Nvidia, despite being founded 32 years ago and now the world’s most valuable chipmaker with a market cap of about $4.3 trillion and 35,000 employees, operates like a giant startup under Jensen Huang’s unique leadership. The “secret sauce” to leading such a huge organization with a startup mindset for so many years lies in several key principles that Huang embodies:

• Rejecting traditional hierarchy: Jensen Huang believes the typical hierarchical communication structure is broken. He prefers to communicate directly with the people doing the work rather than filtering messages through managers or layers of bureaucracy. This keeps information transparent and speeds up decision-making.
• No one-on-one meetings: Huang never schedules one-on-one meetings unless specifically requested. Managing about 60 direct reports, he sees individual meetings as inefficient and believes that important feedback and discussions should be shared openly with the entire leadership team so everyone can learn and grow together.
• Flat organisational structure: By having many direct reports (around 60), Huang flattens the organization, which reduces layers and helps keep Nvidia nimble and strategically aligned in a fast-moving industry like AI and semiconductors.
• Hands-on leadership: Jensen does not consider any task beneath him, emphasising a strong work ethic born from his modest beginnings. He often helps employees reason through problems and expects leaders to empower their teams, fostering collective problem-solving and growth.
• Culture of high performance and intense innovation: Nvidia does not tolerate slackers, quickly sidelining those who don’t contribute. The culture moves at the speed of AI, demanding rigour and relentless execution.
• Cost discipline and transparency: Despite its massive success, Nvidia maintains a transparent bonus structure where everyone receives the same percentage. Jensen is strongly against layoffs, favouring cost reductions through contract renegotiations and travel expense cuts without letting employees go. The company also eschews fancy offices and perks, embedding cost discipline in its DNA. If you want to fly business class while working at Nvidia, Jensen will say, “You can afford it.”
• Hiring through referrals to preserve culture: Jensen prefers hiring people known to the team, like friends or family, rather than strangers, to maintain trust and the corporate culture.

This combination of transparency, direct communication, a flat structure, hands-on guidance, and cost consciousness enables Nvidia to scale massively while preserving the agility, innovation, and startup mindset critical to its success. Jensen Huang has built a leadership model that powers Nvidia’s role as a technology leader and disruptor decades after its founding.