NVIDIA's Jensen Huang: Crisis Mindset Key to Trillion-Dollar Success

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, despite leading the company to the pinnacle of the global AI industry, maintains a profound sense of crisis. For 33 years, he has consistently reminded himself that "the company is 30 days from going out of business." This feeling of unease persists even after NVIDIA became the first company to surpass a $5 trillion market value.

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Don't think about all the failures that could happen before they happen.

Speaking at Y Combinator's Startup School 2026, Huang told CEO Garry Tan that now is the "best time in history to start a company." He believes AI's rapid advancement offers unprecedented opportunities for young entrepreneurs. However, he noted that the primary obstacle is often not technology or funding, but the tendency to anticipate every possible difficulty before even starting.

Huang urges aspiring entrepreneurs not to dwell on potential failures before they occur. He suggests asking "How hard is it, really?" and then taking action, rather than getting paralyzed by anxiety from imagining all possible challenges at once. This doesn't mean he views entrepreneurship as easy; he works seven days a week and has maintained this crisis-driven mindset since NVIDIA's inception in 1993.

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How hard is it, really?

He believes founders don't need all the answers initially. Crucially, they must be willing to accept mistakes and learn when reality proves them wrong. True capability, for Huang, lies not in always making the right decisions, but in swiftly finding answers to unknown problems. He still operates with the same urgency as when the company was small, even while managing a multi-trillion dollar enterprise.

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The company is 30 days from going out of business.