Jensen Huang has a simple message for young people who want to achieve “greatness”: No pain, no gain.
That was essentially the Nvidia CEO's message to students at his alma mater, Stanford University, where he spoke last week at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
“Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character is not formed from smart people, but from people who suffered,” Huang said at the event, in response to a question about how students can maximize their chances of being successful.
When it comes to achieving success, Huang knows more than most. In 1993, he co-founded the computer chip company Nvidia, where he served as CEO for more than three decades. The company's success made Huang a billionaire. Now, with high demand for Nvidia chips to create artificial intelligence software, it has become one of the most valuable companies in the world with a valuation of more than $2 trillion.
Huang himself is one of the richest people in the world, with an estimated net worth of $77.6 billionaccording to Bloomberg.
For Huang, there is one particular trait that can make anyone more likely to succeed: resilience. At last week's event, she told Stanford students how she personally developed the resilience needed to build and run one of the most valuable companies in the world.
'People with very high expectations have very little resilience'
“One of my big advantages is that I have very low expectations,” Huang said, noting that most Stanford graduates “have very high expectations” as a result of having an elite education.
Often “people with very high expectations have very little resilience,” he continued, because they are not used to or prepared for failure.
“Unfortunately, resilience is important to success,” he said. “I don't know how to teach it to you except that I hope it puts you in pain.”
Psychologists tend to agree that developing resilience is a key factor in determining future success. Research has shown that Resilient people are more likely to have the strength and confidence to face challenges. and recover from failure.
Huang certainly struggled in the early days of his company. In 1996, Nvidia nearly went bankrupt as it struggled to compete with other chipmakers. That forced Huang to lay off more than half of his staff.
The experience taught Huang to “become better versed in reading markets and consumer demands,” he said. he told Fortune in 2001which meant discarding the company's previous technology and betting on a new chip model that ended up becoming a great success.
“To this day I use the phrase 'pain and suffering' within our company with great joy,” Huang told the Stanford students. “I say that in a happy way, because you want to refine the character of your company. You want greatness from them.”
Build a 'tolerance for failure' so you can innovate and succeed
Having low expectations can help you prepare for the inevitable challenges ahead, according to Huang, because it's easy to be caught off guard by an obstacle when all you're hoping for is smooth sailing. That's why Huang says he still worries that Nvidia could ultimately fail, despite the company's enormous success.
He believes that any good leader has to continually think about how close a company is to falling apart: “If you don't internalize that sensitivity, you will go bankrupt.” said in October.
Similarly, being aware of your potential for failure can help you develop a “tolerance for failure” that ultimately allows you to let go of the fear of failure that could prevent you from achieving success, Huang said in a previous speech to Stanford studentsin 2011.
“Unless you have a tolerance for failure, you will never experiment, and if you never experiment, you will never innovate,” he said at the time. “If you don't innovate, you don't succeed.”
With that in mind, Huang told a new group of students last week that he hopes they will experience their own struggles to develop character: “To all of you Stanford students, I wish you ample doses of pain and suffering.”
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