In 1993, Jensen Huang pitched a startup idea to his former boss, Wilf Corrigan. After Jensen's pitch, Wilf said, “I have no idea what you just said. That was one of the worst pitches I've ever heard.” Wilf then called the renowned venture capitalist Don Valentine, and said, “Don, I'm going to send a kid over to you. He's one of the best employees I've ever had. I'm not sure what he's doing, but I think you should give him money.” As the founder of Sequoia Capital, Valentine had made early investments in companies like Apple, Atari, and Wilf's LSI Logic (which had generated a $150 million return through its 1983 IPO). So, walking in to pitch to Valentine, Jensen (then 29 years old) was nervous, and therefore, “I did a horrible job with the pitch.” “Well, that wasn’t very good,” Valentine said. “But Wilf says to give you money, so against my better judgment, I’m going to give you money.” With funding from Sequoia, Jensen and his co-founders, Curtis Priem and Chris Malachowsky, started Nvidia—initially, a company focused on creating graphics processing units (GPUs) to improve the quality of video game graphics. Over time, Nvidia's GPUs and other computing technologies would spread beyond gaming to a deep, broad list of industries, including self-driving cars, AI, medical imaging, weather forecasting, and on and on. As a result, Nvidia (at the time of this writing) is the 3rd most valuable company in the world, worth around $2.2 trillion. Takeaway 1: Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull talks about how great ideas often fail the “elevator pitch” test—the ability to deliver a compelling description of an idea in 20 or 30 seconds, about the length of a short elevator ride. “The way to pass the elevator pitch test,” Catmull says, “is to pick an idea that other people are already familiar with. So if you pick something that hasn't been done before, you will fail the elevator pitch test.” After hearing Jensen's pitch, both Wilf Corrigan and Don Valentine said Jensen's idea sounded terrible. Jensen’s idea repeatedly failed the elevator pitch test, but it went on to birth one of the most valuable companies in the world. Takeaway 2: The director Tommy Kail (Hamilton, In The Heights, Freestyle Love Supreme, and more) likes to say of his approach to casting actors, hiring for his production company, and choosing collaborators: “Humanity over talent ... Humanity is more important to me than talent. If there’s a choice to make, I’ll go humanity over talent, every time.” Despite being terrible at pitching, because of his humanity, because he had been a good employee, because he had left LSI Logic on good terms, because he had maintained his relationship with his former boss—Jensen got the endorsement then the money that ultimately launched Nvidia. “The thing I learned from that,” Jensen said, “is your past is more important than your ability to pitch, interview, or anything like that. You can’t run away from your past. So have a good past. Try to have a good past.” - - - “Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character.” — Jensen Huang Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!