards. Twat.
  - fastball 3y ago
    What's wrong with Palantir?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - sneak 3y ago
      The same thing that’s wrong with any part of the military-industrial complex that weaponizes data against civilian populations.
      - peanuty1 3y ago
        Palantir helps the US defend its southern border from illegal aliens. I don't see anything wrong with that.
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
kristopolous 3y ago
I met him 1-on-1 for about 30 minutes in 2000 (I was a camp counselor for his son), he was the same apprehensive divided driven guy then. Someone you don't forget

110 points by belltaco 3y ago

> He told the interviewers that the "superpower of an entrepreneur" is facing enormous tasks and asking themselves, "How hard can it be?" I get how it could be possible to be stuck can be on the hamster wheel asking yourself this question over and over for a lifetime chasing fulfillment. However, the guy is worth $35b+... > If the above sounds somewhat negative, Huang's tone in this part of the interview isn't really regretful but more like an impassive observer. He wouldn't willingly follow the whole journey again, saying, "I think it's too much. It is just too much." He references feelings like pain, suffering, shame, and embarrassment. I don't doubt there was fear of failure along the way/close calls, lots of risk and potential/actual cases for shame, etc. I just don't get why he isn't speaking from a position of fulfillment... it's ironic obviously. Why discuss shame when you have so much success to point to? Then again, if he would've said "There were times I felt shame along the way but overall it's been amazing and I'd totally do it again", we wouldn't be here reading the article/headline/comments about it...

m_mueller 3y ago
Maybe there is still more of his East Asian cultural roots in him than people think? It can basically just be part of being politely humble in those sensitivities. Glorifying oneself or one’s in-group is generally not well accepted across East Asia afaik.
- MuffinFlavored 3y ago
  > It can basically just be part of being politely humble in those sensitivities. Saying "if I could take it all back and undo all of the success I've achieved and lives I've touched, I wouldn't do it because it wasn't worth it" seems a bit more than politely humble to me.
- tw04 3y ago
  Have you not followed nvidia? He literally makes himself the center of attention at all times. Any new announcement features a video of him making the announcement. They’re more CEO focused than Jobs lead Apple was.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    Seems silly to pay a talking head to do the communication, when you have the author itself to communicate the message. And if the author is particularly respected and well spoken, even more silly to not squeeze that asset for all its juice
bobthepanda 3y ago
Is success necessarily happy or fulfilling? There’s a lot of evidence that this isn’t the case.
- armada651 3y ago
  Indeed, to achieve that kind of success sacrifices have to be made along the way; whether in health, friendships or your morals. Some of those choices you may not have been willing to make looking back knowing the full consequences of your actions.
  - Horffupolde 3y ago
    Not really. Perhaps he would have sacrificed those anyway at any other job. So he became such CEO regardless.
wayfinder 3y ago
Reading between the lines, he’s saying his personality isn’t the type to work super hard to make super money. In other words, maybe he could have just been a high level engineer making $300k somewhere and been super happy minus the stress of creating Nvidia. It’s not a general statement. He’s not giving advice.
yowlingcat 3y ago
That's a lot of words to express "cognitive dissonance." I'm pretty sure you know exactly why "he isn't speaking from a position of fulfillment" -- you know very well that he is a human being much like yourself, and despite "the guy is worth $35b+" he puts his pants on one leg at a time much like yourself. Your problem is you cannot conceive that once upon a time he had no more than you. But now he is in a different place. Can you not conceive how and why you would get there yourself? Because if you did, I'm pretty sure you'd phrase this comment in a different manner.
- musicale 3y ago
  > he puts his pants on one leg at a time much like yourself Who are these people who don't know how to put on pants while sitting on a floor/bed/chair/etc.?
  - yowlingcat 3y ago
    > Who are these people who don't know how to put on pants while sitting on a floor/bed/chair/etc.? That is a great point about the neologism. If you're sitting down you can put your pants on two legs at a time. However, there's something quite "everyman" about putting your pants on standing up, because you can do it anywhere. Inside a bathroom? One pants leg at a time. Getting kicked out of someone else's home barely clothed because "someone else" got home? One leg at a time, albeit at a quicker pace. True, putting on pants two legs at a time from a sitting position is ideal, but it is a luxury.
    - musicale 3y ago
      > Inside a bathroom? One pants leg at a time I imagine one might be in a sitting position there as well.
      - yowlingcat 3y ago
        If you're inside a private one? Absolutely. Inside a stall? Danger ahoy. Don't ask me how I know.
arp242 3y ago
> However, the guy is worth $35b+... That on its own seems like a very mixed blessing. On one hand, you never have to worry about money. On the other hand, you will always have to worry about your money. Either way, essentially what he seems to be saying is that it wasn't really worth it. After all, $35b isn't really what makes life worth living for most of us.
- 9991 3y ago
  ??? I have less than a billion dollars, and yet I worry about money a lot. Curious.
  - snovv_crash 3y ago
    So you think if you had a billion dollars you'd worry about money less? You'd just worry about different aspects of money. How not to lose what you have, how you will be constantly approached by grifters, how to keep yourself and your family safe. Different issues, but still worry and still about money. IMO once you're past a certain level it's a lot more about mindset than about what you actually have, right up until you truly stand out from the crowd.
  - arp242 3y ago
    Do you think you can "just" live a normal life with a billion dollars? Being poor sucks and being rich is nice, but being ultra-rich like that is a bit like being a popstar, where things like going out to a shopping centre or having a normal social life become impossible.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

andrewstuart 3y ago

When billionaires tell you wouldn't do it if they had their time again, I'm like "yeah whatever".

blitzar 3y ago
It is always some variation of - "If I had my time again, I would buy a small house in a small town, have a family and mow lawns for a living" Cash out your XXbn and buy your dream house already!

MrLeap 3y ago

This was a reply to another comment on how uncanny it is that gaming hardware allowed the current machine learning advancements. It was deleted before I finished writing, but I'm not letting that stop me from sending this anyhow. Creative immersive experiences, across the history of computing, are computationally expensive. The better computing gets, the more (visually at least) immersive the experience. The search for photo realism is an asymptotic search to compute a convincing simulacrum of reality. So much human nature drove the tip of that spear forward. Immersion itself implies some kind of tricking of the consciousness, blending the familiar with the novel. Instructions and ideas piped into a machine that generates images. GPUs are specialized in parallel computation because that's precisely the architecture that best performs the multi-modal magic trick. It's surprising to me how incredulous people seem about the possibility of creating a sentient machine that is fed off a large enough diet of human written material. Language is crystalized consciousness. It's the primary medium we use to communicate our inner experience to the outside. What other fuel would you use?

Scoundreller 3y ago
I wonder what would have happened if 3dfx had survived. It ultimately had its assets acquired by nvidia! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3dfx
- galeos 3y ago
  I've often wondered this. Would be interesting to see how useful that 3dfx IP ended up being? When I was a teenager I tried to get my parents to open a brokerage account so I could buy some 3dfx stock as I was so excited by what they were doing.
- fastball 3y ago
  They failed because they were out-competed. Not really sure how the timeline would be much different if they'd managed to hang on a little longer.
growingkittens 3y ago
My language skills are damaged by a childhood brain injury. I think in pictures; I remember information with emotions, music, movement, and basically anywhere my brain could stuff information. Words are ephemeral, I often forget the beginning of a sentence by the time I reach the end. The human brain is so much more than language.

IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago

Some of the commenters to the article state "if it's so bad, why did you not retire 3 years ago and live well" The commentary is missing the context of the sunken cost problem. This CEO, like many others, already paid his dues. He's missed many bdays, wrecked his health, and lost relationships. And now he gets to enjoy the benefits of the hard work, with the company is firing in all cylinders. Walking away now would mean all the sacrifice was for nothing.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
frozenport 3y ago
Except its all bullshit because the dude hasn't obviously lost anything. He's got a family friends, and one of the world's largest and most succesful companies.
- junon 3y ago
  Missing the point entirely.
Horffupolde 3y ago
It’s not that. Someone willing and able to become such CEO will do it and keep doing it regardless.
- joecot 3y ago
  If you spent 30 years struggling, and now everything's running well, do you really step away in the hopes that the next person doesn't immediately bring it crashing down? Because the fastest way to destroy a company is the wrong CEO.
  - KRAKRISMOTT 3y ago
    Do you build companies for money, fame, or change? You have to be honest with yourself. Not everybody builds companies for fame or change, otherwise acquisitions won't be a thing.

VirusNewbie 3y ago

The commentary doesn't seem to match what Jensen is saying.

01100011 3y ago

Most of my accomplishments were things that I threw myself into without thinking and then figured out how to dig myself out. It's hard advice to give to someone else but it has worked for me.

saiya-jin 3y ago
Without thinking may be a stretch but for sure any big accomplishments require 'go for it' attitude, and normally there is no way to properly prepare yourself for unknown unknowns and assess risks correctly without previously walking similar/same path.

EdSharkey 3y ago

Bullcrap. This is just a demoralization play from an ubermensch who doesn't want young bucks trying hard like he did and perhaps giving him and his friends some competition/grief. No one knows what they're doing when they are just starting out. This is just dumb.

TechnicolorByte 3y ago
There it is: the least charitable comment I’ve ever come across on HN.
- EdSharkey 3y ago
  Billionaires don't care about you. Scariest creatures on this planet. Tell me why the controllers need my charity? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aiFp-XqV_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aiFp-XqV_M

huijzer 3y ago

I can highly recommend listening the full interview at Acquired. I found that Jensen sounded refreshingly honest in the interview. YouTube: https://youtu.be/y6NfxiemvHg?si=FpfBRSVNRQk8ebjb https://youtu.be/y6NfxiemvHg?si=FpfBRSVNRQk8ebjb Spotify: https://spotify.link/kP791sg35Db https://spotify.link/kP791sg35Db

ksec 3y ago
It is a great interview. Unfortunately Nvidia or Jensen is possibly the top 10 most disliked person / Company on HN. ( Just look at the comments )
consumer451 3y ago
Second this. It is really easy to get disheartened by modern C suite culture and the players. This interview showed the other side. A great thinker and leader who appears to deserve any accolade bestowed upon him.
- huijzer 3y ago
  > A great thinker and leader who appears to deserve any accolade bestowed upon him. Why so binary? Like any person, he's probably great but also in some parts not.
  - consumer451 3y ago
    Fair point. Not trying to hero worship here. But have you listened to that interview? It was just refreshing compared to normal CEO speak / mythology / ego.

didibus 3y ago

What exactly is hard? Anyone listened to the full interview and knows? Is it just the stress of it all? Negotiating the deals, worrying you're going to lose it all, all your money, and be left with nothing?

extragood 3y ago

I went to a talk by PayPal founders - Peter Thiel and Max Levchin - more than a decade ago (before I had any opinions about the former), and they essentially said the same thing. And from what I see in the comments here, a lot of people are misunderstanding the point. If Jensen, Thiel, or Levchin fully understood the challenges they'd face to get their companies off the ground, they would never have pursued it. That's not to say they regret the results. For better or worse, they all persevered, and so it's easy for us to say, well yeah, obviously that was the right move. Because PayPal and Nvidia are obvious slam dunks in retrospect. But none of us have been there, as pioneers of the unproven, and it's the height of arrogance to contradict that.

RCitronsBroker 3y ago
ya, well, it didn’t rattle Thiel enough not to create the abomination he called palantir afterwards. Twat.
- fastball 3y ago
  What's wrong with Palantir?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - sneak 3y ago
    The same thing that’s wrong with any part of the military-industrial complex that weaponizes data against civilian populations.
    - peanuty1 3y ago
      Palantir helps the US defend its southern border from illegal aliens. I don't see anything wrong with that.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]

kristopolous 3y ago

I met him 1-on-1 for about 30 minutes in 2000 (I was a camp counselor for his son), he was the same apprehensive divided driven guy then. Someone you don't forget