Interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

"David: Well, and that being our final question for you. It’s 2023, 30 years anniversary of the founding of Nvidia. If you were magically 30 years old again today in 2023, and you were going to Denny’s with your two best friends who are the two smartest people you know, and you’re talking about starting a company, what are you talking about starting?

Jensen: I wouldn’t do it. I know. The reason for that is really quite simple. Ignoring the company that we would start, first of all, I’m not exactly sure. The reason why I wouldn’t do it, and it goes back to why it’s so hard, is building a company and building Nvidia turned out to have been a million times harder than I expected it to be, any of us expected it to be.

At that time, if we realized the pain and suffering, just how vulnerable you’re going to feel, and the challenges that you’re going to endure, the embarrassment and the shame, and the list of all the things that go wrong, I don’t think anybody would start a company. Nobody in their right mind would do it.

I think that that’s the superpower of an entrepreneur. They don’t know how hard it is, and they only ask themselves how hard can it be? To this day, I trick my brain into thinking, how hard can it be? Because you have to."