By KIM BELLARD
The founder and CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, has been the media’s favorite lately, because of the very high market value of NVIDIA in the last two years ($3.3 trillion now, thank you very much. A year ago it first reached $1 trillion). His company is now the third largest company in the world by market capitalization. Last week he gave the commencement speech at Caltech, and gave the graduates some interesting insights.
That, of course, I will try to apply for health.
Mr. Jensen founded NVIDIA in 1993, and took the company public in 1999, but for much of its existence it struggled to find its niche. Mr. Huang thinks NVIDIA needs to move into markets where there are no customers yet – “because there are no customers, there are no competitors.” They like to call this the “zero billion dollar market” (a word I gather was not invented).
About a decade ago, companies bet on deep learning and AI “Nobody knew how deep learning could scale, and if we didn’t build it, we wouldn’t know,” Mr. Huang told the graduates. “Our logic is: If we don’t build, they can’t come.”
NVIDIA made it, and, boy, did they come.
He believes that we should all try to do something that has never been done before, which is “really hard to do,” because if you succeed, you can make a real contribution to the world. Entering the zero billion dollar market allows companies to be “market makers, not market takers.” They are not interested in market share; they are interested in developing new markets.
So, he told the Caltech graduates:
I hope you believe in something. Something unconventional, something unexplored. But let it be informed, and let it reason, and be dedicated to make that happen. You can find your GPU. You can find your CUDA. You may find your generative AI. You might find NVIDIA.
And within that group, some may be good.
He doesn’t promise it will be easy, citing his own company’s experience, and emphasizing the need for resilience. “One setback, we shake it off and run to the next opportunity. Each time, we gain skills and strengthen our character,” said Mr. Huang. that is difficult. Shake it quickly. There are other opportunities out there – or create one.
He’s quite fond of Taylor Swift references; The crowd seemed less impressed.
Some of those graduates will probably end up working in artificial intelligence, perhaps at NVIDIA (they announced at the beginning that they were recruiting). The rest will be captured by other Big Tech companies. More than a few will start their own companies. And a similar number will likely work in health care, in other ways.
Health needs bright people. It needs innovation; a lot of it. It needs to be more efficient, and, hopefully, more effective. There is no shortage of new ideas or money for him; according to Silicon Bank, venture capital firms will spend $19b on healthcare in 2023, after $50b for 2021-22. It has incorporated AI faster than I could have predicted, such as in drug development, where it is said to be “revolutionizing” the field. AI is also rapidly starting to “copilot” doctors.
But, I’m afraid, it all looks like a marketer, not a marketer.
Ten years ago I wrote Take a Piece of Our Pie, expressed my concern that health innovators are more interested in getting a share of the country’s then $3 trillion (now $5 trillion) spending. “We need innovators who don’t want a slice of the existing pie,” I wrote, “but are willing to throw it away and create a new one.”
I think Mr. Huang would agree.
The Internet should revolutionize health. Electronic health records should transform health care. Digital health must transform health. But they are not. Of course, he changed health care, but health care first tried to ignore him, but then absorbed him in a big bear hug. “OK,” he said. “We can use you, but don’t expect anything cheaper or smaller, and don’t expect a major player to disappear.” Now it’s the same with AI
Everywhere you look in health, there is competition. To be more precise, everywhere there seems to be a consolidator, because many parts of our health system prefer to dominate the market rather than compete in it (for example, Epic, UHC, and many local health systems). But innovators will find it difficult to find a niche market without competition. And the thought of doing something without customers is anathema to healthcare innovators.
Honestly, I think the healthcare innovators who are starting to build around patients, doctors, hospitals, pharma/PBMs, and health insurance companies, too – I don’t think they should bother. That paradigm is deadlocked. We need a new paradigm.
When imaginary numbers were developed during the Renaissance, no one expected that they would be useful for anything, much less that they would be integral (pun intended) to electrical engineering and quantum mechanics. One of these fields does not exist yet. Alexander Graham Bell was more interested in helping the deaf than inventing the telephone. And Bob Taylor of ARPA (now DARPA) didn’t expect to create the internet when he created the ARPANET.
Big and bold ideas find – create – their own market.
If you want to make your mark in health, look for a zero billion dollar market. Find things your customers don’t even know they need. Look for things that your competitors are not interested in (or haven’t thought about yet). Look at building things with logic: “If we don’t build, they can’t come.” Look to change the world, not just to make health less bad.
If you do all of them, or some of them, maybe your health or wellness will benefit, even if it’s not what we think of as “health” or “healthcare” today. Find NVIDIA yourself.
Innovators: Avoiding Healthcare
The founder and CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, has been the media’s favorite lately, because of the very high market value of NVIDIA in the last two years ($3.3 trillion now, thank you very much. A year ago it first reached $1 trillion). His company is now the third largest company in the world by market capitalization. Last week he gave the commencement speech at Caltech, and gave the graduates some interesting insights.
That, of course, I will try to apply for health.
Mr. Jensen founded NVIDIA in 1993, and took the company public in 1999, but for much of its existence it struggled to find its niche. Mr. Huang thinks NVIDIA needs to move into markets where there are no customers yet – “because there are no customers, there are no competitors.” He likes to call this “zero billion dollar market” (a phrase I gather he did not invent).
About a decade ago, companies bet on deep learning and AI “Nobody knew how deep learning could scale, and if we didn’t build it, we wouldn’t know,” Mr. Huang told the graduates. “Our logic is: If we don’t build, they can’t come.”
NVIDIA made it, and, boy, did they come.
He believes that we should all try to do things that have never been done before, “it’s really hard to do,” because if you succeed, you can make a real contribution to the world. Going into the zero billion dollar market allows companies to be “market makers, not market takers.” They are not interested in market share; they are interested in developing new markets.
So, he told the Caltech graduates:
I hope you believe in something. Something unconventional, something unexplored. But let it be informed, and let it reason, and be dedicated to make that happen. You can find your GPU. You can find your CUDA. You can find your generative AI. You can find your NVIDIA.
And within that group, some may be very good.
He doesn’t promise it will be easy, citing his own company’s experience, and emphasizing the need for resilience. “One setback, we shake it off and run to the next opportunity. Each time, we gain skills and strengthen our character,” said Mr. Huang. that is difficult. Shake it quickly. There are other opportunities out there – or create one.
He’s quite fond of Taylor Swift references; The crowd seemed less impressed.
Some of those graduates will probably end up working in artificial intelligence, perhaps at NVIDIA (they announced at the beginning that they were recruiting). The rest will be captured by other Big Tech companies. More than a few will start their own companies. And a similar number will likely work in health care, in other ways.
Health needs bright people. It needs innovation; a lot of it. It needs to be more efficient, and, hopefully, more effective. There is no shortage of new ideas or money for him; according to Silicon Bank, venture capital firms will spend $19b on healthcare in 2023, after $50b for 2021-22. It has incorporated AI faster than I could have predicted, such as in drug development, where it is said to be “revolutionizing” the field. AI is also rapidly starting to “copilot” doctors.
But, I’m afraid, it all looks like a marketer, not a marketer.
Ten years ago I wrote Take a Piece of Our Pie, expressed my concern that health innovators are more interested in getting a share of the country’s then $3 trillion (now $5 trillion) spending. “We need innovators who don’t want a slice of the existing pie,” I wrote, “but are willing to throw it away and create a new one.”
I think Mr. Huang would agree.
The Internet should revolutionize health. Electronic health records should transform health care. Digital health must transform health. But they are not. Of course, he changed health care, but health care first tried to ignore him, but then absorbed him in a big bear hug. “OK,” he said. “We can use you, but don’t expect anything cheaper or smaller, and don’t expect a major player to disappear.” Now it’s the same with AI
Everywhere you look in health, there is competition. To be more precise, everywhere there seems to be a consolidator, because many parts of our health system prefer to dominate the market rather than compete in it (for example, Epic, UHC, and many local health systems). But innovators will find it difficult to find a niche market without competition. And the thought of doing something without customers is anathema to healthcare innovators.
Honestly, I think the healthcare innovators who are starting to build around patients, doctors, hospitals, pharma/PBMs, and health insurance companies, too – I don’t think they should bother. That paradigm is deadlocked. We need a new paradigm.
When imaginary numbers were developed during the Renaissance, no one expected that they would be useful for anything, much less that they would be integral (pun intended) to electrical engineering and quantum mechanics. One of these fields does not exist yet. Alexander Graham Bell was more interested in helping the deaf than inventing the telephone. And Bob Taylor of ARPA (now DARPA) didn’t expect to create the internet when he created the ARPANET.
Big and bold ideas find – create – their own market.
If you want to make your mark in health, look for a zero billion dollar market. Find things your customers don’t even know they need. Look for things that your competitors are not interested in (or haven’t thought about yet). Look at building things with logic: “If we don’t build, they can’t come.” Look to change the world, not just to make health less bad.
If you do all of them, or some of them, maybe your health or wellness will benefit, even if it’s not what we think of as “health” or “health care” today. Find NVIDIA yourself.
Kim is a former emarketing executive at major Blues plans, editor of the late & lamented Tincture.io, and now a regular THCB contributor
