Perplexity’s CEO shared two unusual pieces of advice he learned from the leaders of two of the world’s biggest companies.
On an episode of the “20VC” podcast released on Monday, Aravind Srinivas said Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Tesla CEO Elon Musk taught him two important entrepreneurship lessons that stuck with him.
Srinivas cofounded AI search engine Perplexity in 2022 after working as a researcher at Google’s DeepMind and OpenAI. In August, Business Insider reported that the company was seeking fresh funding at a $20 billion post-money valuation. The startup’s investors include SoftBank, Nvidia, and Jeff Bezos.
On Monday’s podcast, he said that he learned the importance of always staying on your toes from Huang.
“Think about it. $5 trillion, guaranteed to make $500 billion in revenue in the next two years. He has the most advanced chips in the world,” he said, about Nvidia. “And he operates with the mentality that he could be 30 days away from going out of business. That is what it takes to be Jensen Huang.”
Srinivas added that Huang also tells others around him that the chip company is a month away from going out of business.
From Musk, he took away the importance of working for more than the money.
“If you look at his pay package for SpaceX, it’s structured around creating a colony on Mars with a million inhabitants,” the Perplexity CEO said. “It’s not motivating to be worth 10 trillion in net worth or something.”
‘Work forever’
Srinivas said that he doesn’t agree with the entrepreneurship mindset of founding a company, selling it, and then staying home once you have generational wealth. He said that it allows children of founders to have trust funds, but it does not set a good example for them to see their dads sitting at home.
“You always need to be doing something,” he said. “You need to work forever.”
His take on entrepreneurship and work contradicts the rapidly growing financial independence, retire early (FIRE) movement. The concept is seen as an ultimate goal by many in the tech community and revolves around retiring in your 30s or 40s after accumulating a net worth sufficient to live off.
Shark Tank judge and investor Kevin O’Leary is another vocal opponent of the FIRE philosophy. He retired for a few years after selling his first company and described it as a period when he was “bored out of my mind.”
“Working is not just about money. People don’t understand this very often, until they stop working,” he said in a 2019 CNBC interview. “Work defines who you are.”
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