Jensen Huang, NVIDIA's CEO, had a straightforward message for young people aspiring for greatness: "No pain, no gain," at his alma mater, Stanford University, during his recent speech at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
In response to a question about how students can maximize their chances of success, Huang expressed that greatness is not intelligence but rather comes from character forged from suffering.
Huang knows more than most about achieving success. In 1993, he co-founded NVIDIA, a computer chip company, and has been its CEO for over thirty years. This made Huang a billionaire. Today, with NVIDIA's chips highly sought after for AI software development, the company has become one of the world's most valuable, with a valuation exceeding two trillion dollars.
Huang is among the world's wealthiest individuals, with an estimated net worth of seventy-seven billion six hundred million dollars, according to Bloomberg.
People with Exceedingly High Expectations Possess Very Low Resilience
For Huang, resilience is a key trait that can enhance anyone's chances of success. During last week's event, he shared with Stanford students how he cultivated the resilience needed to establish and manage one of the world's most valuable companies.
Huang mentioned having low expectations as one of his strengths, contrasting it with Stanford graduates due to their elite education. He explained that individuals with high expectations often lack resilience because they are unaccustomed to failure. Huang emphasized the importance of resilience in success, saying, "I don't know how to teach it to you except for I hope suffering happens to you."
Huang faced significant challenges in the early days of his company. In 1996, NVIDIA faced the risk of quitting business due to tough competition with other chipmakers, leading Huang to lay off over half of his staff.
The experience taught Huang to understand markets and consumer demands better. He mentioned to Fortune in 2001 that this led to abandoning the company's previous technology and investing in a new chip model, which turned out to be highly successful.
Huang enthusiastically explained to the Stanford students that he continues to use the phrase "pain and suffering" within his company. He clarified that this is meant positively because it helps to mold the company's character, aiming for greatness.
Cultivating Tolerance for Failure
According to Huang, low expectations can better equip you to face the challenges ahead. He believes it's easy to be surprised by obstacles if you only anticipate smooth sailing. This is why Huang admits to still worrying about NVIDIA potentially failing despite its significant success.
According to Huang, without this tolerance, there is no room for experimentation, and without experimentation, there is no innovation that propels you to success.
Keeping this in mind, Huang expressed his desire for the newer batch of undergraduates to encounter their character-building struggles, wishing ample doses of pain and suffering upon them, hoping it would contribute to their growth and resilience.
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