Palmer Luckey's Anduril Pivot
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A story about Palmer Luckey's journey from founding Oculus to starting Anduril, a controversial defense technology company.
"Palmer Luckey started Oculus when he was 16 or 17 and sold it to Facebook for about a billion dollars. He's controversial in Silicon Valley - he's a big Trump supporter which is very atypical there. He was fired from Facebook, and he claims it was because he liked Trump. He sued Facebook for $100 million.
After that, he started Anduril out of Orange County. Their first product was basically an invisible wall - drones to monitor the Mexican-American border. They've raised money and are now worth about $4.6 billion with 510 employees.
The way they operate is different from typical government contractors. Instead of waiting for the government to request specific equipment, Anduril builds technology they think the government needs, then sells it to them. They make sophisticated hardware-software combinations like the Century Tower - a solar-powered monitoring system - and various types of drones. They're trying to be the most technology-forward provider for the US defense budget, which is around $700 billion a year.
It's definitely a right-leaning company, which is unusual in Silicon Valley, and could become similar to Palantir in scale and approach."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.