“If you’re not at one point about to go bankrupt, then you can’t say you really had a startup”

Lately, I’ve been getting lots of messages sharing Jensen Huang’s speech at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, where he wished “pain and suffering” on students at his alma mater.

Clearly the new tech hero of the day, the Nvidia CEO said, “Greatness is not intelligence. Greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people, it’s formed out of people who suffered.”

Clearly too, he knows a thing or two about pain and suffering. He’s had three decades of it – he co-founded the computer chip company and it’s only now that with Nvidia’s chips in high demand for building AI software, it’s become one of the world’s most valuable companies with a valuation north of $2 trillion.

Perhaps it’s our common Chinese roots but this “pain and suffering” message is not new to me. My father, who arrived in Penang, Malaysia, on a boat from China as a teenager, drummed that mantra into me. “Life is hard, you must struggle to succeed,” was one of the things he constantly said, when I would moan and groan about little setbacks in life.

Forget about “suffering for your art”; with my father, it was about “suffering for your life”.

“What’s really difficult is to hire good people, so you have to appear motivated and positive in front of them to keep them on board, while suffering quietly in the back,” says Fritz Demopoulos (second from left) at WiT Africa. With him on panel are Ross Veitch and Stephan Ekbergh (extreme right).

I don’t think this “pain and suffering” message is new to entrepreneurs as well. During Web in Travel Africa last week, I interviewed three travel founders to find out their tales from the edge.

Fritz Demopoulos, who co-founded Qunar in 2005, said, “If you’re not at one point about to go bankrupt then you can’t say you really had a startup! What’s really difficult is to hire good people, so you have to appear motivated and positive in front of them to keep them on board, while suffering quietly in the back.”

Stephan Ekbergh, CEO of Travelstart, said, “Being a founder is not a beauty contest, it’s for someone who can really take the punches.”

Ross Veitch, CEO and co-founder of Wego, who was described as “relentless” by Ekbergh, said the biggest mistake founders can make is “picking wrong business models according to what stage you’re at”.

He should know, he was about to run out of money, trying to scale Wego in South-east Asia, when he took the last of the funds he had and made a bet on the Middle East. That paid off, but not without lots of pain and suffering, I am sure.

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According to Demopoulos, the biggest mistake of founders is lack of self-awareness. “Constraint creates creativity. It’s not about control – it’s about having the personal ability to manage all aspects of managing the startup. Your pitch deck should be an extension of your personality.”

While Ekbergh advised, “Don’t drink your own Koolaid. Constraint is better than throwing money at it. Enjoy the journey – have more fun, don’t take everything so seriously.”

For all the “pain and suffering” they’ve had to go through, all three look pretty happy with their current lot in life and perhaps that comes from being in travel – I mean, if you have to suffer, might as well do it in an industry that makes people happy.

Speaking of which, in her new book, “Take Another Look”, neuroscientist and professor of cognitive neuroscience, Tali Sharot, explores the theme of habituation – how we get used to certain things in life – and how to get fresh perspectives on them, so we don’t go numb or dumb, or take them for granted.

In the “Clear and Vivid” podcast episode with host Alan Alda, she speaks about travel – and how research shows that people are happiest when they are 43 hours into a trip. You can still be happy six or seven days into a trip, but happiness peaks at 43 hours. Which is a real bummer when you think about this trend towards longer trips that emerged post-Covid …

And apparently, we are happiest when we are doing something for the first time.

Cooking an egg for the first time – can be a happy experience for some people. Seeing Table Mountain for the first time – certainly high on the happiness index for me when I visited Cape Town for the first time last week. Cooking an egg on Table Mountain for the first time – I must try that combination the next time I visit.

The other thing about “overcoming habituation” is to constantly do new things and learn. “People are happiest when they are learning,” said Sharot, “in whatever environment that may be.”

The other thing about “overcoming habituation” is to constantly do new things and learn – the team behind the launch of WiT Africa – WiT, Innovation City Cape Town and Travelstart.

That would explain my happy state of mind, having launched Web in Travel in Africa. I wonder where I can take it next, to fight this habituation thing.

Jensen Huang also spoke about expectations. He said that one of his great advantages is having very low expectations, noting that “people with high expectations often have very low resilience, an unfortunate correlation given the crucial role of resilience in achieving success”.

Turns out low expectations also lead to happier travel experiences.

Second from right, Lindy Rosseau, Singita: “Often people underestimate African hospitality and what we have on offer and it takes just a few hours from them to go from asking whether we have water to being completely wowed by the magic.”

During our conference in Africa, Lindy Rosseau, chief strategist of Singita, which runs luxury African safari lodges and wildlife reserves, quipped that visitors often come with low expectations. “Often people underestimate African hospitality and what we have on offer and it takes just a few hours from them to go from asking whether we have water to being completely wowed by the magic.”

PS: Incidentally, if you really want to hear a story about suffering, listen to my podcast, in which I interview Peter Harbison, about his book on “Alan Joyce & Qantas: The Trials and Tribulations of an Australian Icon”. There’s more drama in it than “Succession”.