is critical you speak up,” is how he described the culture at Nvidia. “You would get in more trouble if you didn’t.”

was a perfect match. Walker found CUDA a much easier programming environment to work with, while Nvidia saw an opportunity to extend its reach into the scientific computing world. The company gave Walker technical resources to help redesign AMBER so that it could not only work on CUDA but also use its computing capabilities to the fullest. “We made

The Innovator’s Dilemma taught Jensen, as it has generations of business leaders, how to protect his company from competition. It helped him understand the threat from low-cost competitors, which is why he launched lines of low-tier and mid-tier Nvidia chips made from parts that were not quite good enough for the top-of-the-line chips. It convinced

we’re going to lose, it’s not going to be because you didn’t have help. We’re going to work together. No one loses alone,” Jensen regularly advises Nvidia employees.

But on another level, the line “We’re thirty days from going out of business” was true. In the technology industry, a single bad decision or product launch could be fatal. Nvidia had gotten lucky twice before, barely surviving the disasters of the NV1 and the NV2 before succeeding—with only months to spare—with the RIVA 128. That luck would not

As we saw in the Introduction, perhaps his favorite tool for showing the rest of the company his thought process is the whiteboard.

Driven by Jensen, Nvidia’s e-mail culture was and remains unrelenting. “One thing I learned pretty quickly is if you got an e-mail from him, you acted on it,” Douglas said.16 “Nothing stays. Nothing festers. You answer and move on it,” former head of human resources John McSorley said.17 Jensen would often respond to e-mails within minutes of

was new territory for Nvidia. Since his very first meeting with Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky at the Denny’s in East San Jose, Jensen had always focused on the importance of clearly defining market opportunities and developing new

Even in 1993, he had to convince himself there was a $50 million annual revenue opportunity in PC graphics if he was going to leave behind steady employment and cofound Nvidia. To survive after the failure of the NV1 and NV2, he had to recalibrate Nvidia’s strategy to go after the very top of the market. Here again, the opportunity was clear: