[swimwiththebeat]

I just finished this book. I thought it was a great read, capturing most of the problems (with product, sales, marketing, competition) Nvidia faced in its life and how exactly the team solved them each and every time. It also goes into how the management, org structure, and culture have empowered its engineers to find creative solutions to staying alive in the brutal graphic chips industry and continuously discover and exploit new market opportunities.

I learned a lot about how important not just superior technology, but better operations, marketing, sales, and culture are all critical to a successful business.

The only con of this book is that it skips over some parts of nvidia’s history like the short-lived crypto boom, failed acquisition of ARM, etc. It’s still just a minor flaw in an otherwise great book though.

[Jgrubb]

I'll go one further - operations, marketing, sales, and culture _are_ what makes a successful business. Superior technology is a bonus on top of that.

Superior technology in a company that hasn't figured out how to operate, or market and sell may as well not even exist.

[jasdi]

You missed Finance. There is lot of financial engineering going on to keep orgs alive and quickly adapt to ever changing needs. Dealing with cross border diff in taxes, subsidies, tariffs, regs, forex, interest rates, real estate/rent, labor costs and their constant changes is no joke.

Each of these specializations (just like tech) are evolving at their own rates and are all equally capable of outpacing each other depending on the environment.

[ssivark]

You mean, like… Intel these past few years?

[pipes]

Does it mention the investment from sega that saved Nvidia from going out of business. I think the Nvidia chips became part of some sega arcade boards, might be wrong about that.

[A_D_E_P_T]

That's at the beginning of the book, and it was apparently something of a debacle. The NV2 chip that was supposed to go into Sega's next-gen console never made it, but a $5M investment from Sega did keep Nvidia afloat until the Riva128 launched.

[als0]

The whole ARM acquisition attempt really smelt of subtle stock market games, because the alleged benefits of such a deal made no sense. With the Arm CEO being ex Nvidia I'm sure he was in on it. Looking forward to someone writing up an account of what really happened.

[klelatti]

I think that the blocking of the deal by competition authorities shows the potential benefits of the deal (for Nvidia) in having control of Arm, in addition to making Arm-based SoCs, were real.

Also, Rene Haas (ex Nvidia) became CEO of Arm after the deal fell through. Simon Segars was CEO when the deal was announced.

[Symmetry]

I'm very glad I read the book, but it did lean a little towards the hagiographic side. From the outside it looks like the same high-pressure culture that drives so much innovation at Nvidia also drove their conflict with Apple.

[cryptocali2018]

+1 with your assessment of trending towards a hagiography. The author is not Isaacson. I wish he had spent more time with the people that probably don’t have the best view of Huang’s methods, and approach to running the company. Showing the other side in a more vivid way so the reader can make their own conclusion would strengthen the book and provide a holistic, fuller profile of Huang and Nvidia. Probably the price for access, and still better than nothing…

Nvidia appears to be another pressure-cooker, dog-eat-dog SV company, that outlasted competitors thanks to shrewd bets and urgent execution. Clearly, a great accomplishment, but we’ve seen other companies succeed with similar culture… this isn’t a “new way”… a relentless, obsessive, ruthless technical founder with good business sense (Huang like Gates were able to secure partnerships/licenses of needed technology early on.. same mold as Musk, Zuck) who understands the technology and business implications in detail is a movie we’ve seen before..

[firstadopter]

Thanks for the kind words swimwiththebeat. I really appreciate it. I didn't get to the ARM acquisition failure and crypto boom given time constraints. There is so much to cover in Nvidia's three decade history, so I had to pick and choose.

[A_D_E_P_T]

Yeah, it was a good book. I got an extremely heavy dose of nostalgia from its description of the late-90s Voodoo2/Riva128 era.

It was such a fast-moving era, too. Check this out: https://www.anandtech.com/show/178/2

A card released in September 1997 is described as "an aging and slowly dying chipset." I suppose it parallels AI today, where a model released a year ago is already obsolete on the high end...

[tjoff]

Relevant context: In July of 1998.

[firstadopter]

Nostalgia for the 1990s is real. I loved that era. PC gaming was awesome. I bought tons of 3D graphics cards from Rendition Verite, 3dfx Voodoo and obviously Nvidia. Having John Carmack tweet about my book nearly made me faint (surreal!). I adored his Doom and Quake games so much.

[zf00002]

I recall being on roughly a 6 month upgrade cycle for my pc back then. Alternating between cpu/mobo/mem and gpu.