This entire week, we’re running our observations on what’s ahead this year… stay tuned here, and be sure to also subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more trend updates, industry reports, builder guides, news analysis, and other res
How do you achieve peak performance while avoiding burnout? Big-wave surfing pioneer Laird Hamilton and former pro volleyball star Gabby Reece join a16z crypto General Partner Arianna Simpson to talk about what it takes.
with @LairdLife @GabbyRee
In this special 100th episode, Chris Dixon sits down with Palmer Luckey — founder of Anduril, founder of Oculus VR, and designer of the Oculus Rift — for a wide-ranging conversation on the future of technology, geopolitics, and building.
Recorded live at our Founders Summit, the discussion explores what it really takes to build hardware at scale, where today’s biggest technological bottlenecks lie, and why optimism about the future is still warranted despite geopolitical turmoil, regulatory constraints, and other barriers to innovation. Dixon and Luckey cover crypto, banking, and stablecoins, as well as modern warfare, defense technology, the U.S.–China technology race, AI and manufacturing, and the next frontiers of innovation — from fusion to quantum computing.
The conversation also dives into company building in both good times and bad, including lessons from Oculus, the founding of Anduril, and how to build mission-driven teams that can operate at scale.
Highlights
0:00 — Introduction
2:08 — Early Oculus: why VR was hard
8:02 — Bitcoin and early crypto days
9:49 — The Facebook acquisition
13:36 — How successful was VR, really?
18:59 — Starting Anduril
20:01 — Hiring for mission (“Don’t Work at Anduril”)
23:59 — How Anduril works (product development & org design)
27:47 — How Palmer stays ahead of the curve
33:00 — The U.S.–China technology race
34:40 — What Putin understood early about AI
39:45 — Stablecoins and banking risk
45:00 — Politics as a bottleneck
47:00 — The future of technology: AI, fusion, quantum
50:23 — Automation, abundance, and optimism
53:23 — Ukraine, drones, and the reality of war
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