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\u201cI planned my work. I was organized. I was mise en place,\u201d Huang said during a recent interview<\/a> with Stanford Graduate School of Business. \u201cI washed the living daylights out of those dishes.\u201d<\/p>\n Now he\u2019s beating the living daylights out of the competition as president and CEO of Nvidia<\/a>, the world\u2019s premiere advanced chip manufacturer\u2014and he\u2019s now worth nearly $82 billion and the company he co-founded has a $2 trillion market cap<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But Huang attributes his wild success in business to the work ethic he picked up during his time with Denny\u2019s as a dishwasher, before he was \u201cpromoted\u201d to busboy.<\/p>\n \u201cI never left the station empty handed. I never came back empty handed. I was very efficient,\u201d Huang said. \u201cAnyways, eventually I became a CEO. I\u2019m still working on being a good CEO.\u201d<\/p>\n Huang was born in Taiwan in 1963, moved to Thailand at age 5, and moved to Washington state in the U.S. when he was 9. He went to high school outside of Portland, where he started working for Denny\u2019s at age 15<\/a>, according to an Nvidia blog post. Huang then earned his electrical engineering degree from Oregon State University, then went on to get his master\u2019s in the same subject from Stanford University in 1992.\u00a0<\/p>\n Not only did Huang land his first job at Denny\u2019s\u2014but it\u2019s also the place where he and two of his friends cooked up the idea that would make him a billionaire. In 1993, Huang, Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem (who both worked at Sun Microsystems) met at what was one of Denny\u2019s \u201cmost popular\u201d locations in Northern California to discuss \u201ccreating a chip that would enable realistic 3D graphics on personal computers,\u201d according to the Nvidia blog post.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cChris and Curtis said one day they\u2019d like to leave [Sun Microsystems], and they\u2019d like me to go figure out what they\u2019re going to leave for,\u201d Huang said. \u201cThey insisted I figure out with them how to build a company.\u201d But with little runway on how to build a business, Huang said he resolved to visit a bookstore to find books on starting a business and found one titled \u201cHow to Write a Business Plan\u201d by Gordon Bell. But the issue was the book was 450 pages long.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, I never got through it. And not even close,\u201d Huang said. \u201cI flipped through a few pages and I go, \u2018you know what, by the time I\u2019m done reading this thing, I\u2019ll be out of business.\u201d So with that, Huang took to a Denny\u2019s booth with his two friends to brainstorm a business.<\/p>\n At the time, Huang was working as an engineer with LSI Logic, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based company that sold semiconductors and software. Avago Technologies acquired LSI Logic<\/a> for $6.6 billion in 2014. But Huang kind of skips over that part when he\u2019s telling his career story.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cMy first job before CEO was a dishwasher,\u201d Huang said in the Stanford interview. \u201cAnd I did that very well.\u201d<\/p>\n While at Denny\u2019s that fateful night, Huang, Malachowsky, and Priem \u201cpolished off a Lumberjack Slam, Moons Over My Hammy and a Super Bird sandwich\u2014washed down with plenty of coffee,\u201d according to Nvidia, the perfect fuel for masterminding a new technology. Now, there\u2019s a booth dedicated to Huang<\/a> at an East San Jose Denny\u2019s location.<\/p>\n \u201cThe PC revolution was just getting going,\u201d Huang said in the Stanford interview. \u201cWe thought, why don\u2019t we build a company that solves problems that a normal computer that is powered by general purpose computing can\u2019t. That became the company\u2019s mission.\u201d Some of the industries \u201copened up,\u201d Huang said, as a result of Nvidia\u2019s technology include computational drug design, weather simulation, materials design, robotics, self-driving cars\u2014and the big one: artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n Nvidia\u2019s technology \u201cenabled a whole new way of developing software where the computer wrote the software itself\u2014artificial intelligence as we know it today,\u201d Huang said. \u201cThat was the journey.\u201d<\/p>\n While Nvidia has undoubtedly been developing the technology fueling the AI revolution, it had done so relatively quietly until just about a month ago. But in mid-February, its 46% stock surge<\/a> pushed it past Amazon<\/a>, adding about $560 billion in market value. Then, it beat out Alphabet<\/a> to become the third most valuable U.S. company. But there are some skeptics who think Nvidia may be overvalued. Apollo Global Management<\/a> said that Nvidia\u2019s inflated earnings are creating an AI bubble<\/a> even \u201cbigger than the 1990s tech bubble.\u201d<\/p>\n But even as successful as Nvidia becomes, Huang consistently reflects on his humble beginnings. He tries to maintain a very flat structure at his company and lends a helping hand where he can. He says (counter to conventional business wisdom) that a CEO should have the most direct reports; he has 50.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cNo task is beneath me,\u201d he said. \u201cI used to be a dishwasher. I used to clean toilets. I cleaned a lot of toilets. I\u2019ve cleaned more toilets than all of you combined. And some of them you just can\u2019t unsee.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nHow Huang co-founded Nvidia<\/h2>\n
Huang\u2019s leadership advice<\/h2>\n
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