[Iter-X] 8/100days

Day8️⃣

I managed to finish reading The Nvidia Way during my spare time. Now, when reading about the experiences of individuals or companies, it’s no longer just a story to me; I can now really understand how decisions made at each stage of a company’s development have a profound impact on its future.

Nvidia’s growth over the past thirty years, from making graphics cards to launching GPUs, competing with Intel’s CPUs, repeatedly overtaking competitors, the birth of CUDA, and now the leap into AI — after reading, it’s clear that many pivotal moments weren’t just luck, but the result of accumulated knowledge and decisions made along the way.

I’ve posted three excerpts from the book’s appendix regarding Jensen Huang’s leadership style. Personally, I think Nvidia has a few standout characteristics:

1. Aggressive Talent Acquisition: Jensen Huang and the executive team are very aggressive in hiring top talent. Many times, they would identify the core people in a team or company and directly approach them to join Nvidia. While other companies may have just two key architects, Nvidia has hundreds. With a large pool of talented people, excellent individuals naturally want to be around other excellent people.
2. Heavy Investment in R&D: Nvidia has always been generous in investing in research. They spend a lot of money on research and hire top talent from elite universities. Once researchers make significant breakthroughs or PoCs, Nvidia would immediately invest in R&D, transitioning the researchers to the R&D team. The continuous investment in CUDA, even when it was against Wall Street’s short-term interests, is a bold decision. It’s impressive to see how they’ve been able to withstand short-term pressure for long-term gains.
3. Employee Incentives: The company offers stock options with a four-year vesting period, and for those who perform exceptionally well, stock options are extended for another four years. If someone produces outstanding results, additional stock options are allocated. Huang also has the authority to grant stock options to individuals directly.
4. High-Pressure, High-Intensity Work Culture: This comes from Huang’s own workaholic nature, which has shaped the company culture. It’s not uncommon for employees to work 12-hour days. For example, they would break conventional cycles of graphics card releases and push new products to market every year or even every six months, which was so fast that competitors couldn’t keep up, eventually driving them out of business.
5. Flat Organizational Structure: Nvidia avoids a pyramid-like structure. Huang’s executive team is at the top, followed by employees. Huang often casually chats with employees, making it clear that everyone knows his thoughts and the company’s strategic direction. One of the most impressive things is that Huang requires everyone to send him a “Top 5” list every day, allowing him to gauge the market situation directly from both frontline and non-frontline staff. He can sense changes in the market through these reports and make decisions accordingly. For over thirty years, Huang has refused to have a private office.
6. Whiteboard Culture: They avoid using PowerPoint presentations for internal purposes. Huang believes that PowerPoint is for external audiences and makes the company look polished. Internally, they use whiteboards, where teams write and discuss ideas openly. This forces management to have a clear understanding of the current, past, and future situations without relying on fancy charts and graphs to gloss over things. This “realness” is a great approach.

There’s a lot more in the book, especially the development history of GPUs and CUDA, which is worth exploring if you’re interested. I’d definitely recommend reading it.

That said, I’m going to use all of this as an excuse to cover up the fact that today’s progress is a bit stuck. Today was all about doing small chores, like buying domains, servers, registrations, etc. But I am preparing a new plan, which I’ll share soon.

Here’s a summary of the current situation:

1. Prototype & UI/UX Design: 7%
2. Backend (Go) Development: 10%
3. Client-side (Flutter) Progress: 2%

If you think you meet the following criteria, feel free to reach out:

1. Can persevere
2. Have dreams
3. Are interested