Oculus & Anduril Founder Palmer Luckey: From Flipping iPhones On…
About This Episode
Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey joins the show to discuss his journey from a teenage hardware hacker to a billionaire defense contractor. The conversation explores his philosophy on fixing broken incentives in the prison and defense industries, his early Bitcoin investments, and his contrarian views on personal lifestyle choices like flying coach.
Episode Description
Show Notes
- 07:05- How much did you make from the Oculus sale?
- 13:55- Palmer's journey from minimum wage to millionaire
- 18:55- What did you do with your money when you sold Occulus?
- 26:30- Palmer's crypto investment
- 29:15- What are the online forums that people should be hanging out in?
- 37:45- What ideas were you pursuing after you sold Oculus (prisons, food)?
- 54:40- What does Anduril do?
- 01:15:15- Jason Calacanis vs. Palmer
- 01:23:25- Flying coach
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- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more.
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- Additional episodes you might enjoy:
- #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits
- #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future
- #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto
- * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett
- #218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates
- Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More
- How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More
Links
- * The Blog of Palmer Luckey
- * Anduril
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- * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter.
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Key Takeaways
Apply 'perceptual hacks' and cross-disciplinary insights—such as using software to correct for cheap hardware lenses—to disrupt industries that are traditionally reliant on expensive, slow-moving technology.
Align business incentives directly with desired outcomes, such as a prison model that is only paid when inmates successfully avoid recidivism for five years post-release.
Build a high-performance culture by hiring 'freaks' and 'weirdos' who demonstrate deep passion and competence in niche online communities and personal hobby projects rather than traditional resumes.
Business Ideas Mentioned
Recidivism-Based Private Prison Model
Boring Business
Calorie-Free Synthetic Petroleum Foods
Boring Business
Physically Structured Sensory Food Illusions
Boring Business