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20VC: Anduril Founder, Palmer Luckey: "I Am Here To Build a $50Bn Company", How Palmer Evaluates His Relationship To Money Pre & Post Oculus' $2.3Bn Exit & Why The US DOD Needs To Be More Like China in It's Approach

Sep 28, 2020

Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril Industries and Oculus VR, shares his remarkable journey from living in a trailer to selling Oculus for $2.3 billion. He discusses how his relationship with money has evolved post-exit and reflects on the complexities of risk, happiness, and fulfillment. Palmer emphasizes the need for innovative defense technologies and the challenges of scaling organizations, drawing lessons from his Oculus experience. He unveils insights on leadership, accountability, and the contrasts between American and Chinese approaches in tech.

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INSIGHT

Legacy Defense R&D

Legacy defense contractors underinvest in internal R&D, relying on taxpayer funding.
This limits innovation to what the government already believes possible.

ANECDOTE

Winning Over Skeptics

Anduril convinced a skeptical customer by demonstrating a working prototype.
This highlights the difference between government and consumer sales.

INSIGHT

Silicon Valley and DoD

Silicon Valley's current distance from the DoD is a recent phenomenon.
A small group of radicals have hijacked the narrative about Silicon Valley's stance on defense.

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Palmer Luckey is the Founder @ Anduril Industries, founded on the premise of radically transforming the defence capabilities of the United States and its allies by fusing artificial intelligence with the latest hardware advancements. To date, Palmer has raised over $385M with Anduril from Founders Fund, a16z, Elad Gil, Spark Capital, Lux Capital, General Catalyst and 8VC to name a few. Prior to changing the world of defence, Palmer founded Oculus VR where he designed the Oculus Rift. Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook for $2.3Bn in 2014.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Palmer made his way into the world of startups, made his way from trailer to selling Oculus for $2.3Bn to changing the defence industry with Anduril today?

2.) How does Palmer evaluate his own relationship to money? How has that changed since his $2.3Bn Oculus exit? How does Palmer assess his relationship to risk? How does Palmer approach the correlations between money, risk and happiness?

3.) What were some of Palmer's biggest takeaways from his time scaling Oculus? How have they informed his mindset with Anduril? What worked? What did not work? How has Palmer changed as a leader? How does Palmer approach personal development? How does he optimise for it?

4.) Palmer scaled Oculus to 1,400 people in 1 year, where do organisations break with scale? Why does Palmer believe, "you never want to play yourself"? Where does he feel his biggest weakness is as a scaling leader? How does Palmer approach hiring at scale yet maintaining culture?

5.) From a defence standpoint, why does Palmer feel the US needs to be more like the Chinese? Why is the DoD so poor at investing in innovation? What does it take to sell into the DoD really effectively? Why have the only 2 successful defence companies been founded by billionaires?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

Palmer's Fave Book: The Three-Body Problem

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