Evolution of Love 2

Don't Quit

At 9, his roommate showed him knife scars. He was cleaning toilets in a reform school. Today he's worth $152 billion and built the company powering ChatGPT.

Jensen Huang was 9 years old.

His parents had sold most of what they owned to send him and his brother from Taiwan to America.

Their uncle in Washington found the school. Oneida Baptist Institute. Sounded prestigious as hell.

It was a reform school for troubled Kentucky youth.

Jensen's first night, his roommate pulled up his shirt.

17 years old. Covered in tattoos and knife scars. Showed Jensen every wound like a trophy collection.

Jensen was the only Asian student in the entire school. Undersized. Long hair down his back. Broken English.

Every morning, he cleaned toilets.

His brother got shipped off to work on a tobacco farm.

The other students made his life a living nightmare. Ethnic slurs. Knife threats. Daily reminders he didn't belong.

Everyone said he'd never make it.

"You don't belong here."

"Go back to Taiwan."

"You'll never be anything."

He didn't listen.

Here's what Jensen knew that everyone else missed:

When you survive a reform school at 9, nothing in business can ever break you.

So he cut a deal with his scarred-up roommate:

"I'll teach you to read. You teach me to bench press."

Two years of that.

Then his parents finally made it to America. Found out what their sons had been enduring. Pulled them out immediately. Moved the family to Oregon.

But by then, something had already calcified inside Jensen.

His mother had taught him English back in Taiwan... despite not speaking a word of it herself.

She told him over and over: "You are special."

She left him with a belief that nothing could ever be that hard again.

And after cleaning toilets in a reform school while dodging knife threats from illiterate teenagers...

She was right.

He got a job at Denny's.

Started washing dishes.

His work ethic became the stuff of legend.

"I never left the station empty-handed. I never came back empty-handed."

Promoted to busboy. Then waiter.

Years later, he'd say Denny's shaped everything about how he handles pressure.

His heart rate actually DROPS when stakes are high.

He credits those dinner rush hours for that.

Went to Oregon State. Met his future wife Lori in an electrical engineering lab. She was his lab partner.

Worked nights and weekends to get his master's from Stanford. Took years because he had a full-time job and kids.

Then he sat in a booth at Denny's in San Jose.

Same chain where he washed dishes years earlier.

Meeting with two friends. $40,000 between them. Zero business plan.

Jensen tried reading a book about writing business plans.

450 pages.

"By the time I finish this thing, I'll be out of business."

So they just started.

Founded the company right there in that Denny's booth.

Called it NVIDIA.

From the Latin "invidia." Meaning envy.

They wanted competitors turning green with it.

But the first years nearly killed them.

Ran out of cash. First product flopped completely. Investors bailed.

Jensen later said NVIDIA at founding had "approximately 0% chance of success."

Most people would have quit.

Jensen kept building.

That's when everything changed.

They pivoted. Found the graphics processing market. Started winning.

First product: complete failure.

First decade: barely surviving.

2024: $4.3 trillion. Most valuable company on Earth.

But Jensen wasn't done.

He still works from the second he wakes up until he passes out at night.

Can't even watch a movie without his brain drifting back to the company.

Wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror, tells himself: "You suck."

Has 50 direct reports. Most CEOs cap out at 10.

His philosophy: "I don't like giving up on people. I'd rather torture them into greatness."

Today, Jensen Huang is worth $152 billion.

NVIDIA powers the entire AI revolution. Every major AI system runs on NVIDIA chips.

ChatGPT? NVIDIA.

Claude? NVIDIA.

Midjourney? NVIDIA.

All of it.

And he donated $2 million to Oneida Baptist Institute.

The reform school where he scrubbed toilets as a child.

Built Jen-Hsun Huang Hall. New dormitory and classroom building for girls.

The place that nearly broke him became the place he chose to honor.

All because a 9-year-old kid cleaning toilets in a reform school refused to let that be his story.

He turned a childhood nightmare into unbreakable mental armor.

He proved that your hardest years might be your best training.

What childhood trauma are you using as an excuse instead of fuel?

What impossible situation are you treating as permanent instead of training?

What are you quitting on that could become your trillion-dollar company?

Jensen survived knife threats at 9. Washed dishes at Denny's. Started a company with $40K and "0% chance of success."

His parents got scammed by a reform school and sold everything for nothing.

He donated $2 million back to that same school decades later.

Because he understood something most people don't.

Your worst years might be your best training.

The thing that nearly breaks you might be the thing that makes you unbreakable.

Survival isn't a setback. It's preparation.

Stop using your hardest years as an excuse.

Start thinking like Jensen Huang.

Take your trauma. Turn it into training. Build something that outlasts it.

And never let anyone tell you that where you started determines where you end up.

Sometimes the worst schools teach the best lessons.

Because when you've cleaned toilets at 9 while dodging knife threats, trillion-dollar pressure feels like a vacation.

Don't quit.