Over the last few months, I’ve been part of Perplexity AI Business Fellow program which has given me access to play around and experiment with Perplexity Enterprise Pro as well as hear from AI-native company leaders across several industries about how they are currently using AI in their solutions and where the future is headed.
My favorite session was last Friday, when Perplexity CEO, Aravind Srinivas had a 45-minute conversation with Nvidia Co-founder and CEO, Jensen Huang. They talked about a range of topics including physical AI (already here in some industries in distribution centers, etc.) and probably less than 5 years away more pervasively.
As mind-expanding as these insights were about what’s ahead in the AI age, what really struck me were three points that Jensen shared about his approach to leadership that have nothing to do with AI.
Aravind: “Who do you often look up to as people who you, who you get inspired by or like you look at, look at their style of leadership and things you've taken from them?
Jensen: “I’m a learn from everybody person.”
1. You can learn anything. If it’s important enough, you’ll figure it out.
Jensen: “My mom taught me English, and she doesn't know English. And so it's possible through sheer will and just cleverness, how to teach somebody to do something, and you don't even know how to do it yourself.”
2. Anything you do, do with pride.
Jensen: “One of the one of the people that really made an impression on me was a guy named Roger. He was the dishwasher at Denny's. And right now, as I'm telling the story, I know my older brother will remember him. And he did an extraordinary job every single day. He showed up for his shift just minutes before he is perfectly prepared for his shift. When he left his station it was perfect, and in the middle, he worked his heart out. He was a professional Denny's dishwasher, and he did it with extraordinary pride. And so, he made an impression on me.”
3. There’s plenty of time.
Jensen: “The gardener in the in the I think it's the Silver Temple in Kyoto. It was in the middle of summer, and and all the all of the tourists kind of walked by him. There's this one gardener he's squatting down in the middle of summer. It's beating hot. and you know, during the summer in Kyoto it's hot, it's humid. It feels like the whole ocean of humidity on top of you. And everybody walked by him, and I noticed that he was just squatting down with a little bamboo tweezer. And I stopped to look at him for a second, and he's picking off these little tiny pieces of dead moss. And so I asked him, you know what’s he doing, and you know, with a little broken English, he said he's picking up dead moss. Little tiny pieces of dead moss. And I looked up, and I said, this, your moss garden is huge. This is the largest collection of moss in the world. It’s a huge garden. And without blinking, he said, I have plenty of time. That phrase I have plenty of time, I use 10 times a day….People always say, Jensen, I know how busy you are, and I hate to bother you and you know I always respond. I have plenty of time, and I don’t wear a watch, because I have plenty of time. And I think there's something about not allowing Outlook to control what you do and to be in the moment.”
*Quotes from Perplexity AI Business Fellowship 2025 Program conversation on July 11, 2025 featuring Aravind Srinivas and Jensen Huang.