On Big Numbers

XXXI

2024.01.28

My mind gets numb when I try to comprehend big numbers.

This week, I stood in a 750,000 square foot office that cost $550,000,000 to build and was constructed by a company that’s worth $1,500,000,000,000. 

What does that even mean? And how do I think at that scale?

Visualization

What is the biggest number that you can visualize? I’m not asking what the biggest number you can read on paper is, that’s trivial; I mean what is the largest number that you can put into terms that you can comprehend?

In front of me, there are three oranges and nine bananas. That’s super easy to perceive and visualize. I can look at them and understand what that quantity means. Once we start getting into hight two digits or three digit numbers, it gets a little bit less obvious, though.

I’ve been at parties with a couple hundred people–yup, I’m cool. That’s a decent way to visualize three digits worth of people, but most of the time, you can’t really see them all at once, so it’s not super useful to visualize.

From the top floor of Skeeps in Ann Arbor, though, you can maybe see 300 people at once. Behold:

Really, though? Only 300 people? Out of the 8,087,421,644 on the planet? In the grand scheme of things, that’s not much.

Allegedly, you can see the number 10,000 if you hold a handful of sand, as that’s about how many grains there are. I don’t really count that because of how small the constituents are; they all blend together. You’re not really seeing all 10,000 grains as individuals. I certainly don’t perceive a handful of sand as “10,000.” I guess I don’t perceive the crowd at Skeeps as 300, either, though.

The University of Michigan stadium holds 110,000 people. If you know me, you know I would leave games after about 15 minutes–I don’t much enjoy watching sports. That being said, I often spent those 15 minutes looking around at the magnitude of the structure around me. It feels like you’re standing in a canyon. I suppose that’s roughly what 110,000 looks like, all of the people, but they do blend together when you look out across the stadium.

Still, I’d say that 110,000 be the largest number that I’ve seen, and I can barely comprehend it. My mind goes numb trying to understand what it means. 

Even then, 110,000 is still small… something like 73,000 times smaller than the total population of the Earth. 

Dinner with Joe

I got dinner in San Francisco Friday night with a guy we’ll call Joe. 

Joe is very cool and smart, and pretty ripped, too. 

His fintech startup does somewhere between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 in ARR (annual recurring revenue). 

How am I supposed to visualize that? What does a stack of 1,000,000 one dollar bills look like? Thankfully, the Chicago fed has a cube of 1,000,000 one dollar bills: 

I still don’t think the cube is super useful to visualize what a $1,000,000 means.

It gets even harder to conceptualize when you take into account a sentence that came out of Joe’s mouth: “I could raise a $10,000,000 round in a week if I wanted.” The sentence was totally credible, too. Based on his business model, amount already raised, and current investors, there is no doubt in my mind that this is true, which is all the more reason it blew my mind! Again, I have no idea how to conceptualize that number… 10 of those quirky fed cubes? That’s not very helpful. 

Let’s try something else: with a gallon of gas in the US costing $3.18 on average, and a Subaru Forester getting 25 miles per gallon on average, $10,000,000 looks like driving from NYC to LA and back about 14,000 times. Again, that’s not very useful–that’d take roughly 131 years of non stop driving. No way to visualize that. What does it look or feel like?

Something that is actually somewhat tangible: if you pay software engineers roughly $150K a year, $10,000,000 is one year's salary for 66 software engineers. I don’t know about you, but I can picture 66 software engineers in a room coding. If you were to ask me to visualize how many lines of code that would result in after a year, we’d run into a problem.

Needless to say, Joe has the ability to leverage a lot of resources given his access to one of the most fluid resources—capital.

Nvidia

Mo brought Adi and I to the Nvidia Voyager officer this week. I spent most of my time there really just in awe of the scale of the place. The place is visually stunning. It’s like a dome with what the employees call a “mountain” of conference rooms and cubicles in the middle. 

It felt like I was in a giant cave with a tower in the middle. I suppose this is what $550,000,000 looks like; after all, that’s what it cost to build the place. 

If Nvidia spent all of their annual revenue on building clones of this building, there would be 32 of them dotted around town, making some futuristic, space-like landscape. With the division in Voyager numbering about 6,000 people, that would be enough space for another 192,000 engineers… almost two Michigan football stadium’s worth of them. 

The company itself is worth $1,500,000,000,000… if you were to liquidate that, they’d have over 2,700 Voyager offices. Again, back to the realm of completely unimaginable numbers… what does that even look like? If they were lined up in a row and you were flying over them at 10,000 feet, I bet you’d not be able to see the start or end of the line.

Once again, a mind numbing sum. While the $1,500,000,000,000 number is unaccessible, the firm has access to such a slew of possibilities with the capital it does have access to. If gas prices held steady, I’m sure they could afford to have someone drive back and forth between LA and NYC until the sun burnt out.

Numbers have more 0’s in the Bay.

Think Bigger

My attempts to contextualize and visualize numbers may seem like light hearted fun, but, really, it’s an exercise in inspiration.

Most of the time when I hear a big number, my mind glazes over it and turns it into this abstraction, this flat thing that’s not real. But, sometimes, the number sticks out and I can’t get ahold of it, I can’t bring it into reality, no matter how hard I try. 

It’s a reminder to think bigger.

There is a company out there that is worth $1,500,000,000,000. There are people who can raise $10,000,000 at the snap of their fingers.

In the past, I’ve sold $5/mo investing software, $10 books, $25 books, and asset management services that were worth more than that, but nothing crazy. 

Now, I am thinking bigger. Numbers can get big fast. Either increase customers or increase revenue per customer; it’s not that complicated. 

Kind of exciting, really, when you break it down like that. 

Anything is attainable; seeing other people attain it, or even seeing evidence that it has been attained, just makes it so much more real. 

I’m grateful to be able to exist in a world in which I am nowhere near the top of what can be done in any regard whatsoever. 

More to learn, more to earn.

There’s nothing like Skeeps on a Saturday night to remind you how small you really are, and nothing like a conversation with someone further along than you to remind you how big you can be.

I’m in San Francisco most of next week; if you’re around and want to think bigger with me, let’s grab coffee or drinks. 

Live Deeply,