Jensen Huang Says Building Nvidia Was A 'Million Times Harder' Than He Expected

Nvidia Corp NVDA became the world’s most valuable company earlier this year on the back of surging demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) chips. 

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang founded the multi-billion dollar chip company more than 30 years ago and recently talked about what it would take to pit expectations against reality and do it all over again.

Starting a successful company is “insanely hard,” Huang said last year on an episode of the tech podcast, “Acquired.” 

“And when I see these amazing companies getting built, I have nothing but admiration and respect because I just know it’s insanely hard,” he added. “You could do all of the right things and still fail.”

Building Nvidia was “a million times harder” than Huang expected it to be. Knowing what he knows now about launching a business, he’s not so sure if he would do it all again. For those who want to try, he offered an interesting piece of advice: Underestimate the challenge. 

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In order to be a successful entrepreneur, you have to “trick your brain” into thinking a particular challenge is not as difficult as it really is. 

“You have to get yourself to believe that it’s not that hard because it’s way harder than you think,” Huang said. 

If you can maintain a “How hard can it be?” mindset, he suggested that you will wield an entrepreneurial superpower that can get you through tough times. 

“If I go taking all of my knowledge now, and I go back, and I said I’m going to endure that whole journey again, I think it’s too much,” he said. 

Huang attributed much of Nvidia’s success to the people around him, who never gave up. He named several team members who have been at the company since the very beginning.

He said that if you surround yourself with people who share the same mindset, you can get through the tough times. However, you still have to trick yourself every day into thinking it’s not as hard as it really is. 

“I’m surrounded by these people that never one time gave up and they never one time gave up on me. That’s the entire ball of wax,” the Nvidia founder and CEO said. 

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Some elements of this story were previously reported by Benzinga and it has been updated.

Photo: Shutterstock.