While the book is certainly a great read, I can't help but think that many people will try to replicate NVIDIA's culture (a la founder mode) when all they will do is replicate the effects/correlations and not the root causes.
NVDA's success goes probably extremely deep into Jensen's character, the leadership team he built and the industrial context of the time. It is unclear to me how much of it is really useful in the foresight.
100%. The vast majority of it is meaningless. People tried to copy google back in the day, and apple, etc. None of it makes a meaningful difference. The only thing Google, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia etc have in common - a really great product/service in a large, growing market that lends itself to a competitive advantage.
Yes – people forget that during the Jobs era, he was very transparent that Apple's secret sauce was almost obessively focusing on thoughtfully executed tentpole products, but otherwise having nearly conventional org structure and culture (modulo Jobs letting managers internally poach people for secret new projects.)
The fact that Apple now depends a lot on services for profitability has changed their priorities and ethos quite a bit, and I think the late-2010s depths of shitty hardware and software QA demonstrated that.
> It is unclear to me how much of it is really useful in the foresight.
While the specifics are of limited use, they do point to very useful generalities. Leader character. Leadership team. Deep understanding of the technology and industry. Long-term technological leadership. And avoiding Wall Street's quick-buck predators - and their twisted mindsets - as much as possible.
That's a good list. I'd also add a willingness to take risks, which was particularly evident in the early years with RIVA 128 but also arguably CUDA was a risk and one that didn't pay off until relatively recently.
The deep understanding of technology is so important. So many CEOs are empty MBA suits who are BS artists and don't know anything. I wish I could shout this to the rooftops even though I do cover it in the book. The importance of technical competence and avoiding finance/MBA/consulting executive CEOs.
Sure. My point is that, averaged out over all the great success stories and their corresponding books, the greatest common divisor fits in a blog post:
- Make big bets
- Build core, differentiating technology
- Lead by example
- Science the sh*t out of operations and finance
I've never seen a company benefit from layers of MBAs who are only there to hide their screw ups from the leadership while doing whatever they can to get promoted.
Strong organizations are usually bottom up, with a lot of ownership and direct contact between people doing the work and ones steering the ship.
I'm sure there are MBAs at Nvidia too, but what I found interesting is the vast majority of dozens of Nvidia employees from early years I interviewed were engineers and technical/operationaly employees. I don't remember interviewing an MBA.
I've seen founder led companies also get derailed by this, usually after raising a large round and getting forced by VCs to put their buddies in management positions.
I agree with this. You have to do the whole culture - not just a part of it. One prominent CEO (I won't name) started posting on social media about the book, the parts of being blunt and direct in feedback, and I bristled. He certainly doesn't understand the entire culture of treating employees like family in times of health crisis.
> While the book is certainly a great read, I can't help but think that many people will try to replicate NVIDIA's culture (a la founder mode) when all they will do is replicate the effects/correlations and not the root causes.
That doesn't imply that you cannot get meaning from the story.
This is the naivete of many founders but it extends beyond startups and it is something embedded in human beings. There is no logical reason that you can copy the material and human context where NVIDIA, Apple, etc were born.
NVDA's success goes probably extremely deep into Jensen's character, the leadership team he built and the industrial context of the time. It is unclear to me how much of it is really useful in the foresight.