Nvidia AI product lead Subhan Ali says it's all about the game, not the score.
Subhan Ali
A 38-year-old Subhan Ali is an AI product lead at Nvidia and has watched the company go through exponential growth over the last five years.
Unlike other Big Tech companies like Apple or Meta, Nvidia hasn't been a household name for consumers who don't follow the tech sector or stock market. But now that the AI boom is in full swing, Nvidia could become the world's most powerful company.
The company's stock has skyrocketed over 2,500% in the last five years, transforming the lives of some of its early investors and employees.
Ali posted 23 lessons he learned at the company and shared them on LinkedIn. He spoke with Business Insider about the four biggest lessons he's learned, with the overarching theme centering on tuning out the noise and developing a product that's different.
"We've been around for 31 years, which is impressive in its own right," Ali said.
"There is a bigger story and narrative, and Nvidia has been at it for a very, very, very long period of time," he added.
Ali suggests doing "extremely hard things" and doing them "over very long periods of time."
He told BI that he defines those things as projects that are "difficult to pull off" and challenging to the point that many won't want to try them.
By the time people realize what you've been doing, they will realize the value, but they won't be able to catch up to you," Ali wrote in the post. "You will be in a league of your own."
Ali told BI it's important to "differentiate yourself" and not to waste time comparing yourself to "perceived competition." He said he doesn't believe in improving someone else's product as a way to reach success.
Ali sees Nvidia's graphics processing units, known as GPUs, as an example of this. When Nvidia first created the GPU, it was a "highly differentiated kind of product."
"At the time, everything was based on CPUs and serial processing," Ali said, adding that GPUs offered "a new paradigm and a different way to think about things."
He suggests doing things that are "radically different" and to build a vision around that.
Ali said in this post that "differences between individuals or teams are opportunities." The faster you discuss those differences, the sooner you can get aligned and start moving in the same direction.
"If people or teams see something differently, it's just better in everyone's interest to openly discuss that," Ali told BI.
Ali said if anyone has second thoughts or something on their mind that's preventing them from getting on the same page, it's important to bring that up rather than "letting it fester."
Ali said while you can play the game really well, the score might not reflect that — and vice versa.
"The score is an output, and it's an output that we don't necessarily control," Ali said. "All we can control is how we play the game."
Ali told BI he believes that if he plays the game as well as possible, "the score will take care of itself." He said that could take five years or 20 years, but the focus shouldn't be on individual quarters or years.
Ali said Nvidia's explosion over the last couple of years is the ultimate "manifestation of playing the game, not the score."
