NVIDIA’s first salesperson – before it had any products
Jeffrey “Jeff” Fisher earned a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1980. Immediately after graduation, Fisher moved to Silicon Valley on the brink of its technology boom, and he has remained there ever since. Fisher's career began in the sales department of a tech company called Adaptec. Six years later, he transitioned to Weitex Corporation, where he assumed a sales leadership role. In 1994, Fisher made a significant career change by joining NVIDIA as the head of worldwide sales and the company's first salesperson. At the time, NVIDIA employed approximately 25 people and had yet to ship its inaugural product. Since then, NVIDIA has evolved into a global leader in visual computing technologies. It is credited with inventing the GPU, a high-performance processor that generates interactive graphics across various platforms, including workstations, personal computers, game consoles, and mobile devices. Today, one out of every three PCs and engineering workstations sold is powered by NVIDIA graphics, and the company’s annual revenue exceeds $60 billion. During his three decades with NVIDIA, Fisher has held several critical roles, such as executive vice president for worldwide sales and vice president of the Graphics Processing business unit. Currently, he serves as NVIDIA’s senior vice president of the GeForce business unit. Purdue honored Fisher with an Outstanding Electrical and Computer Engineer Award in 2003 and a Distinguished Engineering Alumnus Award in 2009.