Jensen Huang: I wouldn't build NVIDIA if I had to do it over again

If you were magically 30 years old again today in 2023, and you were going to Denny's with your two best friends, who are the two smartest people you know, and you're talking about starting a company, what are you talking about starting?

I wouldn't do it. I know the reason why I wouldn't do it. And it goes back to why it's so hard is building a company. And building a video turned out to have been a million times harder than any of us expected it to be. And at that time, if we realize the pain and suffering and just how vulnerable you're going to feel and the challenges that you're going to endure, the embarrassment and the shame and the list of all the things that go wrong, I don't think anybody would start a company. Nobody in their right mind would do it. And I think that's the superpower of a entrepreneur. They don't know how hard it is, and they only ask themselves, how hard can it be? And to this day, I trick my brain into thinking, how hard can it be? I'm still enjoying myself immensely, and I'm adding a little bit of value. But that's really the trick of an entrepreneur. You have to get yourself to believe that it's not that hard, because it's way harder than you think. And if I go taking all of my knowledge now and I go back and I said, I'm going to endure that whole journey again, I think it's too much. It is just too much. Do you have any suggestions on any kind of support system or a way to get through the emotional trauma that comes with building something like this? Family and friends and all the colleagues we have here. I'm surrounded by these people that never one time gave up, and they never one time gave up on me. And that's the entire ball of wax. And to be able to go home and to have your family be fully committed to everything that you're trying to do. And thick or thin, they're proud of you and proud of the company, and you need that. You need the unwavering support of people around you. Jim Gaithers and the Tench Coxes and Mark Stevens and Harvey Jones and all the early people of our company, the Bill Millers, they not one time gave up on the company and us, and you need that. And I'm pretty sure that almost every successful company and entrepreneurs that have gone through some difficult challenges, they had that support system around them.