Jensen Huang on urgency, Steve Jobs on the power of no, and PG on doing things that don’t scale

Welcome back to the Z Fellows newsletter! Every Monday we share 3 ideas - to help you build companies, ship products, and create your life's work.

1: Jensen Huang on Urgency

Jensen Huang has said publicly that NVIDIA has come within 30 days of going out of business multiple times over its history.

He means it. The most valuable semiconductor company in the world was nearly dead. Multiple times.

You’d think that kind of track record would make him relax. It didn’t.

He still manages dozens of direct reports. Still digs into the details. Still treats every product cycle like the company could go under. Because he knows it could.

The founders who build enduring companies never let themselves get comfortable. They move faster when things are going well, not slower. They stay paranoid — because that paranoia is the edge.

Urgency is a skill. The best founders practice it every day — not because they’re anxious, but because they know the moment you stop acting like everything is on the line, someone else will.

Source: Paraphrased from various public talks

2: Steve Jobs on the power of no

“Focus means saying no to the hundred other good ideas.”
— Steve Jobs, Apple WWDC 1997

When Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he cut the product line from 350 items to 10. Not because the other 340 were bad ideas — many were good. He cut them because Apple couldn’t be great at 350 things.

Most early-stage founders fail not because they lacked opportunities. They fail because they had too many.

Every new feature, every new market, every new partnership is a distraction dressed up as an opportunity.

The best founders are obsessively narrow. They pick one customer, one problem, one motion — and they go all in.

What’s the one thing you need to build right now? Say no to everything else until that one thing is working.

3: Paul Graham on doing things that don’t scale

“Do things that don’t scale.”
— Paul Graham, paulgraham.com (2013)

In 2013, Paul Graham wrote one of the most-read essays in startup history. His argument: most early founders skip the unscalable work. They want to build the system before they’ve done it by hand.

In Airbnb’s early days, Brian Chesky flew to New York to photograph apartments himself. He knocked on doors. He onboarded hosts one by one. That doesn’t scale.

But it gave him something no dashboard could: he understood his users at a molecular level.

The things that don’t scale are often the things that matter most. Talk to your users. Onboard them yourself. Send the emails by hand.

The unscalable phase isn’t a problem to solve. It’s a gift.

Best of The Week

See you next Monday,

- The Z Fellows Team

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