Zero to Startup: Day 19: Strategic Positioning
Sometimes the winner isn't the one who crosses the finish line first.
The other day on my run, I was listening to a podcast I have come to really enjoy, “Acquired” hosted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. On this podcast, they had arguably one of the most influential leaders of the time, Jensen Huang, one of the founders and current CEO of NVIDIA.
As I was listening to their podcast and the conversations surrounding the rapid growth of NVIDIA, as they seem to have timed things just right, Jensen said a quote that stood out to me: “You want to position yourself to be closest to the tree. For sometimes you may not catch the apple, but you may be the first to pick it up.”
What I love about the Acquired podcast is the way Ben and David break down large companies and corporations into somewhat of a history lesson. They dive into the strategic turning points for companies, what they did during those time periods, and why they were able to thrive from those moments.
Many times, startups succeed or fail because they were either able to read a market years in advance, or struggle to adapt to it. It’s difficult to hear buzz words or watch VC’s throw money as companies for a single technology like their handing out free candy and not want to act on that.
The founders that are able to strategically position themselves in a position of prosperity years in advance are the ones that are on a course of success. But this task is not as easy as some may believe. Take, for example, the current situation with AI. It’s such a hot, new technology and we have seen just about every startup reposition their product or service to utilize this technology at rapid pace.
And while it’s working now, we will see a shift as people start to realize the shortage in hardware and thus the inflation of costs. So how can your business or startup position itself strategically to overcome this foreseeable future?
These are the questions that founders need to be asking themselves I am beginning to learn. It may seem like an obvious realization, but when a treat is dangling in front of you, it’s easy to forget. This is why I love Jensen’s quote, because it exemplifies the awareness successful founders need to have when growing their company. NVIDIA wasn’t building hardware for AI at the time, but they were aware that the trajectory of technological advances would inevitably require exquisite computational necessities.
To me, Jensen says in this quote that to be a successful founder, one must not run under the tree, look up at the apples, and wait. Rather, one must read the wind, the rain, and the strength of the tree to position themselves in a placement where apples are guaranteed to fall and then be waiting with a bucket when they do.