This is a short excerpt of a YouTube talk by Jason M. Lemkin arguing that being a founder is the hardest job, emphasizing that experience and scale (e.g., $20–30M revenue) produce honesty and perspective; he references Nvidia as an example of a competitive company whose leader expressed unexpected doubts about founding.
Okay. How can you not have, after all these years, gotten to a trillion dollar market cap and recognize that there's nothing harder on planet Earth than being a founder in the same year and really just recognize the two? The. No bullshit. No. This is why, Harry, you've done how many of these 20 VCs again? 2,936. This is why I won't even talk or interview a founder below 20 or 30 million in revenue. Because they're not honest enough. They don't have enough life experience. Right, right. To hear from Nvidia, which you know, has been in a ruthlessly competitive market with non recurring revenue. Right. Live or die on these margins, finally become one of the breakout top five tech companies of all time and say, I wish I wasn't a founder. Not literally, but conceptually. I mean, I don't know if it's got to be founder of the year.
