🎧 01:13:16 - 01:15:57 (02:40)

David Senra: And he says, I don't love talking about our past, but I don't want to like, I think this is an important thing too. It's like, yeah, he love talking about his past. He's not just talking about his past failures. He applies that even after a massive success. Remember that one story when they're smashing the quarter and he tells his team that he woke up that morning and wakes up most morning mornings, looks at himself in the mirror. It's like, you suck. And I actually think there's a very productive way to do this. So this idea of not looking back not resting on your laurels again this is something he has common with steve jobs and he has a great way i think summarizes what jensen's doing here not resting on his laurels not like he i think later on the book jensen says something like you know wasting there's nothing worse than like looking back at your own accomplishments or um just not good use of your and so what Steve says is, he says, I think if you do something and it turns out pretty good, then you should go do something else that's wonderful and not dwell on it for too long. Just figure out what's next. The reason I think this is important that it also fits into like Steve Jobs' overall philosophy. If you go back and ask, if Steve was asked one time, like what his favorite quote is, and it was actually a quote by Aristotle where it says, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit. And so I think Steve would tell you the key is to keep pushing forward, stay hungry, and continue to create really wonderful things rather than dwelling on past achievements. And so throughout this book, this theme just reoccurs over and over that complacency kills. I went back and searched all my notes and highlights, and you just see this over and over again. Andy Grove, he had this mantra, success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. Herb Keller, the founder of Southwest, said a company is never more vulnerable to complacency than when it's at the height of its success. must not let success breed complacency, cockiness, greediness, laziness, indifference, preoccupation with bureaucracy, hierarchy, or obliviousness to threats posed by the outside world. There's a great line from one of the biographies of Bernard Arnault, founder of LVMH that I read. He abhors complacency so much. Les Schwab, who's one of Charlie Munger's favorite founders, he said, we must constantly remind ourselves as to why we are successful and what we must do to continue to be successful because if we become complacent, brother, it's all over with. Warren Buffett, you need to fight off the ABCs of business decay, arrogance, bureaucracy, and complacency. When these corporate cancers metastasize, even the strongest of companies falter. And so that combines with the fact that at NVIDIA, innovation is a necessity. It's not an option.

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