Anduril was founded on the thesis that great power conflict was inevitable. The founder argues you cannot wait for war to start before developing defense technology. By then, it's too late for deterrence, and you can only participate in fighting the war, not preventing it.
To filter out opportunistic job seekers, Anduril launched a recruiting campaign highlighting the job's harsh realities—field work, long hours, and unpredictability. This counterintuitive strategy repelled the wrong candidates while attracting mission-driven 'true believers,' tripling qualified applications.
To stay on the cutting edge, Palmer Luckey reads academic literature across many fields. He argues that academics effectively survey the state-of-the-art and identify key players and new approaches. While their own work may not be practical, their research provides a reliable, consolidated signal of innovation.
Instead of building massive teams around one or two products, Anduril launches dozens of products, each with a small, lean, autonomous team. The founder finds this approach easier to manage as it avoids middle management bloat, keeps the 'cooks in the kitchen' to a minimum, and leverages natural team dynamics.
Palmer Luckey argues the main barrier to VR adoption is poor user experience (comfort, content), not price. He posits that even if headsets were given away for free, over 90% of people would stop using them within a month. The focus should be on creating a premium experience, not a cheaper device.
After appearing on the Joe Rogan podcast, Palmer Luckey's messaging tools became unusable for 48 hours. The influx of over a thousand messages from everyone he's ever known created a 'denial-of-service' attack on his inbox, burying critical communications. This is an unintended consequence of mainstream media attention for founders.
Perfecting Oculus's inside-out tracking was difficult not because of the core technology, but because of real-world variables. Things like glass reflections, moving curtains, ceiling fans, and people walking through the scene created countless edge cases that were easy to ignore in a lab but fatal in a customer's living room.
Oculus needed advanced Samsung displays that weren't in mass production. Since money alone couldn't convince Samsung to build them, Oculus offered to develop the software and hardware for Samsung's Gear VR. This partnership was the only way to secure the critical components needed for their flagship Rift headsets.
The SVB collapse highlighted that a future populist government, whether right or left, might be politically unable to bail out 'billionaires' and tech companies. This new political risk creates a demand for banks that prioritize capital preservation (narrow banking) over yield, hedging against a scenario where politically popular decisions override rational financial ones.
Palmer Luckey reframes his firing from Facebook by arguing that Oculus ultimately achieved its mission by taking over Facebook's R&D focus and corporate direction. His vision for the metaverse became the dominant component of Facebook's spend and future, which he views as a successful 'reverse takeover' of the parent company's mission.
When Facebook first offered $1B for Oculus, founder Palmer Luckey turned it down. His early, significant Bitcoin holdings made him financially independent, so he didn't care about the money. This forced Facebook to return with a much larger R&D commitment ($1B/year for 10 years) that aligned with his mission, not just a higher price.