Six years ago, in the crowded lobby of a Taiwanese Grand Hyatt hotel, I was fortunate enough to sit under Jensen Huang’s learning tree.
I was among the 60 or so journalists and analysts lining up for Nvidia’s press conference at the Computex expo in Taipei, where we were expecting to hear about the new gaming processors the company was working on.
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Huang emerged before the talk to walk among us, carrying a big black bag with him. Remarking that everyone looked hungry, Huang repeated these sage words as he pulled out sandwiches and handed them to us: “Never go hangry … never go hangry.”
He won the crowd over, not that he had to work too hard at it. Huang has long been largely liked in tech circles. Though he's a salesman (what CEO isn’t), Huang is an unusually earnest one. Between his trademark leather jacket, the intense conviction with which he spoke and an obvious enthusiasm for showmanship — sometimes sandwich-related — Huang had a certain goofy charm about him.