Why Did Jensen Huang Bet Nvidia on a Market That Didn't Exist?

David Senra, reading Tae Kim's The Nvidia Way, says Jensen Huang would rather create a market than fight for share of one that already exists. At a Caltech commencement Huang described Nvidia's move into robotics: they decided to build something where they were sure there were no customers. Everybody laughed. He was serious. Where there are no customers, there are also no competitors.

The target is a market that barely exists, and might not exist at all, yet could one day be giant. Edwin Land, a hero of Steve Jobs, went after instant photography when there were no customers and therefore no competitors, because Land invented the market and built a monopoly. One result is pricing power.

Huang's example is the gamer who buys an Nvidia card and will pay for performance when the screen shows something radically different. The bet is to make that market, not to chase a share of an old one.