"How Jensen Works" Jensen Huang is the longest-running founder CEO...
Sinclair Ta@sinclairdta
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Nov 18, 2025
~2 min read
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"How Jensen Works"
Jensen Huang is the longest-running founder CEO in tech—32+ years building NVIDIA into a $3T+ company. This breakdown of how he works is the best leadership masterclass I've ever read.
Here's what stood out (See below)
Watch Jensen Huang's inspiring story here: buff.ly/csKSXtT
#JensenHuang #NVIDIA #Leadership #AI #Entrepreneurship #TechLeadership
Jensen Huang is the longest-running founder CEO in tech—32+ years building NVIDIA into a $3T+ company. This breakdown of how he works is the best leadership masterclass I've ever read.
Here's what stood out (See below)
Watch Jensen Huang's inspiring story here: buff.ly/csKSXtT
#JensenHuang #NVIDIA #Leadership #AI #Entrepreneurship #TechLeadership
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🔹 Professor Jensen. If you're not spending 90% of your time teaching, you're not doing your job. Jensen creates a "Vulcan mind-meld" across NVIDIA—talk to any two employees who don't know each other, and they'll say the same thing.
🔹 Whiteboard everything. Forces employees to demonstrate thought process in real-time. No hiding. No PowerPoints. Just clarity. The whiteboard represents both possibility and ephemerality—brilliant ideas must be erased so new ones can take their place.
🔹 Whiteboard everything. Forces employees to demonstrate thought process in real-time. No hiding. No PowerPoints. Just clarity. The whiteboard represents both possibility and ephemerality—brilliant ideas must be erased so new ones can take their place.
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🔹 Complacency kills. Andy Grove: "Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive." Jensen repeats this obsessively. In 1997, when Intel was 860x larger, he told his company: "We need to kill Intel before they kill us".
🔹 60 direct reports. No 1:1s. Flat organization by design. Jensen created a company he could manage directly—like an F1 race car built for him to drive. Public criticism so the whole org learns from mistakes.
🔹 60 direct reports. No 1:1s. Flat organization by design. Jensen created a company he could manage directly—like an F1 race car built for him to drive. Public criticism so the whole org learns from mistakes.
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🔹 "I look in the mirror every morning and say: You suck." After blowing the doors off a quarter, Jensen told his team this. Tortured into greatness applies to himself first. Excellence is the capacity to take pain.
🔹 Speed of light benchmark. Judge yourself only against the theoretical maximum speed possible. No delays, no queues, no downtime. Not what others are doing. Not what you used to do. Physics is your only constraint.
🔹 Top Five Emails. Every employee sends Jensen 5 bullet points on what they're working on. He reads 100+/day. Wants information from the edge—weak signals that could become $100B markets. He drinks scotch and reads emails for fun.
🔹 Speed of light benchmark. Judge yourself only against the theoretical maximum speed possible. No delays, no queues, no downtime. Not what others are doing. Not what you used to do. Physics is your only constraint.
🔹 Top Five Emails. Every employee sends Jensen 5 bullet points on what they're working on. He reads 100+/day. Wants information from the edge—weak signals that could become $100B markets. He drinks scotch and reads emails for fun.
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🔹 LÚAO. When employees ramble, Jensen says "LÚAO"—Listen, Understand, Answer the Question. Four-letter acronym. Maximum efficiency. Zero tolerance for noise.
🔹 "Working is relaxing for me." Jensen works every day. If he's not working, he's thinking about work. Unapologetically extreme. Second place is first loser. Long hours are prerequisites for excellence.
🔹 Swarm your greatest opportunity. 2002: GPUs used for non-graphics computing. 2007-2008: Invests heavily in CUDA during financial crisis. Stock drops 80%. Margins collapse. He doubles down anyway. Two decades later? $3T company powering AI.
The takeaway? Jensen built NVIDIA for decades with relentless principles: teach constantly, move at light speed, stay paranoid, torture yourself into greatness, and swarm your biggest opportunity even when no one believes.
This is a blueprint for building something legendary.
🔹 "Working is relaxing for me." Jensen works every day. If he's not working, he's thinking about work. Unapologetically extreme. Second place is first loser. Long hours are prerequisites for excellence.
🔹 Swarm your greatest opportunity. 2002: GPUs used for non-graphics computing. 2007-2008: Invests heavily in CUDA during financial crisis. Stock drops 80%. Margins collapse. He doubles down anyway. Two decades later? $3T company powering AI.
The takeaway? Jensen built NVIDIA for decades with relentless principles: teach constantly, move at light speed, stay paranoid, torture yourself into greatness, and swarm your biggest opportunity even when no one believes.
This is a blueprint for building something legendary.