Vol 19 – Do You Want to See My Homework?
- Ann Yu
- Mar 30
- 9 min read
Updated: Mar 30
March 30, 2025
Hello!
What a quirky title for this week’s newsletter, right? 😄
It comes from a “legendary” pick-up line that Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang used 40 years ago to ask out his classmate (now his wife). As a true geek, it was the sincerest - and perhaps boldest - offering he could come up with.
Following his lead, Jadewell Family Office is here to show you our homework too! Whether it’s something tailored to the data provided by you, or a collection of our past work to help with brainstorming, we’re always happy to share.
We also want to give a big shoutout to InvestHK for their kind press release earlier this week about Jadewell’s establishment. Excitingly, our social media channels (Facebook, IG, X) are now live and buzzing! Follow us there for timely updates, thought-provoking charts, and more tidbits.
One last note: there won’t be a newsletter for the next two weeks because the blog writer is going on holiday. See you again in mid-April! ✈️🐨
Category | Contents for this Week |
1) Chart of the Week | |
2) Book Buzz |
Key things to watch for the upcoming week:
China/HK - Eco Data | Mar 31 (Mon) - China PMI Numbers Apr 2 (Wed) - Deadline for Cheung Kong to Sign Port Deal Contract with BlackRock |
US – Eco Data | Apr 1 (Tue) - US Manufacturing PMI Apr 2 (Wed) - US Liberation Day for Trump's Reciprocal Tariffs Apr 4 (Fri) - US Labor Market Data, Non-Farm Payroll |
Other Events | Apr 1 (Tue) - Reserve Bank of Australia Rates Decision |
Chart of the Week – Big Pain, Small Pain, and the Missing Middle
Morningstar recently updated an interesting deep dive into 150 years of US bear stock markets - defined as drops of 20% or more.
And the conclusion? You can already guess it: stay diversified, check your risk tolerance, plan your time horizon - we're all tired of it. 🥱
What caught my eyes was their use of a pain index. Imagine it as a “misery meter” by measuring two key things:
How far the market falls (the percentage drop from its peak).
How long the agony lasts (the time it takes to recover).
Morningstar pegged the worst bear market ever - the 1929 crash that sparked the Great Depression and wiped out 79% of market cap - as the ultimate standard of pain, scoring it a full 100%. They then stacked every other bear market (19 total over 150 years) against this beast to calculate the "relative" pain index. And that’s where the plot thickens.
The Jaw-Dropper: Pain is All-or-Nothing
You’d expect the pain that people have suffered to be a mixed bag - some rough, some mild, most in the middle like a normal distribution. Wrong! The pain index reveals a bizarre split:
4 out of 19 were soul-crushing nightmares, with pain indexes well above 80.
12 out of 19 were quick pinpricks, with pain indexes below 10. Blink, and they were over.
Barely any (only 3) hovered in between. It’s like the market either sucker-punches you or gives you a "tap".
But whether you can handle even a “tap” from the market… well, that’s a story only you can tell!
Why This Hits Home (and Offers Hope)
We’re wired to dread bear markets, but the pain index says most (12 out of 19!) are no biggie.
Take the 2020 COVID crash: stocks tanked hard and fast, but the rebound was so swift it barely registered on the pain scale. Sure, it felt like chaos in the moment - remember those panic-buying toilet paper days? 🧻 - but history shrugs it off as a hiccup.
Now, when the markets do get ugly - like those 4 with pain indexes over 80 - they’re downright brutal. But here’s the good news: they’re rare.
The Bottom Line: Don’t Sweat Every Dip
So, what’s the takeaway? Bear markets happen and we will feel the pain. But these market corrections are not all monsters under the bed. Most are fleeting, recoverable blips.
The real beasts are rare, but when one shows up? 👹 Well, if we’re "lucky" enough to face one, here’s hoping we’ll earn some epic battle scars - and ultimate bragging rights - for surviving to tell the tale years later. 💪✨
With Jadewell Family Office, you’ll always have a trusty sidekick by your side when facing bear markets. If you're Mario, I'll be Luigi - let's squash those market Goombas together! Contact us today 😊
For your reference only. Not investment/product recommendations.
Book Buzz – The Nvidia Way - How Close to Bankruptcy Can You Be?
The Founding Trio: A Match Made in Tech Heaven
Every epic story needs heroes, and Nvidia’s got three: Jensen Huang, Curtis Priem, and Chris Malachowsky. (We’re on a first-name basis now - Jensen, Curtis, and Chris - because they feel like old pals after this tale.)
Jensen: The firebrand leader. 🔥Born in Taiwan, he landed in the U.S. as a kid, hustling through odd jobs - waiting tables, cleaning toilets - before diving into electrical engineering at Oregon State. He kicked off his career at AMD (yep, Nvidia’s future nemesis) as a designer for microprocessors. But the gig got old fast, and he jumped to LSI Logic - a company trying to make chip designing faster and easier - as a client project manager. His first “client” was a tiny duo at Sun Microsystems - Curtis and Chris.
Curtis: The graphics guru. 🎨 Curtis designed chips that pushed early visuals to life. But Sun Microsystem’s bureaucracy felt like quicksand - he wanted freedom to create, not endless office politics.
Chris: The execution genius. 💡Chris was Curtis’s partner-in-crime, a fellow tinkerer obsessed with making screens sing with colors. Together, they were a dynamic duo, restless and ready to break out.
Curtis and Chris dreamed of going solo with their graphic chip design skills, but they needed a business ace to pull it off - enter Jensen!
Legend has it, in 1993, the trio hatched the idea of Nvidia over breakfast at a Denny’s. They came up with the name “Nvidia” from the Latin word Invidia, meaning envy.
“We wanted everyone to wish they’d done it first,” Jensen later grinned.
First Blood: The NV1’s Bold Flop After securing initial funding from Sequoia and Sutter Hill Ventures, Nvidia was ready to make its big debut in 1995 with its first-ever product - a graphic chip called NV1 - crafted for gamers hungry for breathtakingly vibrant visuals. Curtis, the engineering mastermind in this field, poured his heart and soul into the project. Determined to wow the gaming world, he crafted NV1 with cutting-edge graphics technology and even integrated sound card functionality for superior audio quality that's way ahead of what existing sound chips could deliver. His vision was to create the ultimate multimedia chip for gamers. But the dream didn’t quite pan out. While the graphics technology Curtis created with NV1 was groundbreaking, mainstream game developers like Microsoft didn’t support the format to run it. The newly added sound functionality turned out to be more of a liability than an asset - it not only jacked up the cost of NV1 but also made it incompatible with computers that already had separate sound cards. “We thought killer tech was enough,” Curtis later mused. “Turns out, you need a killer product people actually want.” Ouch.
NV2: A Lifeline, Not a Legacy After the flop of NV1, Nvidia rolled out its second chip, NV2. But truth be told, there was nothing innovative here. NV2 was only built to meet contractual obligations with Sega, the Japanese gaming giant, in exchange for the desperately needed $1 million funding. Two failed chips in a row had left Nvidia in dire straits. Liquidity dried up, and the company was forced to lay off half of its 100 employees. Meanwhile, a new rival company swaggered onto the scene: 3dfx. These guys had Jurassic Park cred - think roaring T-Rexes stomping across screens - and their graphic chips (named Voodoo) was stealing the spotlight. “We were in survival mode,” Jensen admitted. “No grand plans - just don’t die.” The Brink: $3 Million and a Crazy Bet In late 1996, things were looking grim for Nvidia.
When Jensen took a hard look at Nvidia's bank account, there was only $3 million left. That's barely enough to keep the lights on for another nine months. Nvidia needed a game-changing chip, and they needed it fast. The problem? Designing a chip from scratch typically takes two years - time Nvidia simply didn’t have. The team got creative and pulled out all the tricks to speed up the process. Engineers ditched tradition, mocking up designs on simulators, tweaking code on the fly, and praying the silicon wouldn’t fry. “We were inventing as we went,” Chris said. “No safety net.” To mark a clean break from their previous missteps, Nvidia named their new chip RIVA 128 - short for Real-time Interactive Video and Animation accelerator, 128 bits wide. By the time RIVA 128 was released in Aug 1997, Nvidia's cash reserve was down to only thirty days of payroll!
The Miracle: RIVA 128 Saves the Day
Then, finally, a breakthrough! RIVA 128 hit the market like a thunderbolt. Gamers geeked out over buttery-smooth 3D graphics. Developers loved its compatibility with existing formats. No gimmicks, no sound card nonsense - just raw power at a price that didn’t scare wallets! Orders flooded in. Nvidia claimed 20% of the PC graphics market with RIVA 128, elbowing past 3dfx’s shadow.
Up until today, Jensen still uses this near-death experience as Nvidia's unofficial company motto: “Our company is thirty days from going out of business.” But that was only the beginning of Nvidia’s rollercoaster journey. From the triumph of the RIVA 128 to their rise as an AI powerhouse, the road ahead was filled with countless challenges and make-or-break moments. Stay tuned for future newsletters - we have more stories to share!
The Startup Trap That Nvidia Nailed (and I’m Still Learning) Nvidia’s NV1 bombed - brilliant, but "irrelevant." Startups tend to fall into this trap too. Here’s what I’m still trying to figure out:
Does it really add value for clients? It’s tempting to fall head-over-heels for our own ideas. But if it doesn’t make our clients’ lives better - if it’s not the aspirin to their headache - they won’t care! Passion’s great, but practicality wins.
Does it fit the bigger picture? Nvidia’s NV1 was a tech marvel, but it clashed with prevailing PC format back then. Lesson learned: Our value proposition needs to play nice with the world that clients live in, or it’s toast.
Does it lure clients rather than merely convince them? That’s the difference between a sales pitch and a magnet. Nvidia’s RIVA 128 didn’t just talk a good game; it delivered performance that had people scrambling to buy. That’s the goal: make clients want it, no hard sell needed.
At Jadewell Family Office, we struggle, fail and evolve through constant trial and error. Each challenge bringing us closer to the ultimate solutions the clients need. I’m still learning every step of the way, so if you’ve got any ideas to share, hit me up anytime!
As Jensen Huang once advised Stanford students, "I wish you ample doses of pain and suffering" because that's the only way to success!
🌟 Head over to Jadewell Family Office official website to check us out and subscribe to our weekly newsletter for all the fun-filled updates! ✨
For your reference only. Not investment/product recommendations.
About Jadewell Family Office
Jadewell is committed to offering proactive, customized services akin to a “single-family office,” yet within the ease of a “multi-family office” environment.
Ann Yu
Co-Founder and CEO
Jadewell Family Office
FOR INSTITUTIONAL & PROFESSIONAL CLIENTS ONLY – NOT INTENDED FOR RETAIL CUSTOMER USETHESE ARE NOT STOCK OR PRODUCT RECOMMENDATIONS
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