Jensen Huang Once Revealed His 'Great Advantage' In The Lead Up To Success At Nvidia Was Having 'Very Low Expectations'

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang says his edge over Silicon Valley tech CEOs is disarmingly simple: "I have very low expectations."

What Happened: Speaking at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research in March 2014, the billionaire CEO said character, not IQ, separates the merely talented from the truly great. "Greatness is not intelligence," he told the crowd. "Greatness comes from character. And character isn't formed out of smart people; it's formed out of people who suffered."

Huang knows something about resilience. He launched Nvidia in 1993 despite a disastrous pitch to his former boss with two friends and a shoestring budget. Three decades later, the chipmaker sits at the center of the artificial-intelligence boom and is worth more than $2 trillion.

Yet Huang insisted his "great advantage" was "very low expectations," contrasting his mindset with what he called the high-expectation trap of elite graduates. "People with very high expectations have very low resilience," he warned, because they're unprepared for failure's punch.

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Resilience, psychologists say, is strongly linked to long-term achievement, and Huang told students he can't teach it in a classroom. "I hope suffering happens to you," he said bluntly, drawing nervous laughter. The chief executive even uses the mantra inside Nvidia. "To this day I use the phrase ‘pain and suffering' in our company with great glee," he added. "You want to refine the character of your company. You want greatness out of them."

Why It Matters: From washing dishes to leading one of the most valuable tech companies in the world, Huang says his journey was shaped by the challenges he faced and his determination to keep going even when things got tough.

In another interview in 2023, Huang also mentioned that at Nvidia, there’s never any talk of ‘market share' to help nurture talent and build new territory. Often described as a ‘demanding‘ boss, Huang's approach is reminiscent of other tech titans like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, also known for their demanding nature.

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