Jensen Huang: “VCs don’t invest in business plans” When asked for advice on business plans and raising venture capital, Jensen tells the student audience at Stanford: “VCs don’t invest in business plans… They invest in great people. And so the question is: do they trust you? Your reputation matters. Your history matters.” He explains that a one of the key reasons Sequoia wrote the initial check into NVIDIA was because he had done great work with Andy Bechtolsheim, the founder of Sun. Jensen also argues that you need to have a vision that’s “sufficiently large to invest in.” Because of the nature of the businesses VCs invest in, the odds of success are rather low. “If they need to put in $10 million and the market is only $20 million, they’ll never get that $10 million back with a reasonable return.” But market size is secondary to people: “You might have to reinvent yourself over time, and if you want to reinvent yourself, you need to have great people. That’s why great people are so important.” Video source: @StanfordOnline (2011)