Copyright Inc. Magazine
Nvidia came to the broader public’s attention in 2023, when generative AI took off and Nvidia’s chips provided the infrastructure to make it happen. However, its “overnight success” was 30 years in the making. The company didn’t start in a garage, like other legendary startups. Instead, Nvidia’s first office was a corner booth at a Denny’s in East San Jose, California. Huang and two other co-founders would meet at the restaurant and brainstorm ideas for hours at a time over pancakes and bottomless coffee. Over the next 30 years—yes, three decades—Nvidia’s owners faced dozens of catastrophes and challenges that would have convinced most founders to give up: failed products, risky bets, market crashes, unproven technologies, competitive pressures, and near bankruptcies. However, Huang found a lesson in every setback. That’s why he constantly repeats the stories of struggle to internal teams and outside audiences. The benefits of struggle He once stunned Stanford business students by saying: “I wish upon you ample doses of pain and suffering.” At first, the audience went silent, but seconds later erupted into laughter and applause as Huang elaborated on his comment. Entrepreneurship is more difficult than most people can imagine, “a million times harder, almost too much to endure.” Huang explained. The only way to survive the inevitable roadblocks, hardships, challenges, and setbacks is to be resilient. Resilience, Huang added, leads to greatness. “Greatness comes from character, and character is not formed out of smart people,” Huang said. “It’s formed out of people who suffered, struggled, who had to do the hard things and work through them.” Leveraging failures into strategic goals In the story of Nvidia’s rise, struggle isn’t a chapter. It’s the whole story. Many entrepreneurs try to hide the harsh reality of what they’ve had to endure. Some view failure not as a badge of honor but as a disappointment to keep private. Huang, however, does the opposite and leverages the hard part of Nvidia’s journey to accomplish three strategic goals.
