Dropped out of school to start a business at the age of 19, worth US$2 billion in two years! Xiao Zha's ambitions in the universe were once supported by him

Dropped out of school to start a business at the age of 19, and was acquired by Facebook for a huge US$2 billion within 2 years. At the age of 24, he was ranked 22nd on Forbes' list of the richest entrepreneurs under 40 years old.

Yes, we are talking about Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR.

Drop out of college - start a company - reach the top of life...

This is a sight Sense, manual @Jobs here.

A weird kid who loves experiments

Luckey was born in Long Beach, California, USA, and grew up with his three sisters. His mother took care of him full-time at home, including his studies and life. .

Luckey has been different from other children since he was a child.

He likes to play with various gadgets and novel experiments. In his garage, he tried various complex electronic experiments, including "rail guns, Tesla coils and lasers" ”.

The father, a car dealer, allowed his son to use half of the family garage for his various "experiments."

He completed his initial education at home with his mother's tutoring. He became interested in the field of electronics and engineering from an early age and taught himself some basic programming languages ​​through online courses.

He has shown his unique thoughts on the concept of virtual reality very early, "I like the experience that computers bring me, but I hope this immersion can be more real."

In an interview with Insider, he said:

VR had already become popular in the 1980s and 1990s, and many people promised it at that time. It's coming, but a lot of ideas haven't taken off, meaning the technology isn't ready yet. Even if they do everything perfectly, they won't be able to make a VR device that satisfies consumers. What we need to do is create low-cost and high-performance VR equipment.

Since 2009, when he was 16 years old, he began to design and make VR headsets by himself.

The VR headsets on the market at that time had obvious shortcomings, including low contrast, high latency, low field of view, extreme size and weight, etc. Simple It's just that it's big and hard to use.

He improved on some of these issues by building his first prototype, the PR1, in his parents' garage in 2010, which had a 90-degree field of view, low latency and built-in Tactile feedback.

Luckey has since developed a series of prototypes to explore features such as 3D stereoscopic vision, wireless and extreme 270-degree field of view, while also reducing the size and weight of the system.

Eventually, he single-handedly built more than 50 head-mounted displays.

In 2009, he and his friends founded the ModRetro forum, which is a "portable" online community that gathers a group of computers and electronic equipment , retro game enthusiasts.

He later attended California State University, Long Beach, where he majored in journalism and served as the online editor of Daily49er.

During this period, he also worked as a part-time engineer in the Mixed Reality Lab (MxR) at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT), BRAVEMIND, part of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory, is part of a team designing cost-effective virtual reality systems.

#This experience also paved the way for him to later found Anduril Industries, a defense technology company focusing on autonomous drones and sensors for military applications. Foreshadowing.

At the age of 22, Palmer Luckey even appeared on the cover of Time Magazine.

Encounter with the legendary game designer John Carmack

In 2011, the legendary game designer John Carmack was brewing in his mind An idea about 3D visual experience, so he thought of VR.

Carmack wanted to show their masterpiece Doom 3: BFG Edition to the public in the form of VR, but the best head-mounted display (HMD) on the market at the time also suffered from high latency. , low field of view (the highest field of view coverage is only 40 degrees) and other problems, it cannot meet his vision.

In the comments section of an article titled "LEEP on the Cheap", Carmack found a person who was engaged in VR-related research. He is "PalmerTech" - the screen name of Palmer Luckey .

He immediately wrote to the man named PalmerTech and asked him about the VR prototype. ​

In May 2013, Carmack received the Oculus Rift prototype, and on that day he specifically tweeted to praise Luckey’s work.

In addition to this tweet, John Carmack also shared some extensive comments about the Luckey prototype.

With Carmack’s help, some industry veterans such as Valve engineer Dan Newell and Sony senior director Mick Hocking also pre-ordered some Oculus Rift prototypes.

Carmack used it to demo id Software's Doom 3: The BFG Edition at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Since then, Oculus Rift has begun to enter the public eye, and Luckey dropped out of college to focus on Oculus research and development full-time.

Co-founded Oculus with Brendan Iribe

After Oculus Rift became famous, he received his first offer from Sony.

This is a full-time position in Sony's European Computer Department, with full authority to manage Sony's R&D laboratory, with an annual salary of US$70,000.

He faced a difficult choice, whether to join Sony's high-paying team or insist on completing his Oculus project.

At this time, Brendan Iribe became the noble man who appeared at the right time.

Iribe received a call from a friend and wanted to introduce him to a virtual reality-related project.

He was skeptical about the VR concept at first, but because of John Carmack’s reputation, he decided to give him a chance.

But when he saw Luckey’s products and some of his ideas about virtual reality, he became interested in the project.

After meeting Luckey for the first time, he suddenly had an idea that would change Luckey's career.

At that time, he was still seriously considering Sony’s offer, and something Iribe said touched him:

"No one is more familiar with your own product than you."

After talking with Iribe’s team, Luckey became even more convinced that he should remain independent and build a software ecosystem around his hardware.

Luckey told Iribe that his previous plan was to launch a Kickstarter campaign and sell the kit. But now he has received invitations from many companies to join them.

A few months later, Brendan Iribe successfully persuaded Palmer Luckey to start Oculus with him.

Other big names in the gaming industry, such as Mark Bolas and David Helgason, also expressed their support for Palmer Luckey's VR project in a Kickstarter video.

During the Kickstarter campaign, Luckey introduced the Oculus Rift to all gaming enthusiasts and VR fans, earning the startup fantastic exposure.

The Kickstarter campaign was a huge success for the entire Oculus team.

Oculus raised a total of $2.4 million, ten times the $250,000 expected by Palmer Luckey.

The VR dream of this little boy from Southern California began to take off.

‍Zuckerberg’s debut

After solving the motion sickness problem, Oculus took a total of 7,500 from Marc Andreessen and his partners Thousands of dollars in financing.

And this Marc Andreessen was the one who introduced Brendan Iribe to Mark Zuckerberg.

After a phone call, Iribe took Oculus to Facebook for a demonstration.

At that time, everyone present was shocked by the Oculus experience. It is said that only one sentence came out of their mouths - I'll choke you! (Holy Crap)

And Zuckerberg himself was also very excited.

Five days later, he came to Irvine in person to meet with the Oculus team. As a result, Palmer Luckey also met Xiao Zha for the first time.

#The story that followed is very familiar to everyone. Oculus, which was founded less than 2 years ago, was acquired by Facebook for US$2.3 billion in 2014.

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