Take a good look at this man. This man who once cleaned toilets at school will one day be the richest person in the world. The company he founded 30 years ago for $200 has today turned into a $2 trillion giant. One day, a movie will be made telling his story and he will probably be played by Jackie Chan. But before those days come, before the movies are made, before there is even a decent book written about him, I want to tell you the story of this man, the founder of NVIDIA, from my own perspective. From $200 to $2000000000000 The story of Nvidia founder JENSEN Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang was born in Taiwan in 1963. His family moved to Thailand when he was 5 years old. At the age of 9, they sent him to his uncle living in Washington state in the USA, so that he could have a better future. His family sent him to America to live with his uncle, who sent him to a boarding school in Kentucky. As you can see, this child had a very fast start in life. He had to move to 4 different parts of the world before he was 10. That boarding school he was sent to is also interesting because it was located in a mountainous, poor area where hostile gangs live. Imagine a small school established to teach the children of these hostile families to love each other and not to fight. Jensen immediately realized that it was a very different place. Look, this kid was only 10 years old. But his roommate was 17 years old and his body was covered in bruises. Because they were fighting all the time. Imagine, you are a little child who was sent first from Taiwan, to Thailand, from there to Washington and then to a place tucked away in the mountains to escape from violence and take shelter in a safe place, and this is what you encounter. “The kids there were really tough,” Jensen explains in a radio program he attended. “They all had pocket knives and when they fought there would be chaos. Children would get injured! “Everyone would attack each other.” In that school Everyone had to work as well as study. And Jensen had to clean the toilets. “That period was very difficult for me, I had to work hard, but ultimately it was an experience that shaped my life,” he explains. His friends also describe him as a person who always tries to see the good aspects of the situation he is in, rather than the bad aspects. For example, in that school's dormitory, there was an apple tree right in front of his window. This hard-working student graduated from high school at the age of 16 and entered a state university in Oregon. He started studying electrical engineering. While he was working part-time at a restaurant called Denny's, he was also going to school. One day, they paired him with a girl in the school laboratory. Love at first sight. He immediately wanted to take her home and show her his butterfly collection. Not quite, but look how he got her: And just like that, he later married this girl, whom he met when he was only 16, and had 2 children and a dog. They have been living happily for over 40 years. Of course, our story does not end with "They lived happily ever after". The couple is still happily married, but Jensen's career is now approaching a much more interesting crossroads than his personal life. After graduating from university, they moved to California. To Silicon Valley… Jensen started working in various companies there. On the other hand, they would occasionally meet up with their friends at Denny's restaurant and hang out. They were chatting there. It was at such a meeting that the idea of starting their own company emerged. That's where they decided to establish a graphics company. “We brainstormed and dreamed about what kind of company we should be and what kind of contribution we could make to the world…” he explains those days. He recalls, "While I was a very shy, weak, cynical, and introverted person at university, when I worked in this restaurant chain and had to take care of the people at the tables, it pulled me out of my shell: “It was back then that I learned how to deal with difficult people in difficult situations.” You may not always be able to control the environment you are in. Going through chaotic situations can give you such good qualities later on. Will you take a look at the twist of fate? Jensen later goes to this restaurant chain, where he had to work years ago, as a customer and decides to start his own company there. Think. You are a 30-year-old engineer. You have no idea about companies or the business world. But you have a lot of innovative ideas in your mind. What do you do to achieve these? Let me tell you. You need to acquire a skill that is valid then and today. You should be able to explain your problem. You must be a good storyteller. You must be able to present your ideas beautifully to others. And that's exactly what he did. He immediately went out and bought a computer. And downloaded a presentation program into it. In those years, there was no PowerPoint or Keynote yet. At that time there was a presentation program from Adobe called Persuasion. So he bought and downloaded it. The date is February 17th, 1993. How do we know it? because that day is Jensen's 30th birthday? You know, on days like these - birthdays etc. - people reevaluate their lives. Well, he did just that, reviewed his ideas, took action, and exactly 1.5 months later, they founded the company on April 5, 1993. I mean NVIDIA. Actually, they wanted to name the company enVision, instead of NVIDIA, but this name was taken by someone else. By a toilet paper company. There is something about toilets in this story, I don’t know what... That's why Jensen derived the name of the company from a Latin word: From the word “invidia”. Which means to envy. Well, they founded the company, and what did they do? They didn't do anything for the first 6 months. There were 3 of them in the company. They met and talked all the time. “So what you ate last night?” "Yo let's bring some donut or something Tomorrow, and put it in the fridge so we can eat it in the morning." While they were busy with such problems, they were also reading books on topics such as what to do after establishing a company, how to expand it, how to get investments, etc. This is no joke, he tells these things himself. Finally, Jensen went to a law firm and said, "Help us with this." So they said that some capital was needed. Tell us something so that we can determine the prices of the shares and calculate down and stuff. “How much money you’ve got in your pocket?” they asked. With that $200 in his pocket, NVIDIA got its first energy and started its way. Today, 30 years later, it has grown into a $2 Trillion company. There are no longer 2 zeros next to 2, but 12 zeros. The money in his pocket increased its value 10 billion times in 30 years. There are many other interesting big and small points in Jensen's story, for example, let me tell you something else that comes to my mind. His cousin is now the CEO of AMD. You know AMD, the chip manufacturer? CPU. But I just mentioned that he got help in the beginning. If you want to get such support and establish a company quickly and easily in the USA, UK, European Union or Turkey, there is an online platform that provides you with all the services you may need, wherever you are. Mükellef How does Mükellef help you? It allows you to establish a company in the USA and the UK. Provides things such as Virtual business addresses, which is mandatory for this and adds prestige to businesses, phone numbers to register to banks or e-commerce platforms, opens online bank accounts to receive global payments, tracks and reports income and expenses, sales from e-commerce platforms, bank movements. 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To benefit from discounts of up to 10% in the USA and the UK and up to 3000 TRY in Turkey for company establishments, click on the link you see on the screen and which I added in the description section, and become a Mükellef member immediately. Let's continue where we left off. If you remember, Jensen had just founded his company for $200 about 30 years ago. So, has he made a business plan? No, he couldn't finish it. He found an author named "Gordon Bell" and bought his book. The name of the book is “How do you start a high-tech company?” He read the first few chapters of the book, started his business plan but could not finish it, but he prepared the presentation and started knocking on investors' doors. And that's when he realized that they weren't investing in the business plans or anything. Because anyone can write a business plan. They look for people they can trust and invest in such people. Being a reliable person. This is the first condition! Then he adds: “Market size matters, and investors want to know that there is at least one smart idea in the market that hasn't been done before. This last part is perhaps secondary because you may also have to reinvent yourself over time, and if you want to reinvent yourself, you need great people.” Look, not only investors but also entrepreneurs are looking for the same thing. Those wonderful people... So, it is extremely important to find reliable, visionary people and surround yourself with them. Even if you don't get together physically, find such people, read them, listen to them, watch them. Pay attention to how they behave in situations. Founded in the 90s, the company's shares began to rise slowly in the 2000s. During those years, they continued to talk among themselves and dream: “What do we do when shares hit $100?” they were talking. Jensen said, "If something like that happens, I'll go and get a tattoo." And the day the shares reached this target for the first time, he cried like a child. Not only from joy, but also from the pain too! Now many CEOs have such a special way of dressing. They don’t walk around with just a t-shirt. Jensen also has such a style: Shiny black leather jacket. He wears this everywhere. Moreover, he does not have a fashion designer or PR communicator who forces him to dress like this. “My wife and daughter dress me,” he says. Let's talk about his working strategy. There are exactly 50 people who report directly to him. For someone at the CEO level, this number may seem like a lot. But he says that this way, he reduced the layers within the company and created a horizontal system instead of such a vertical hierarchy: “In this way, we streamline the information inside the company and ensure that everyone is aware of everything.” Of course, there is also a disadvantage of dealing with so many people at the same time. You must be in constant communication with all of them. It is said that Jensen writes and sends hundreds of emails within the company every day. Of course, in order to write so many e-mails, one should not go into too much detail. This is another feature of him. Writing and sending very short messages. One of his subordinetes says they are like Japanese poetry haiku, another says they sound like a ransom letter for them. They have adopted the principle of thinking and working at the speed of light with their short and fast messaging system. They also continued to develop many things for exploratory purposes. For example, I'm sure players especially have heard the word CUDA. One of the most striking examples of this. When it was built, it had no competitors because it had no obvious customer base. In this way, we can compare Jensen to Kevin Costner in the movie "Field of Dreams". You know, there was a baseball field opened far away in a middle of nowhere where no one else was. What was that voice heard from the unknown saying: If you build it, they will come. Yes, if you do it, someone will find it somehow. Today, NVIDIA's value is breaking record after record. But they started doing that 30 years ago. When they started, they set out to produce powerful graphics cards for video game players. But Jensen realized that supercomputers could also be run with the processing power inside them. Nobody needed that much power back then. They turned to topics such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. They continued to improve their products in these areas where not much progress had been made for years. They were ready for the artificial intelligence revolution, but artificial intelligence could not reach the level they wanted for years. Instead Bitcoin appeared out of nowhere. This time, their powerful processors turned into hammers and shovels used in cryptocurrency mining. And finally, when the need for truly powerful processors really peaked with the AI revolution that started last year, NVIDIA had already been ready for this job for more than 10 years. If you build it, they will come. But building is not easy at all. Every adventure is like this. For entrepreneurs, establishing a company, finding investment, accessing quality human resources, developing products, becoming profitable, then going public, growing sustainably, growing, growing... Making new inventions is not easy. So what advice can we give to those who want to embark on such crazy things? Try to have fun while doing the job. Enjoy the adventure. Yes, not the end of the road, the journey itself is a success. I think if we could only think like that, we could all become the richest people in the world. So, take a good look at this guy for inspiration. Because this man, who once cleaned toilets, was happy by looking at the apples in front of his window instead of getting depressed. Inspiring, hopeful, enthusiastic people. Fill your environment with such people. Look at such people. Pursue a strong vision of the future. Find your own apples.