The NVIDIA way
NVIDIA: The Philosophy Behind the World’s Most Valuable Company
This book captures the essence of NVIDIA - the most valuable company on the planet right now. Doing so, it essentially documents the founders philosophy and values that governs the ethos and innovations of the company today.
Key Takeaways
The Whiteboard Philosophy Jensen likes to use whiteboards, the underlying philosophy being what was drafted yesterday can be erased and every new day start with a blank board. The idea being to delete the phrase “this has always been done this way” that ails the other companies, this is what makes NVIDIA culture so nimble and adaptive to the times.
Never Back Down Jensen is not of that kind who runs away from a fight. In his own words “I do not pick up fights but hell yeah I don’t runaway from one and fight it till the end”. This fearlessness is what he picked from his boarding school days where he was bullied and beaten by boys older than his age. This whole experience instilled in him the courage to face situations in unknown and unseen environments.
Radical Candor & Engineering Autonomy Nvidia has a culture of blunt straight-forward communication, where things are conveyed as-is no matter the hierarchy. It is an engineering led organization where the engineers have complete autonomy to explore the ideas at the same time, they have to own up for the consequences.
Flat Hierarchy, No Politics There is no room for internal politics or managing up by the senior/middle managers. He has ensured a flat hierarchy which provides him visibility on entire organization.
Embrace Pain Jensen’s advice on being successful — “I wish upon you pain and sufferings” — and this stance has not changed.
Patience Meets Urgency Another philosophy that Jensen follows in his own words: “I am very patient about certain things (long-term goals and roadmap) and have urgency on certain other things (idea execution, product iteration)”.
The Genesis of NVIDIA
The genesis of NVIDIA was made by two engineers, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, who realized that their employer, Sun Microsystems, was about to shut down the graphics accelerator product line called GX and instead focus on making the CPU more capable of handling graphics operations as well. The two engineers realized the bottlenecks in this approach, and Curtis decided to go ahead and build a graphics ASIC which he theorized would play a great role in the upcoming PC revolution, with emphasis on GUI-based applications and 3D games. This was their target market.
Curtis brought both Chris and Jensen on board his idea. Both Chris and Jensen would not leave their jobs until they had a firm belief that there was a market for what they planned to build. Curtis took a leap of faith and quit his job to go full-time. This forced Chris and Jensen to do the same — thus, NVIDIA was born.
The Chain of Command
Right from day one, the founding team had agreed on a chain of command. Jensen would be CEO, thereby overseeing the business side of things, while Curtis became the CTO, providing the technical vision to the company, while Chris was the execution guy and became the engineering head.
“Your Reputation Precedes You”
The founders of NVIDIA realized a valuable lesson during their fund-raising efforts. The reason they were entertained by VCs was that the CEO of LSI at the time believed in the abilities of Jensen and his team — he was unsure of their idea, though. Yet he asked if he could invest in their idea, as he believed in the team’s ability. When the VCs were doing background checks, his recommendation played a key role. Jensen notes explicitly that the reputation of NVIDIA had reached VCs even before they formally met them. “Your reputation precedes you” aptly suits this anecdote.