A 19-Year-Old Programmer Built a $2,300,000,000 Company in 2 Years
No One Could Have Predicted His Success
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Facebook acquired Oculus VR for $2.3 billion in 2014.
Palmer Luckey founded Oculus when he was 19 years old. He had dropped out of college where he was studying journalism. His parents were concerned about his decision to drop out of college.
In less than 2 years his company Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook.
Palmer Luckey is now the founder of Anduril Industries. Palmer has raised more than $385 million in funding with Anduril from various investors.
The Oculus journey began in a trailer
The trailer belonged to a nineteen-year-old boy named Palmer Luckey.
Luckey had modified the trailer to suit his every need. Luckey had installed all six of his screens in the trailer. Luckey used to conduct hardware experiments in the remaining space of the trailer.
His obsession with virtual reality began when he was sixteen years old. During that time, only a handful of people were interested in virtual reality.
Initially, when Luckey started, he had no idea about virtual reality.
Previously, he was interested in a subset of modding called “portabilizing”. It involves hacking old game consoles into playable handheld devices.
In his city, the number of portabilizers actively involved in the trade was much smaller.
That’s why Luckey started an online community called “ModRetro” for other portabilizers. People in this online community introduced Luckey to virtual reality headsets.
According to Palmer Luckey:
“Man, ModRetro days were the best.”
For the next three years, Palmer Luckey continued to play around with VR headsets. He assembled more than 50 prototypes of his design.
To finance all of his experimentation, Luckey used to work at the Long Beach Sailing Center, repairing diesel engines, cleaning boats, and doing other jobs for minimum wage.
In July 2011, Luckey had the opportunity to work as a lab technician in a mixed reality…
