Sad to see Jensen Huang ousted. CEO Nvidia. Visionary entrepreneur. Created massive value for the world, especially strengthening USA/Taiwan/Japan unity in manufacturing AI-crucial chips. Despite personal moral failings (eg affairs), Jensen’s a net good force and I remain a fan.
In a crisis, there's also opportunity. Looking to lease? Lock that lease in now. Looking to buy? Get ready. If you find the right deal, try to buy it now. There are opportunities in real estate right now.
Every major technology brings doom and gloom. AI is no different. But people are going to figure out how to harness AI and become more productive individually. That's the opportunity.
One of the most important skills of the future is human leverage. AI is changing how work gets done. But the ability to bring people together and get things moving in the right direction becomes even more important.
Look at multifamily apartments. Class B or C. Workforce housing. Lower-income housing. This type of asset class today is where you're seeing some of the best prices.
If you have too many engineers, they just start engineering stuff. Then you get bloated products, dumb features, and confusion. It becomes distracting for leadership. Keep that side lean. Focus on forward movement. Focus on sales.
Value creation is in the areas where folks have overlooked it. Now, you've got to be careful because oftentimes the crowd is right. But you've got to go down to the fundamentals and do your homework. Sometimes everybody thinks you're wrong, but you know you're right.
Business is a hell of a lot more messy than theory. Business is like fighting or like a sport. You've got to get in the cut, shake it up, and figure it out outside the box.
Your best people don't need someone looking over their shoulder. They need a clear objective, the resources to accomplish it, and the freedom to attack. Then get out of their way.
Best filter in hiring is getting the person to opt out on their own. They know more about whether they fit than I'm ever going to figure out.
So we're transparent, we put the heat on early, and people who aren't up for it leave quick.
The strongest incentive I've got for teammates doesn't cost me a dollar.
You need people who are actually on board with the mission to further humanity, bc that's a deep incentive that touches the heart and no comp structure competes with it. Hire folks who don't care about that and you're buying their effort forever, over and over.
Then there's the money side, which matters plenty. You're already paying them, that's an incentive as it is. But equity like incentives, bonuses tied to real production, that gets everybody rowing toward the same place financially.
They do better, and guess what, so does the company. You're just splitting the fruits of the tree with the teammate who grew it.
Most people on the market aren't A players. That's why they're on the market.
Might sound like a mean thing to say but it's true. They're kind of repeats, back out there every two years or so. They don't really care about the work and want to kill it, they want to mail it in. You can't hire those people, they're not going to build anything.
Here's what makes it hard tho. Those same people are usually better at marketing themselves than a true A player is, bc they've had a hell of a lot more practice at it. Every year or two, always selling themselves into the next job.
A real A player is rarely out getting a new job. Their company won't let them go.