Palmer Luckey (Founder, Oculus and Anduril): How He Got Fired For Making a $9,000 Donation in Support of Trump
The Logan Bartlett Show
Building Tools for Defense and Deterrence with AI and Autonomy
This chapter discusses the company's focus on developing AI and autonomy enabled systems for defense and security purposes, including hardware, software, and integrated command and control interfaces.
Palmer Luckey is the founder of Oculus (VR headset maker that sold to Facebook for $2.3B) and Anduril (an autonomous military technology company valued at $8.5B).
In the episode, Palmer uncovers the real story of why he was famously fired from Facebook in 2017. He also shares his thoughts about the virtual reality industry and discusses why building these autonomous military defense systems leads to more ethical wars.
This discussion originally happened in September 2022. Thanks to all of the engaging details, we’ve decided to reshare it!
(0:00) Intro
(1:43) Welcome Palmer Luckey
(2:19) Being misrepresented by the media
(7:39) Choosing advancement of the VR industry over personal views
(11:24) Palmer’s donation to a pro-Trump group and the fallout
(16:42) Game studios “not” working with Oculus
(23:17) What the Facebook PR team got wrong
(31:27) Palmer's biggest takeaways from the firing
(38:14) Palmer’s background and founding Oculus
(41:09) Why you should follow your talents over your passions
(48:31) Selling Oculus
(53:15) Founding Anduril after being fired from Facebook
(1:06:51) What does Anduril do?
(1:12:38) Knowing a little about a lot
(1:14:05) Autonomous military systems
(1:16:16) How AI can improve war ethics
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1
Follow on Socials
📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow
📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow
🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow
About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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