Palmer Luckey: “I don’t think it takes that much bravery when you’re young to start a company”

You speak about, you know, deciding to drop out of school. You're 19. You want to start this company.

Yep.

The guts and maybe the gumption that that takes nothing.

I think it's hugely overstated. And I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Everyone talks about how scary it is to start a company, but it really depends on where you are in your life. If you are someone with a family and with kids and with a stable job, then that totally makes sense. What I don't buy, and I always push back on this, is this idea that starting a company as a recent college graduate or someone taking a break from college as some kind of crazy, incredible sacrifice because I have people like, oh, it was so scary. I had to be so brave. It's like, no, you didn't. You don't have any family to take care of. You don't have a mortgage, you don't even have a career. You just. You have nothing. So for me, I mean, I was going from I was working a minimum wage job and wasting my time to having Oculus. So for me, it wasn't hard to make that decision. I guess dropping out of school maybe, but if you can get your head past that, then it's actually pretty easy. So usually what I tell people is, if you're going to start a company, especially for younger people, realize the stakes are lower when you're young than they will ever be, unless you get to be old. And also, you've never had a career and you don't have a family and you have nothing better to do, in which case you've probably got other issues to deal with. So. So anyway, I make that point mostly because I don't think it actually takes that much bravery when you're young to start a company. And I think more people should do that and recognize that really, they're a coward for not. You have nowhere to go but up and nothing to waste but time.

Alright, fair enough.

And when you're working minimum wage, your time is not worth very much.