Logan: Palmer Luckey. Thank you for doing this.
Palmer: Thank you for having me.
Logan: We've wanted to do this in person. I've been a admirer of companies you've built and how you've got about not without controversies have popped along the way. And I think we can talk about of stuff, but the portrayal versus in prepping for this who, person that I've heard a bunch of things about, a little incongruous, I say to say the least.
Palmer: Yes. The media lies.
Being misrepresented by the media
Logan: Yeah. We'll talk about that once. About a time you were aspiring tech journalist.
Palmer: That, yeah, people actually don't understand this mostly because it just didn't come up all that much. During the Oculus days, I was a journalism major. I went to [00:03:00] journalism school for three year years. I was 15, I started, yeah. I started attending college when I was 15. And I dropped out when I was 19 to start Oculus. I was actually the online editor of the school paper, the daily 49ers. So It's not like I have this this is internal bias against journalism. If anything, I'm generally inclined to be charitable and favorable and to see the value in good journalism.I actually just dislike specific journalists and specific outlets. Probably more than a person who didn't have such a background of journalism would.
Logan: I thought it would take a while work up into this. But it's interesting. This has been true even in the early of Oculus, there were a lot of like little details about who what at CES, right? Misrepresenting, The whole story of your career like little there's one big that we can talk but there's little anecdotes about how like can be misrepresented at times along the way, right?
Palmer: oh yeah, absolutely. And I think, we, I dealt with that a lot at Oculus, but the reality is you don't. [00:04:00] You don't have to deal with it when everything is going well. And when you're being treated generally fairly, I wasn't gonna go out and nitpick that they got some small thing wrong or some salt attribution, incorrect. The issue is when, they started to just say things that were. Completely untrue, totally fabricated and then refused to correct them for years and years on end. That, that was really, for me very surprising because I knew people made mistakes, but I didn't quite understand the extent to which they would protect their careers over correcting the truth, actually there was there one of them, there's an artist technical article about me, where it said that I was funding, racist, antisemitic memes that were being spread all over Twitter and Facebook.
Palmer: Which of course like the whole thing was actually just a completely fabricated claim. Nothing like it even happened. And they refused to remove, or even edit the article for six years and they actually removed it just a few months ago without telling me no retraction, nothing. And I'm try. I wish I could see behind the scenes, like what caused them to finally. after, Because for years I asked them to correct it. I was like, this is obviously false. So you have no sources. It's contradicted by many other credible sources. You're clearly in the wrong here and they just refuse to even respond. And then finally six years later it disappears. And I've gone been through that similar things, literally dozens of times.
Logan: I, Thought we would up this, but, we're, diving right in. I think one of the interesting things as I poked around, like there actually isn't a great, Verified version of like how that stuff played out right? Like the history of the future is a great book about the Oculus story and it goes into a little bit of this stuff but I don’t know most of the time when people wanna do things the default like, Hey, go turn to page 300 of this 550 page book.
Palmer: No. Yeah. It's headline.
Logan: It was pithy headline. So I realized there's restrictions on the things you can say, but you were very clear that and you [00:06:00] like making this explicit, you were fired from Facebook.
Palmer: Correct. And I then thank you for calling out that I like to make it clear it's I'm not trying to make myself, Overly victimized here, but there's so many times where executives, Are pushed out of their own companies and then everyone agrees to play by the rules.You've seen this totally. They've decided to spend more time with their family. They're excited to move on the next grade adventure.
Logan: Yeah. VCs are excited to get back to operating or go spend time with their families.
Logan: It's yeah, I'll get back to operating. Yeah. Yeah, It's oh eight, years of zeros on investments.
Palmer: And now you’re ready to go with FBI. go back to operating. Yeah. And so I think that is. A healthy thing. I think it's not a productive thing. I would like to see the industry be more honest about this, if only because it minimizes the, We all hear about the successful acquisitions, we all hear about the ones that go well and how they made the money and how it's great. But then the other side of it, the part where they potentially are getting forced out of their companies, where control is seized beyond the limits of what was [00:07:00] agreed, that those parts often get smoothed over by the corporate messaging. And the problem is then future people deciding what they're going to do with their company. Only see that positive side and they don't understand, they don't have the real world experience to to know that things don't always, or even often go that way. So I think it's productive
Palmer: For people to see both sides of the coin, the Oculus story. One of the things that I was most worried about is it would be taken as very much a success story. Of mine, where it was like, I deal did this thing. I built this company, I sold it. It went great for me. And then I moved on to my next great adventure. I would hope that people could learn something from not just the good parts of what happened, but the bad
Logan: You, also, you have this very pragmatic view in a lot of ways. And it's a dichotomy, I think in some where you've said it still fills you with rage to this day. Of, of what happened, but also you have this in some ways, peace that, that I've heard you talk about Hey, ultimately what I care about is the VR industry becoming it is and it's in[00:08:00] good hands doing that. And so I can't let my personal views of what happened to me get in the way of mission that I actually wanted to. Or Hey, I actually believe in the system at which people can maybe not be fired for political views. But I believe in the system at which at will employment exists, that's something that I believe in. And so I actually think that I have right to be fired for my company if they give me a few billion.
Palmer: Absolutely. And I've had to make this clear to people. They say, I can't believe that you are fired for your political views. And actually I'll go even further. It's not just at will employment. This is not legal. I'm not saying that I break the law here, just as a disclaimer for whoever's listening. Yeah. But I actually think you should, in certain situations be able to fire someone there for their political views. Imagine that I work at I work at Citibank and we hire as an executive, somebody who comes in and then, Shortly after hiring them, they are publicly out on the record as saying my life's work is to dismantle.Central banking and the capitalist apparatus. It is a moral imperative that I [00:09:00] return the world to the people and that we nationalized all banking and and industry, I, that's very much a political belief. Yeah. And I think it would be fair for Citibank say, I think Citibank is not the right place for you.
Palmer: Yeah. I think you should go somewhere else. To the letter of the law, you would have to continue to employ that person and allow them to be out there, using their Citibank job as a platform to get recognition and say things that are fundamentally opposed, not just what Citibank is doing, but what the entire industry that you're operating in is doing. And you couldn't possibly be an effective executive in that situation. And so that that's one of the things I actually I, wish that it was legal for Facebook to just say, yeah, we fired him for politics. He didn't fit in. We, we didn't like what he was doing.
Palmer: So we got rid of him instead, you have to. Make these ridiculous constructs where if you ask them, was Palmer's politics, any part of why he was fired? They have to insist not only was it not why he was fired, we didn't even consider it. It wa It wasn't even part of our thought process. It's [00:10:00] like saying that the sky is green.Especially if you see the contemporary evidence, if you've read some of the stuff from the top, like it's extraordinarily obvious that it was at least in some part motivated by politics, but instead everyone has to lie. Everyone has to say these nonsensical statements And argue that they're telling the truth.And it's just so bad For everybody to have
Palmer: And of course I'm at peace because If I wanted to, I could just go and, just go and try to like, re, re you've seen me go off on a few of the people who have wronged me. There's a lot of people who have wronged me where I've never gone after them because I've done the calculus and it would be bad for the VR industry. I'm not gonna do anything bad for the VR industry. And people often will say, oh, the press should be fair. And they shouldn't be cheerleaders for the VR industry or tear it down, but I'm not a journalist. I'm a techno bro. And so I can do whatever I want, including choosing to not address major issues. Cuz I think it'll help the industry that I care so much about. So there's a lot of people who who escaped my wrath only because it would be terrible for the VR industry.
Logan: That's and so we [00:11:00] danced around it a little bit.
Palmer: I guess maybe I took it down.
Logan: It's actually hard to find a a canonical record of what even transpired that's synthesized in a way. So I, let me do it in my words. And you correct? You correct me on anything that you want to, okay. So you gave $9,000 to a pro-Trump political organization called nimble America.
Palmer: It was a self-described social wear 501 C four nonprofit with a goal to ship post for Donald Trump as the, it was for a broad set of candidates against Hillary Clinton, theoretically, because that's the structure of the 501 C or whatever, but like for Donald Trump and the specifically To bring shit posting to the real world was I think there was, I think the quote there got it. People always could sh they quote shit post outta there, and then they say, oh, that means that he was trying to flood the internet with memes and posts. No, actually in fact, they explicitly were saying it's shit posting, but not in that venue. Yes. Which was very frustrating for me at the time.
Logan: And so the distinction you're drawing is [00:12:00] not just doing digital ads of ship posts and it's not even just doing digital ads. All they did was run a physical building. I was gonna get there one what? And so that was the distinction you were drawing was so ultimately what happened of the organization they're making that distinction.
Palmer: Yeah. Yeah. If you were doing it on the internet, you would just be a shit posting organization. Yeah. You wouldn't say our goal is to bring shit posting into real life. Yep.And and so there was one billboard that was run. It's that two big to jail for It's yeah, it was a picture of Hillary Clinton alongside the text too big to jail,big to jail. And so there was one billboard that at the time to, at the time that it came out, this was when there was a lot of controversy about. Handling of classified material and whether or not she was being treated the way that other people had been treated by the legal system for handling data in similar ways.
Logan: And so how it came to be is interesting for journalists, journalistic, integrity and all that, that you were ultimately tied up in all this. And I think that's a interesting thing if people really care about how it came to be, but you did not, your original intention wasn't to be public with this, it was[00:13:00] the founders, I think, of the sub forum or subreddit, they just used to be moderators of it.
Palmer: Yeah. That's the thing. They weren't even Moderat is they, at one point were moderators of the subreddit for like the, defacto sub Reddit for for which, which has ultimately got banned by Reddit. And I don't even really know the years later, 2020 I think. And some of the stuff that at least the daily B started article, that was the big one that broke out said was to become a, maybe it was a moderator. It said, is there a difference between white nationalism and white supremacy was 9/11 and inside job?
Palmer: So the, interesting thing there you're right. They did they mentioned, oh, it's this horrible place. For example, they ask you, you, had to answer if nine 11 was an inside job, but they don't say what the right answer was. And the thing is those questions, they imply that you basically had to be a crazy conspiracy Nutter in order to even be allowed in. It was actually the opposite. They implemented those questions to keep out all of the nutts that were trying to become moderators. If you said nine 11 was the inside job, you were not allowed to become a moderator. They basically said, okay. Yeah. That's if you [00:14:00] think that the us government did this, you should not be moderating this political forum for a current us president. And so that was the actual really interesting thing is how they actually completely flipped it by, Acting like you had to answer one way. And in fact, it was the other way they were trying to filter out exactly the people they're implying.
Logan: Tthat's interesting. And and obviously there was a period of time at which it was popular and then it branched off and there was different, whatever ties to different groups and all that. But so this ultimately came out through some very weird series of events that daily beast it seems didn't respect, journalistic, integrity behind verifying things off the record was,
Palmer: right. at least the way they confirmed in writing that it would be off the record. Yeah. And then later, When I pointed that out, the editor said, oh no, while you are on the phone, you confirmed that it would be on the record. Yeah. It's like way, wait, that's not how, that's not how any of this works. Yeah. Why would I have done such a thing?
Logan: That's what, yeah. It's actually the CCAs razor of this situation is like [00:15:00] why would that have been how you would want to reveal, in this big breaking thing it just, and people do make mistakes. being on the record off the record. It happens, especially when they're not familiar with the rules.
Palmer: Yes. Or journalism. Remember I went to journalism school. I was a journalist. I was an editor. I very well understood the rules. I worked in the tech sector for years. I did literally thousands of interviews. Yeah. I understood the rules and it was in writing that it was off the record. And so that they don't argue that, oh, this was of such journalism important journalistic import that we're breaking the rules. It was just no, you agreed on the call that it was on the record. Yeah. It's of course was untrue.
Logan: Yeah, totally. So they did that a bunch of controversy followed. This was prior to the actual presidential election.
Palmer: Yeah, so it was late September of 2016, late. Oh, wow. September 22nd.
Logan: Okay. Got it. And so you're asked to take a leave of absence as this shit storm is brewing. People are internally within Facebook signing different things and and game studios or [00:16:00] saying oh, we might not work with
Palmer: or so, so actually that's another bit of misinformation a lot. There were a lot of headlines that said game studios are dropping support for Oculus until they removed Palmer lucky. So there were three companies that said on their Twitter that they were not gonna work, With Oculus until the situation resolved. They didn't actually say that they needed to fire me. One of them was a trading, a paper trading card game company that later said that they, the whole thing was just a joke. They're like no, we thought it was a joke. We said, we're dropping Oculus support. We literally make paper trading cards. That the joke was that we were
Logan: and you're like, ha. Yeah. You're like, yeah, Thanks for that. I appreciate
Palmer: that's one of them. And then the other two had never released a game. And in fact, neither of them ever released anything. They were two independent solo developers who never released the games they were working on, which. they weren't Oculus partners. They hadn't even been approved to be on our store. How could they be dropping support for us? When in fact we had no relationship with them, had no plans of [00:17:00] hosting their game one way or the other, but instead people turned into this huge, they did this huge thing. It's like developers are dropping support for Oculus, which really bothered me because, as a business guy, that's an accusation of material impact saying his actions had a material impact on the Oculus business. And it was just completely false. N not a single developer we had ever worked with. Did anything of the sort. like at, or if you really wanna go the other way, every single developer we worked with kept working with us despite the controversy, which you know, and I don't know if you can say that, lack of action is an affirmative action, but, If you're going to skew it in one way, the way to skew it is every single partner we had stood with us.
Logan: How much of after all that stuff happened then it starts brewing on itself?
Palmer: I've never been it starts brewing cuz for people who aren't listening for who haven't followed this, like I gave money to this, to, to this. And the report said is that I was funding anti-Semitic racist, white supremacists troll farms that were,[00:18:00] Attacking Clinton supporters all over the internet on Facebook and Twitter and posting these vile, horrible memes all over the place.So I just wanna be clear. The thing that I was getting attacked for was not what I did. It was, I did one thing. It was reported as a completely different thing. And on all the controversy was in response to that.
Palmer: The daily beast did not report any of these things. Now what they did is they did what I talked about earlier, where they made, they implied that you had to that you had to support white nationalism in order to be model. They implied, you had to think nine 11 was in inside theory, but they didn't actually explicitly say it. They just did it so that any. Reasonable person would read it and assume much worse. The other articles were actually the ones that were much worse to the daily beast for all of the journalistic malpractice they engaged in. They were not the ones who actually elevated these claims to saying, He's funding Donald Trump's antisemitic meme machine.He's flooding the internet with Nazi propaganda. Those were just made up [00:19:00] by other outlets, wired and Washington post and the New York times and boy, Boeing. I mean like the gamut of credible to not incredible, it was all completely false reporting.
Logan: Was it actually reporting or was it skimming aggregation? Like how much do you think it was mal intent?
Palmer: It was original reporting. I, sorry, when I, of course everything's just aggregation, but no, these were like, like this wasn't just like they posted a link, those like. All five plus paragraph articles, putting their own spin on what had happened. Reporting mostly what people on Twitter had were saying about it as if it was fact.And it was, it's hard to stress this without sounding like a Nutter, but like the claims they were reporting had no sourcing were totally untrue. There was no source whatsoever. And anyone who tried to point that out was immediately smeared as, oh, they're a neo-Nazi Palmer, lucky apologist.In fact, actually, for example, like the Neoga forums, which are major game industry development community, they actually made it policy that anyone defending me was [00:20:00] instantly banned from the forum. Like that was the level of pushback on correction that there was
Logan: what do you think? It's actually, it brings so many different questions to light in, in all of this, but so this whole controversy starts brewing. The election happens the person that I think all the people that were against you were supporting and who I also voted for in full disclosure didn't get elected. And the person that you were supporting did get elected, and then that's when it actually went from this is crazy annoyance, but probably gonna blow over to holy shit.
Palmer: I was explicitly told after the election, you can come back to the office. Yeah. Like we're gonna we're just gonna let this blow over. And, but you're right. It's because Trump won, They decided that strategy was non-viable strategy.
Logan: And did you ever get, it seems in reading the book, it seems like implicit that there and you're so pragmatic about a lot of these things that actually from like a, had it been a business decision, it seems Hey, listen if games, studios were actually going to drop Oculus and I [00:21:00] was the impediment to it I totally understand why that would have to be a business decision.
Palmer: to, oh I would've done it in a
Logan: You would've fired yourself. If you were mark Zuckerberg in that situation, if game studios were gonna drop Oculus that's right. Yeah.
Palmer: But that wasn't what was actually happening.No it isn't what was happening. It's very much the palace intrigue thing where the tech reporters were all over this fascinating drama, Gamers are not, they're not they're not following the exact political views of every executive in every company and every studio. It's just, look at look at Bobby Kodak. Yeah. He's a outspoken Republican, he's donated Republicans for many years and he's running blizzard act division and they're. One of the, if not the most successful game studio in the world. So clearly, voting for Trump is not this thing that makes a company disqualified it's, it would be specific things like you mentioned, game developers dropping Oculus. That, that would, be the equivalent.
Logan: so I, I don't wanna ask you to, to speculate on other people's intentions because I realize that's just, that's a hard thing to do, but [00:22:00] what do you think led, obviously some leadership desire to not push back on all of this.
Logan: Was it just loud group of people that this seemed like the easiest way to make this whole thing blow over within Facebook? What was the rational Palmer, lucky, the the detached analytical person of Hey, everyone's acting in their own self-interest, which I think you, you believe at the end of the day incentives and self-interest drive a lot of these things.
Logan: And so if you were to speculate why it actually happened, what's your speculation on it?
Palmer: The playbook that they followed was more or less exactly the playbook that you would learn in crisis communications training. It's, To let it blow over and not give them more fuel. Like what they did was actually like pretty by the book. I don't think it was the right move. I think we were an unconventional company in an unconventional situation that you couldn't have done things in that way in particular, because it would've been so easy to at least camp down on the worst of it. It's again, the reason. I'm highlighting that all this reporting was false is cause I wanna be fair to people it's gotten boiled down to in the modern day, as[00:23:00] Oh, they were upset because you gave money to a pro-Trump group, but it's not quite true.
Palmer: That's unfair to the people who are angry. They were reading media that I was funding neo-Nazi propaganda farms run by anti cites who were flooding social media with personal attacks and trolls against Hillary Clinton's sports. That's what was getting reported. That's why people were angry. We could have easily taken the edge off of that and been like Whoa That's not what's happening. And instead there was a refusal to even do that basic crisis control of Hey, this reporting is outright false. And there were a few reasons for that one. One of the things that was going on during the election was it was going to, it was considered unthinkable to question the press, if you are left leaning press, but like the act of saying.
Palmer: The press is lying to you was considered an attack on democracy itself. That was. You, you, remember 2016. And so there were a lot of people we cannot actually say the press is lying to people because that's what Trump says about the press. But we all agree. That's [00:24:00] obviously what's happening right now. They are, They're just fabricating a story like, yeah, but we can't say that, cuz it'll look so bad and anti-democratic as if the press enjoys this special, position in, In government that makes them unsayable. So that, that was part of it. The other reason that I think that the thing that really mixed things up.
Logan: Do you remember, the record?
Palmer: Vaguely. Nobody ever really talks about it these days, but it was very relevant at the time. It came out that act blue share blue was funneling millions of dollars to correct the record, which was an actual campaign to pay people to post on the internet to say nice things about Hillary Clinton and bad things about Donald Trump. It was an actual astroturfing campaign and it was actually funded by the DNC and major leftwing organizations.
Palmer: And my whole controversy came out about a week after that was revealed that they were doing that. And so I think in some ways I was being framed as The mega millionaire financer of the right wing equivalent to [00:25:00] correct the record. It was a, oh look, we're doing this but, also the other side is doing that. And I think that's what set it partially outta control and why there was so much mainstream media coverage, like the Washington post story. Wasn't. Oculus or video games. It was about how, how astroturfing troll farms are funded and operated.
Palmer: And there they basically talked about correct the record and they're like, oh, and Palmer, Lucky's doing this on the right too. He's paying people
Logan: 12 people on the internet too.
Palmer: That, that kind of made it very difficult because to go out and try to correct the record as it were on, that would have also been seen as picking the right wing side of the debate. And so that, that was, I think, fundamentally why I ended up, why I ended up in such a bad spot is I assumed that the people making communications decisions were looking out for the company and for me, and typically the way that it works is you let the company, you let the company handle the strategy and in exchange you get protected.
Palmer: It's basically it's look I'll like, I'll let you call. I'll let you call. the shots and I'll be a team. As long as we're all on the same team. What I did not divine [00:26:00] is that there was no intention of keeping me on the team. And in fact, it was just a poorly run PR strategy that didn't help the company or me or anybody.
Logan: Yeah. Who so you understand from an incentive standpoint, in a lot of ways how you ended up in that situation.
Palmer: I like To Put it in one sentence, if they would've just fired me and said we're firing him because we don't think he can be an effective leader because so many people here hate Trump and his supporters. I would've been unhappy about it, but ideologically, I couldn't have found my much rage in my myself about it. I would be like, okay. That's that's a that's a well. At least like a reasonable concept to hold you have the right to fire me. The problem was where I wasn't allowed to correct these really awful stories. And I was thrown under the bus at the end of the day. It was, I got fucked at both
Logan: I got, yeah, it's a, it's almost like the principle element of it is what was so like frustrat. It was like all different things that could be screwed over, ended up cutting you the wrong way on
Palmer: and also making it that it was very clear that one of the reasons I was so angry afterwards is because the way that the initial situation was handled, made it much harder for me to start a new company and to get started again, like BA basically the fact that all these stories had been allowed to go uncorrected for the better part of a year more or less cemented them as truth, which is why to this day, you still have press repeating those same claims, which. It they're obviously false, but if you put in no effort, then it's easier to rereport them.
Logan: And honestly, I think about myself until I went down this rabbit hole of doing all this. Like I it's actually a very natural thing. You want to believe what you're being told is true. And going back to primary research on every topic, isn't a tenable way to live your life
Palmer: Oh, it's tough. It's yeah, you can do it on one or two topics you care about, but to do it every time. You're right. There's not enough time in the
Logan: enough There's not, it's just oh, that, that seems like not the, Pearl's not worth a dive for me to figure out [00:28:00] exactly what happened to Palmer. Lucky, easier for me as a venture capitalist to not invest in his next company, just cuz I would have to go talk to many different people to figure so well.
Palmer: And especially cuz like you go to Wikipedia and it says a bunch of stuff and it cites a bunch of stories and the way Wikipedia works is if a credible outlet reports that it's true. It's true now that's true. Even if primary sources directly contradicted, Wikipedia says primary sources are not to be trusted.
Palmer: It's actually third parties that are reporting on that are the ones that are actually weighted higher.
Palmer: So you can have a primary source that directly contradicts, let's say five major media outlets saying something and Wikipedia is gonna say no. The version that the media outlet said is true.
Palmer: And you can't edit it because the admins will come in and say no, this is a settled fact. And so like for you, the venture capitalist, you're gonna look and say, wow, this is a well sourced claim. Many incredible outlets have said, so this must be true. It's only reasonable thing that someone could do, which is why, by the way, I'm not angry at people who read these stories and were aggressive [00:29:00] against me.
Palmer: This is why I'm so angry particular at the reporters because the people who were MIS. We're misled This is not their fault. They were told something that wasn't true and they got really angry about something that didn't happen and that's not their fault. I can't really hold. I can't say, oh,
Palmer: You should have gone to the primarysources. Yeah. Because you're, to your point, that's not, reasonable, but I can hold. the people who made that happen accountable,
Logan: which, and so what's the better takeaway from you in all of this. Obviously it's a very unfortunate situation. You, the company you founded was taken away from you, and I know it's gonna bother you.
Logan: You seem to be doing well. Andurilw seems to be a, oh yeah, a great, and it seems like you're in a pretty good place with all of but I’m sure it's still hurt. The biggest takeaway is, do not underestimate the long term impact do correct Falsehoods about your company or yourself? A lot of people they say, oh it's not that big of a deal.
Palmer: I'll just let it be said. And we don't correct it, They don't wanna go toe to toe with the press. And they don't understand the long term impact of that. Because that thing that was said can now get re reported. There was a [00:30:00] New York times story that reported a quote and they put it in quotation marks and said that I said something.
Palmer: I never said that. And in fact, I had the written quote, they were quoting a written quote. I said, Hey, your quote is literally inaccurate. I said, something totally different.
Palmer: Here is the written quote. They said, oh, we don't think the meaning's all that different. And I explained, I said that's not how the New York times style guide works.
Palmer: You don't get to decide. We put in quotes what we think the general meaning of something was because it actually is important to note what it was. Oh, actually what it was is we were talk, I was talking about why I donated to nimble America and the original sentence said, I donated them to put things on this billboard because X and they just removed.
Palmer: On this billboard, it just, they just removed what I actually did. I'm like no, this doesn't work because you're removing the context in a way where it's gonna get misreported. And then what happened? I fought it a little bit. I stopped fighting it.
Palmer: And then that quote, The one that I didn't say ended up being endlessly quoted by dozens of stories over the course of three years. And so a lot of people don't understand the value [00:31:00] of taking the hit at the beginning, going toe to toe with the press. And if they will not correct the story, like I've been pretty effective at using newsletters and interviews and even Twitter to say, Hey, this is wrong. This is false.
Palmer: This particular reporter, this particular outlet is derelict in their duties. And that actually seems to work pretty well in getting stories seemed what's been the most.
Logan: So in getting the story out there, when this all came on, my radar was really the Jason Calak canis, like all in thing. Like I and we were talking about it before we started, like you've been recognized in in Ukraine for that what's been the most effective means of actually dissuading people from thinking that narrative, you have to get out and you have to actually tell them your story. If you don't tell them, then they're not going to dig themselves, you have to make it.
Palmer: So they the real version of what happened is as easy to find as the false version, you need to make it where a person doesn't have to go deep into the primary sources of what happened in the distant year of 2016.And instead, you just have to keep [00:32:00] talking about what you're doing now and also what happened then. And that's actually worked out pretty well for me. I think me being very aggressive has gotten myself and by extension Andro into a much better place, which is not what anyone in any crisis communications PR firm will tell you, they will tell you like what I, if I'm like, yes, the way to solve MIS reporting is to immediately aggressively. attack The journalist, who is who is lying about you, they'd be like, oh no, you can't do that. But it turns out that In the modern dynamic, that's often the only way you can defend yourself
Logan: after all of, after all, after you went through all this stuff, what you came out the other side and now have Andurilw, which I promise we'll talk about at some point, but that's right. Finally, Yeah. We can talk about your current company. But it seems like going through something this, inevitably when
Palmer: I will note it's pretty incredible that I've spent hundreds of hours of my life, maybe thousands dealing with a $9,000 donation that I made, [00:33:00] honestly, without putting that much thought into it.
Palmer: I don't wanna sound like a rich guy here, but I had just sold my company for billions of dollars. This was a relatively small donation to a relatively innocuous cause it was one billboard in Pittsburgh that had Hillary and the word too big to jail. It's incredible how that was turned into like this defining thing that has to be addressed every single time anyone does about me.
Logan: but I think what's interesting about that is, or at least you're across the bear in this.And again I don't know if you see it this way and actually having gone through it. I'm sure easy for me to say, but is that you are like how many people I've gone through something similar and aren't willing to talk about it in the way that you have or come out the other side around it.
Palmer: No, most of 'em just have their careers destroyed and they never have a second chance that's the reality. I like I'm, lucky. Yeah. I'm lucky to be able to deal with it. At the same time where I don't feel it's my should be my cross to bear is you have many other entrepreneurs donating much larger sums of money to their political candidates of choice. The reality is It isn't [00:34:00] Trump and it wasn't misreported. And so that's, so it's oh, the real problem is Palmer, donating to political organizations. It's wait a second. The people working above me, even at Facebook donated literally hundreds of millions of dollars to political organizations to almost, first of all, not very much coverage, but certainly no scorn.
Palmer: That's always, that's all you. And I'll get to find oh, Palmer, outspoken, Wing propaganda, funder. It's wow, is that really all it takes these days, $9,000. And all of a sudden you're outspoken about your politics and you're funding, wing propaganda. It's Nobody would be like, oh, this Democrat, he gave a few thousand dollars to plan parenthood. So he's an outspoken, well known left wing P politic anonymously, and got docked into doing it. Therefore you're outspoken right wing. Yeah. I, this is another thing. Yeah. I've had rallies with you're, you, you were very outspoken about your political beliefs during the election.
Palmer: I'm like wait. Let's be clear. I was docked and the reason that's important is from a business perspective, if you are being outspoken is a very different business position than like I'm gonna [00:35:00] have my politics and keep it to myself. Basically what I was doing, the only alternative beyond that is I'm gonna have my politics keeping to myself and do absolutely nothing to support anyone that I support. Yeah. Which is a tough thing to advocate for.
Logan: A lot of people end up taking because of all this stuff. It's a smart one, honestly. So we dove right into that and I wanna tuck touch on a few different things and I appreciate you going through all that, hopefully that serves as at least something of a primary document on all this. It it took me even as you heard, I made mistakes along the way in talking that through. And that was, time and that's after you've read Books, hours. Yeah. Yeah. I knew directionally what it was, but
Logan: You are how old though? 29
Palmer: Wow. Yep. old.
Logan: you're getting feels that way sometimes. Yeah. I, you were the boy wonder at 19 starting Oculus. So you grew up we're in orange county right now.
Palmer: I grew up in long beach, California which is actually technically LA county, but okay. You know's you close to the port, so right on the line.
Logan: so your father was a car salesman. That's right. Mother homeschooled you that. . [00:36:00] And did you have an inclination? It seems like you had a bunch of different interests. Going into journalism, you were also deep into tech and VR and gaming and all this stuff being homeschooled. It sounds like also you were a little bit of a pain in the ass as a kid.
Logan: You got kicked outta your house at least twice, once into a trailer once into your garage at some point. Yeah.
Palmer: into a I'm. Some would say I'm a pain in the ass
Logan: Yeah. Listen, aren't we all, but yeah not all aren't we all take me through how you got into Oculus originally. And that and I think one of the interesting things as we ultimately take it back to the company, you're now a part of and founded I think it's interesting to talk about how accidental versus purposeful the two different companies were as you contrast them.
Palmer: Like the thing about Oculus was VR was my hobby at the time. And so I started Oculus because I really liked VR and I wanted to make a run. I had a few good ideas for had basically how to make a better VR headset and how to replace certain high end hardware functions with much cheaper software functions, make it easy to use for game developers.
Palmer: I started working on VR when I was 15 as a hobby [00:37:00] because I was building PC gaming rigs and I had built a really nice PC gaming rig. And as I started planning out my next round of upgrades, it just wasn't exciting. And it was clear that the future of gaming was not gonna be more monitors and more graphics cards and just, incremental improvements.
Palmer: It was gonna be something radically different. and as a science fiction fan, it was apparent to me that virtual reality was not just the next step in gaming, but the final thing, once you have perfect virtual reality, like that's it, the ability to simulate anything a human could experience or imagine experiencing that's the holy grail.
Palmer: And so I decided that I was gonna work on that as a hobby and Oculus kind of came outta that. Not because I thought that VR was gonna be the best business ever, or because it was gonna make me a lot of money, but because I loved working on VR, it was very interesting. I had a lot of fun working on it and it turned out that I was doing the right thing at the right time.
Palmer: And the technology was in a place where I could build a multi-billion dollar company out of those insights and ideas from a hobby. To the point you just mentioned, I've often said Andurilw was different because I started from the beginning. [00:38:00] I am going to build this and to be a major company so that I can have a big impact through the size and through the influence which is very different from, let's make my hobby into a thing that pays the bills so I can move outta this 19 foot camper trailer and into a real apartment.
Following your talents vs passions
Logan: following your passions, generally doesn't lead to being a billionaire or founding a multi-billion
Palmer: oh no, not at all. One of my contrarian piece of advice to people is to never follow your passions, follow your talents. Cuz those often are not 100% aligned. So many people, they get this false advice where they're told, follow your dreams, follow your passion, whatever you love doing.
Palmer: That's the thing that you really should do with your life. The problem is that the most of the things worth loving are not things where you are going to be able to make money or certainly have an impact. And this is especially true for, I think kids and teens, kids and teens and all follow your passions.
Palmer: No. What you're passionate about with when you're nine years old has very little correlation with good life decisions. It's. It is bad advice for kids in, in, in my opinion. And it that's how you end up with the number one most desired job [00:39:00] for children being a YouTuber or a, or a Twitch streamer rather than being an astronaut or an engineer or a writer or, whatever stereotypical, great profession You want to, you wanna lay.
Logan: you say children, I'm 34 years old and I'm a YouTuber now. So I I don't think it's just children that are aspiring on that, but I think it's interesting. The point about,
Palmer: oh, it's fine to have good YouTubers. And I think your success in this space shows that you do have at least some talent that lies there. The issue is when it is by far the most desired job in the whole,
Logan: We can't have a country of YouTubers. Yes. Yeah. That's no, very much true. It's interesting. It goes to the, I've heard you talk about the, people wanting to be lawyers or when artists or whoever within a company go to the engineers and say, why this isn't fair. You guys are getting paid more than me. Maybe. Can you speak a little bit about those?
Palmer: I know you're yeah. I've I experienced this, especially at Facebook, there was this interesting interesting dynamic where you, there was this idea that some people have that all work is of equal value.
Palmer: And this is a thing people say, they'll say all work is of [00:40:00] equal value. And so you'll have someone whose days consist of like brainstorming and sketching flowers, and thinking about how they're gonna do a sticker in the Facebook chat. And then you'll have them complain and say, why is it that engineers are valued more highly at this company?
Palmer: We live in a culture that values certain things over others. And the reality is all of our work has equal value. And I'd say the AMO super engineers would be like, no, you are wrong. Your work has less. By all definitions of the word value. That's why you're paid less. That's why there's less prestige.
Palmer: That's why there's like that. That's why it's easier to get a job doing it. And people like, how could you say that you, everyone is equal worth? They're like, no, there are certain jobs that create more value in the world for myself and for everybody else. And while wages are not a perfect reflection of value disparity, certainly there are, everyone should be able to agree that there are jobs that create more value for mankind than others.
Palmer: And that, that was yeah, there's people who would always say that, that [00:41:00] was unfair. And the thing is some of that is due to like lawyers. They have to go to law school and, go through a really painful grind, but also their. Really are terrible. Yeah. And you'll even hear this from lawyers who love practicing law.
Palmer: Nobody will say this job makes you feel good. It activates all the serotonin and dopamine on a regular that's no, this is a tough job. And one of the reasons I'm paid more is because it it sucks and you have to pay people more if they're gonna do shitty jobs. And it just it's just very interesting that huge gap, because I've always been someone where I've always thought myself is pretty, pretty rational.
Palmer: And even when I wanted to be a journalist, I never would've dreamed of going to be like, yes, my, my job as a writer is equally valuable in terms of salary as an engineer, I would have to be like, oh maybe I'm making a bigger impact in the world, but it's definitely not worth as much money as the guy who had to go to school to be an engineer.
Logan: It's interesting. You're making me think that maybe not all lawyers are just in it for the love of law.
Palmer: Oh, not at all. And a lot of lawyers aren't and a lot of doctors aren't, and [00:42:00] that's not to say that they don't find
Palmer: meaning and worth and value in it.
Palmer: And before anyone says that I'm attacking doctors and lawyers, I have a lot of doctor and lawyer, acquaintances, friends, and colleagues who will say the exact same thing.
Palmer: Look, you don't get into you. Don't get into law. If law didn't pay I probably wouldn't be doing it.
Logan: Yes. I think even if they love law, listen, they love it.
Logan: If we cut lawyer salaries in half, I think there's gonna be less of them. I just, it's a theory of mine, but I think that's
Palmer: This also gets to being in like, like executive positions.
Palmer: The people often are saying, oh, CEOs are paid too much and Csuite is paid too much. Have I know this is, this sounds like such a stereotypical rich executive thing to say, like having been on the other side, Where you are responsible for everyone's wellbeing. You're the final backstop for legal and compliance and fundraising.
Palmer: And if you don't perform, everyone's out of a job and the company's gone, like I think a lot of these guys are not paid enough, especially the ones who already have a lot of money. Like it, you, if we took CEO salaries and dropped them to be [00:43:00] remotely, like what it is to be a worker, I think most of these people would be like, man, peace out.
Palmer: I am outta here. It is not worth the extraordinary stress and demand also. They're they're seeing I, most of these people, they're not seeing their kids. They're not seeing their families. They have to give up on so many holidays on so many occasions. Cause they have to put the company first.
Palmer: Like you, you couldn't pay me enough to do the job of some of these executives that I've seen, especially in companies that are going downhill, like exec. They're like, oh, how's this company failing. And they're paying the CEO of $10 million a year. It's you know why they're paying $10 million a year?
Palmer: Because the company's failing. Yeah. You want that job. You want to go work in the place where every day your job is to try to attempt the 10% probability chance of a turnaround. That's that I, you couldn't pay me to do it with any amount of money.
Logan: It's interesting. Yeah, I it's all these things, it goes back to the incentive point between dollars and prestige and what, and it's Hey, listen, the everyone's why don't we have better people in politics? And I'm like listen, that's a pretty fucking shitty job.And [00:44:00] you don't get paid very well. And like peoplesend
Palmer: many people in politics, it's the best job they can have too. There's a lot of people where Yeah, it isn't that great of a job. And people are like, oh, pays $170,000 a year and you get benefits. It's yeah. But. You spend all your time traveling. you're basic, you're fundraising. All of time you get death threats all the time, you get death threats all the time. Your, family is now on is now being attacked by press, by random people on Twitter, you, and that never goes away even after you're a politician. It's like, why are so many politicians sociopaths.
Logan: It's listen, it takes a sociopathicperson to want that job.
Palmer: And I think a lot of the best politicians I've seen are the ones that get out of politics eventually. So like, I they'll get in cause they really wanna make a difference. And then they just can't take it, come to if you're able to survive in politics for decades. It either means that you are, You're truly a believer in your mission or you are broken in the brain in some way.
Logan: Yeah, I think that's right.
Selling Oculus
Logan: Oculus so VR, you started it at 19 sold by 21 for [00:45:00] billions two to 3 billion, depending on how count.
Palmer: What's a billion between friends?
Palmer: But, Specifically like the reason for the confusion and just for who's listening the official number was 2.3 billion. But the way that it worked out is there was also a $700 million employee employee, retention package, cuz that was a lot of the value of Oculus was the employees. And some employees had more equity than others, but you really had to make sure that people who did not necessarily have a lot of equity ownership at the time of the acquisition were sufficiently motivated that they were gonna continue working.
Palmer: And that's also true for some people that did have a lot of equity ownership where you had to make it worth hanging around instead. Immediately piecing out. That's one of the downsides of a rich tech market is, You sometimes you'll have great people brought together, they accomplish something extraordinary and then they make enough money to go spend time with their families and who can blame them.Totally. But it's a loss for the industry. When you have these you'll have a successful company. You've seen this before company IPOs and then it's right after the lockout period, half of the most talented people [00:46:00] they're gone, not just from the company, but from the workforce forever.
Palmer: I'm not saying that people shouldn't make money.I love it. But it's a, it's one of those things where if you wanna paint the whole picture, you gotta look at the, downsides too. Yeah. But that's why there was a $700 million retention package. Yeah. Make sure that those people stuck around for a few years to see through what we were doing.
Logan: And so it was 75 people when it was acquired. And by the time you left and as we touched on, In 2016, or I guess beginning 2017. Yep. How many people were at the
Palmer: About
Logan: Do you regret having yeah. Exactly. Do you regret having sold the business to Facebook?
Palmer: Not at all. It was definitely the best thing for VRbecause of the industry itself because of the financial outcome, It was, we got the resources we needed to get the rift out the door and to fund so much content that never would've gotten funded otherwise. So much of the VR content. And especially in the very early years, you have to understand, could never have survived [00:47:00] organically. The market was too small.
Palmer: Nobody could possibly have invested the money that we did to start that self-sustaining flywheel of people wanting to buy the headset so that they can play the cool games, which then leads to money that leads to more cool games, which leads to more sold headsets. To kick off that fly. Takes billions of dollars.
Palmer: Look at what it took, even just to start Xbox that took billions of dollars. And that was a game console. People understood that they were able to have ports from other consoles to their platform. Like starting a new platform, takes billions of dollars and Facebook put in the money. Now I don't agree with every tactical decision they've made, but broadly they are putting more into VR than anybody else in the world.
Palmer: And people often point to other companies, especially at the time they did, they said why not Google? Why not Microsoft? All those companies have dropped their VR initiatives. Facebook's the only one that has the singular God king leader who has the power and the money to continue investing in virtual reality, no matter what anyone says about it, shareholders, board of directors or otherwise.
Palmer: And it [00:48:00] is really hard to be unhappy with that outcome as someone who wants VR to happen. Now people say, oh, but do you really want in the hands of that particular corporation, do you really want, this particular model of advertising to take hold? And my view is like the really hard thing is.
Palmer: Getting VR to the mainstream. It's not necessarily going to happen. It, you have to make it happen. Seeing that happen is my life's work was my life's work anyway. I, it's hard for me, no matter how angry I am about how it all turned up. It's hard for me to turn around and say, because I got screwed, this was bad.
Palmer: That's just not how it is. And I got screwed.
Logan: Yeah. That's interesting. So now finally so
Palmer: oh, and I made a bunch of money. I don't want people to act I did not walk away poor. So that certainly just realistically does make it a little bit easier to rest easy.
Logan: I, no I can only imagine that I’m =told you have a wonderful house here with a lot of cool,
Palmer: I do, but I'd say I'm like, I'm probably not gonna go on the path that you've seen with other people where they've, they've departed Facebook [00:49:00] and then been very aggressively against Facebook. And we talked about this earlier. I'm not gonna do that cuz it'd be bad for the VR industry. Yeah. It'd be gratifying, huge, hugely bad thing to do if I want VR to succeed as it's currently
Logan: Yeah. Interesting.
Logan: So you took some time off after you were fired and started thinking about what you were gonna do next and you landed on Andurilw.
Palmer: about, I basically decided more or less immediately. Like we officially founded the company June 6th, 2017, which is the anniversary of the Dday invasion. But I mean I had already actually purchased some warehouse space and started buying machine shop stuff. So I knew I was doing it actually before I was a it took Facebook a while to fire me.
Palmer: They told me in January that I was being fired and then it takes a long time to fire somebody who's so deeply entangled. The company it's not just like some random person where you move over their project. It
Palmer: take takes a while.
Logan: Yeah. They don't give you a box.
Palmer:yeah, they don't give you a box and walk you out the door. But the but yeah, I, as soon as I heard I was being fired, I knew that this was what I [00:50:00] wanted to work on working on national national defense and so you've said or I've heard that the problem that existed within national security is those who can won't and those who will can't right. In terms of. And so maybe talk a little bit about what was the insight that you saw in the the industry that presented an opportunity for It was three things and it's the reason I started was cuz I saw an opportunity and also a big problem. The problems were. The major defense primes in the United States, Lockheed Northrop Raytheon were not equipped with the talent and incentives. They needed to build autonomous systems core technologies like sensor fusion and mesh networking.They were not equipped to build the systems that I thought were going to define the future of warfare and from a talent within that's right? Meaning like the, best AI experts in the world are not inside defense companies.
Palmer: They are inside of companies like Facebook, like Google, like actually I've lost people with Snapchat who are [00:51:00] excellent.They genuinely have one of the best computer vision teams in the world. People laugh cuz they think it's just a funny, social media, mustache, emoji, AR overlay app. They have excellent technologists. But all those excellent technologists are working on problems that I don't think matter all that much advertising optimization, getting a little bit more engagement in the photo applications.
Palmer: And so that, really profitable, but not meaningful in the same way, profitable, but not, and also profitable only in the sense that yes, they're doing something that is worth more than their salary, but you know how, if you're making a particular ad, 0.1% more effect, One ad product 0.1% more effective, that'll pay your salary.
Logan: But in terms of at a personal level profitable at organizational level. We can debate the meaning of life
Palmer: Exactly. A little, bit but then the, and the tech companies where all these people are are not working on defense for a variety of reasons. Some of it's ideological, most of that is a smoke screen for the executive intention, which is to preserve access to Chinese markets, Chinese capital, Chinese manufacturing, for example, They [00:52:00] couldn't work with the DOD, even if they wanted to, because 95% of their manufacturing is in China.
Palmer: They're investing another 275 billion in Chinese manufacturing, cap capacity. Like they, if they even try to move out of China, they'll be swiftly punished by the Chinese government as an example, in deterrent to other companies that might try to do the same. And so you have the largest, even the largest companies in the world are totally.
Palmer: Dependent on the Chinese communist party. And there's never been a point in history where anything was remotely like this. Imagine if during the build up to world war II, if the most valuable technology companies in the world in the United States and say, we can't work with the DOD because we need access to Imperial, Japanese manufacturing.
Palmer: Or imagine if during the cold war, if we'd said, ah, I don't think we can help the department of defense because we really see we really see the Soviet union as a huge revenue opportunity for us. We're in a position like that today, except it's even worse because back then we could have changed our mind, had a conflict broken out and we could have pivoted into it IBM serviced them back in world war II. So they did. And that, that I'll get to that in second for, but you, that is an interesting one.
Palmer: Right now we're in a position where in the us, we couldn't change our minds because we outsourced all of our manufacturing and industry. So if a war did happen, we would just be totally screwed because our big tech companies have divorced themselves from duty in a way that's never been seen in the us history.
Palmer: Now IBM was interesting cause you're right. IBM did service Germany, including under the Nazis. And I, it is a very complicated issue. Like I, IBM I think today is a very good company. Their official excuse is that they didn't understand the extent of what was happening in Nazi Germany and that when they were required to, by the government, that they did comply with the rules and stop supporting things, whether or not that's true, even in the case of IBM, literally supplying technology to the Nazis, even when they were supplying the Nazis, they were also working with the us military.And so that's what, when I say we're in a worse position today, these companies will sell technology to China because they need China to be happy. They will not sell it to the us [00:54:00] military. For exactly the same reason cuz they need China to remain happy.
Logan: So at least IBM was willing sell the both sides of the, just of the wrong. So there's two different buckets. There's the Lockheeds and the Raytheons and the Northrop Grummans.
Logan: And then there's the apple, the Googles, the, I don't know who else is in that bucket, Microsoft. And so there, and there's been at different times, Google's tried to work
Palmer: and Microsoft, by the way, there are shining light. They have said their president, Brad Smith said that us war fighters will always have access to their best technology. They did the IVAs program, building AR glasses for the us army. It's like Microsoft actually is one where I think they're doing the right thing and they are getting penalized in, in in China and other markets for it. I'm so glad that they're doing that. They're making the right call. So I just wanted to call them out outta that list.
Logan: I guess apple, Google are specific.
Palmer: I think apple and Google really apple is my favorite go-to example because they're so dependent. Without Chinese manufacturing, apple ceases to exist, people talk about apple cash reserves [00:55:00] as if it's, The lost treasure of Atlantis, it's a hundred billion dollars plus in cash sitting in the bank, they talk about that.That'll allow them to weather anything. It couldn't weather, this a hundred billion is not enough to completely reset up all manufacturing for all apple products. Many which require components that can only be made in China at present. Their company could be destroyed with the stroke of one pen. And they're the most powerful largest corporation in the entire world.
Logan: And so that's the best example. Yeah. And their business is hardware. And so that, that leads lends itself to being sold into China a little bit
Palmer: exactly. Yep, exactly.
Logan: So the insight, China is a market as well as manufacturing. Those who can won't those who will can't and so that, and so you wanted to build a Silicon valley style, Phil philosophy.
Logan: We can debate Silicon valley as a as a literal place, but as a mentality that was servicing the United States and our Western allies, is that right?
Palmer: Yeah. And I, people have had this idea before to start defense focused [00:56:00] startups and try to be a prime, but they've never been successful because of the failure of the us government.
Palmer: Primarily, if you look at the last 35 years and you've probably heard this before, cause you've seen my podcast, but for people who haven't heard it, 35 year period, there were only two unicorns in the entire defense base, ER, SpaceX, both founded by billionaires, which means investors write them off.
Palmer: And the issue with that is if you try to start a new defense company, most investors will. Or would say rather look, I don't have to understand this market to understand that you can't be successful in it. There's dozens of examples of success in enterprise software, dozens of social media, dozens of gaming, dozens on those. There's all these unicorns and all these other industries. Clearly the government is incapable of turning small defense companies in a big defense companies. And for that reason, I'm not gonna invest because investors wouldn't invest in new defense companies, smart founders, wouldn't start defense companies, smart employees wouldn't wanna work for defense.
Logan: It's all a pattern matching feedback loop and VCs in general, like I, to the credit of the industry and some, it's a very [00:57:00] rational way of operating to defend myself of and we do this a lot internally, Hey, what's the precedent or comp for, if this becomes big what do we think it can be?
Logan: And you draw analogs against, Hey, we think it can be a XYZ type company. And it's a lot easier to point to, Hey, we think it could be 10% of a Google, rather than a, Hey we don't really know, but we just think it can be really fucking big. And that's really hard when there isn't any precedent.
Logan: And we're talking about today that there's SpaceX and Palant here. Five years ago, those were still, SpaceX still is paper gains. But like back then it was even more paper gains. And so it's actually, it's very rational. And if the government isn't willing to fund and work with these startups, then you can't really get the flywheel spinning at
Palmer: That's right. And I think like the success of Anduril atRaising money and then also succeeding and winning billions of dollars in government contracts has [00:58:00] changed the game for a lot of other companies too. I think other companies have raised more on our success than we have. Yeah. Which is great. I love it. I think it's much better for the industry to set that as the norm.We were able to do it because we started with a great team. I had a lot of money we didn't have to agree to bad terms. And also we had investors that believed in our vision, and I know that sounds like a cliche At some point. But it's true.
Palmer: We were asking a pretty crazy thing of our investors.Yeah. There's never been, Like in the modern era, there is no examples of building the equivalent of Lockheed, a true defense prime building, military hardware and weapons. But we believed that it was possible. We came to them with a vision of how we were gonna pull it off and they believed in us and our first investor in annal was founders fund.
Palmer: It's worth noting. Founder's fund was also the first institutional investor in, Oculus. They were the first one to agree, to write a check for, I think it was $1 million and it was similar back then. Lots of people saying, oh, this will never work. There's never been a successful VR company in history ever. And Getting the right investors board [00:59:00] who do believe in your vision is as cliche as it sounds absolutely critical to succeeding and raising future capital.
Logan: One of the things that I think is fundamental to and your and your founding tenants of this, not just the pH philosophy of how to bring these two together, but is that that cultural equivalence is a lie, right? And that, that and I think at times, and not to bring it back to the media thing, but in times we've jumped to, Hey, every culture has its own unique uniqueness to it, and everything's special in its own way.
Logan: And to not understand that is to judge other cultures or other people and all that. You fundamentally reject that notion in starting this company, correct?
Palmer: Yes. I, every culture is different, but in particular people will say, oh no, every, no, every country is different and no country is better than one or the other's no, you can't.You can't put a value on a culture and say that one is better than the other. That's crazy to me. There are [01:00:00] cultures, there are countries and there are governments that are better or worse than others. Some people like oh, saying a culture is inferior
Palmer: is racist. It's no, this isn't about race. In fact, culture is the least race tied thing. There is culture. Definitionally is mostly about behaviors and activities. It is the furthest thing from geography or race. There are culture. That do not value free speech. There are cultures that do not value individual Liberty. There are cultures that do not value the idea of being able to decide for yourself what you will do with your own life.
Palmer: And there are many cultures that recognize use of force as an appropriate way to determine leadership. And I think that it's absolutely okay to say, you know what that is not good. It is better to have democracy and human rights and, a recognition that people have the right to choose for themselves what they want to be and what they want to do.
Palmer: And I know that sounds almost like cliche, but that's what you have to boil it down to. When you're talking about values of [01:01:00] one culture, one country, one government being different or better than others. And in in particular, I. Our system and the system that our allies have adopted in, different levels of success is superior to what for example, in Russia or in China and what they have built, then people say, oh what you really mean is what you really mean is the the Chinese government, you don't really mean the Chinese people or their culture.
Palmer: No. Their culture also has an element of it being okay to rule through application of force, to be an empire that that, that rules over people and that people don't have individual Liberty to choose their own destiny. Like that. that. is, that's not even a government thing.That is also a cultural thing. So I know it's a bit controversial, but you're right. I believe that cultures can be better than others in terms of their, the level of morality and, decency.
Logan: So we've set the backdrop for all the things that led to your current company. What do you actually do?
Palmer: So what we build is tools for the United States and our allies to deter war from happening in the first place. [01:02:00] And if it does happen to win quickly, Our we focus primarily on artificial intelligence and autonomy enabled systems.
Palmer: So we build hardware that is powered by artificial intelligence net, really high end networking, high end sensor fusion technology, really.Softwaredefined hardware enabled products that are able to solve complex missions. We build products that defend military bases from ground air and undersea Persians. We build systems that that, that protect us bases from air attacks. We build things that are used to find targets and mark them so that we can destroy them.Or If we need, if need be.
Palmer: We build a whole bunch of stuff I can't talk about today. And we also build software systems that tie together, not just our hardware, but also dozens of existing military systems into a single command and control interface that allows you to use every sensor in the mesh as a sensor for every effector in the mesh. So tying together man fighter craft Naval, destroyers ground vehicles, ground ground, ground weapons platforms all into one user interface so [01:03:00] that all the people and all the machines have access to the important data all of the time. As quickly as possible.
Palmer: I know that covers a lot of ground, but, that's where we're building, drones that, small drones that go in backpacks, large drones that go in the back of, in the back of big trucks we're building sensor towers that are deployed along the border.
Palmer: A lot, bunch of critical infrastructure, a bunch of along of mil, us military bases, a lot of counter air systems for knocking air vehicles out of the sky. But, and but before they are able to attack us and allied forces and we're deployed not only here in the us, but also all around the world on combat footprints that are seeing real action every day.
Logan: And there's two other things I think that are interesting that it feels like you've done. One is that there was an opportunity to to shortcut your way into some of these contracts by willing to go at risk, and put your balls on the table and say, Hey, we're going for this.
Logan: And we're gonna use our own money, which is not the way that the primes traditionally operate.
Palmer: We [01:04:00] use our own money and we decide what to build, how to build it and how to build it.
Palmer: And when it's done, and then we sell a product to the government you're right. Most government contracts are what's called a cost plus basis where they get paid for time and materials, which incentivizes them to actually work slowly to pick expensive solutions rather than cheap solutions.
Logan: And because there's just a little bit amount above, you're gonna get your time and then you're gonna get a little bit of profit margin on
Palmer: Exactly. You get paid typically a few percent on top of whatever your materials are. So you're actually in incentivized. To make your materials cost as material possible.
Logan: Your hourly cost is hour number of hours because if I'm getting 20% on 500 million or, and it's a 500 million project, it's better.
Palmer: If it's a billion it won't be 20%, it'll be like 4%. or 5%. Yeah. And so the people often misunderstand the severity of the issue. It would be it, people think, oh, that means that they're gonna just work on a project slower. And because they want to milk it for money, but it's worse than that. Even at the very beginning of the process, they will architect things in such a [01:05:00] way that it has to be expensive to build, because let's say that you can solve the problem for. $10,000 at that point, it's not even worth doing the paperwork.
Palmer: You you, will never architect a system that is so cheap that you can't make significant money in this model. And so what we've done is say, you know what, we're gonna try to solve the problem for first principles, and we're gonna try to build it using our own money. And then we are going to do better than everyone else and sell it to the government.Often we're selling to the government for a small fraction of the price of competing systems and performing better. And we still make more money, both in terms of absolute per absolute amount and percentage, because we are able to build cheaper systems that are still higher margin because we actually did it in an intelligent way that was trying to be efficient from the very beginning, like the first page of our first pitch deck said, Andro will save the government hundreds of billions of dollars a year by making tens of billions of dollars a year.And we're, We're well on our way, but we're not quite there
Logan: we're not. And one of the other, you're going at risk, but then you're also not doing the incrementality of [01:06:00] how the government typically operates of let's make a slightly, this one goes to 11 or faster horses or whatever the right analogy is, which is how you're doing it more from a first principle standpoint of how we can solve this problem.
Palmer: Correct. internally we always say to always trust that the customer knows what their problem is, never trust that they know what the solution is, meaning you, these are the guys who are actually getting attacked getting killed, having to carry out these missions. They know where they're struggling.
Palmer: They know where they are not winning, but you cannot count on them to then come to you and say, and this is the thing that we think you need to build to solve the problem. Because a lot of times they don't have exposure to the full set of technologies you can bring to bear. They're not experts on autonomy or artificial intelligence.
Palmer: They don't know what new sensor technologies might be possible if you invested more money into it. And so what we'd usually do is. Listen to them about what the problems. and then try to come up with better solutions than anything that they've ever thought of. And, we maintain close communication as we build the thing.
Palmer: We I like to say we [01:07:00] can't just build a Batmobile and show up and say, Hey, what do you think of this thing outta the blue? But if you keep them in the loop, then you can make sure you're building the right thing, even though the government's not paying you to do
Logan: stop, which is something you personally, and I think you encourage your employees to do as well is to try to know a lot about a lot, but at a minimum know a lot, little, a little about a lot.
Palmer: Yeah, if you know a little about a lot of different things, then you can reach outside of your you reach outside of your domain to do, To do totally different solutions that you never wanna come up. Otherwise like the government solution to an aircraft not having enough range would often be like, okay, we're gonna iterate on the compression ratio of this engine, or we're gonna spend a year trying to make the aerodynamics 5% better.But if you have people who. In a totally different world, they might say,
Palmer: Actually you could just have better flight path planning that is taking advantage of reading the air. The weather conditions in real time, as you're taking off out a hundred miles, and it could be just through that, you achieve your five, 5% improve improvement.Oh, and guess what all you needed was a cheap sensor and a [01:08:00] couple weeks of development and a person who's an, aerodynamicist never, would've even considered that as the solution to the problem. Someone who's an expert in, building new engines, never would've even considered it. And who really wouldn't have considered it. The guy who's in charge of funding that airplane he's it's not even on his radar as a possible solution to his range problem. And that. Yeah, We try to think of it from first principles. What's really the best way to solve a problem, not the best way within one particular industry. And I make sure that we have employees who who have broad experience things from different industries, not just experience in the defense sector
Logan: And that manifests itself in interesting ways. I think where instead of like autonomy, for example, in flight the failure rate, if you're trying to build it with a person flying a plane, right? The failure rate that you wanna maintain is astronomical. Cause if it fails, then the person's gonna die.
Logan: But if it's, if it fails one out of every a thousand flights and it falls off, then you can design it cheaper and have it be more effective. And actually if it falls [01:09:00] off, then it's not actually a big deal. No, one's dying.
Palmer: And it not only are you able to make things cheaper, like you could say, okay, we don't need the life support systems. We don't need to have, triple redundant oxygen systems. We don't need to x-ray every bolt because it's okay. If one out a thousand airframes ends up failing, that's just fine. It's easier to get reliability through multiplication of numbers than multiplication of reliability of each airframe, but you also actually get better capabilities. You've probably seen the new top gun. Yep. You remember the part where Tom cruise was flying and he, They talk about how he bent the airframe, flying it beyond its limits.So the thing is, when they're talking about those limits, that was actually a really clear example.
Palmer: The airframe was capable of much more than they would willingly allow a human to normally operate it at because if a person operates that aircraft that way and something goes wrong, then it's going to potentially rip apart explode and he dies. But if you have autonomy, you can say, you know what. We're gonna have all these things operating at the limit where maybe even, maybe there's even a 50% chance the aircraft is gonna destroy [01:10:00] itself during the mission by operating so hard. That's okay. Not acceptable with people. totally acceptable. If it's part of your plan with autonomous systems and autonomy is gonna enable so many advancements in, in cost reduction in capability advancement, and also in the number of systems you can manage, you can't manage thousands and thousands of airframes at the same time in an area.
Palmer: If they're manned, it just doesn't work. People are bad. Parallel computers. You literally cannot communicate over radio, fast enough to coordinate, but with autonomy, you can have a thousand airframes, all working together to do missions that are literally impossible for people to do.
Logan: Ultimately the systems in war that get used will kill people. That's what happens in war.
Logan: So one of the things I've heard you talk about is that there's that optionality presents the opportunity for morality
Palmer: Yep. actually having these opportunities. Yeah. The way I usually frame it is technological security is superiority is a prerequisite for, For [01:11:00] ethical use of technology.
Logan: Can you elaborate on what that means?
Palmer: Sure. No, no people often say that's not technically true. You could choose to use technology in a moral way, even if you're losing, but history suggests that doesn't happen.
Palmer: When you have worse technology and less power than your adversary, you will fight dirty to survive. If you want to basically use technology in the most ethical way in war, meaning you want have the lowest amount of collateral damage, you want to have the lowest amount of of friendly fire.
Palmer: You want to have the least suffering possible while still defending your country. It's much easier to do that when you are so immensely powerful. And so immensely perceptive, meaning your intelligence apparatus and surveillance apparatus for watching your enemy systems is so good.
Palmer: You can basically fight with your hands behind your back. You say, you know what, we're not going to take a pot shot at that thing when it's rolling by a civilian building, because we know we're gonna be able to kill it at any instant that we choose. We're gonna wait until a different moment. [01:12:00] It's when you have limited capabilities, when you're on the wrong side of the technological curve that you start to say, you know what?
Palmer: We have to take whatever shot we can get. Oh, it is that an enemy soldier? Or is that a farmer? I don't know. And I'm not willing to risk those five guys over there. I'm gonna take the shot. A lot of the worst ethical decisions that we have made as a country and war have been when we are not in a good position to win.
Palmer: And I think that's true for almost any other country that wants to survive. And so what the reason I say technological superiority is a prerequisite for ethical superiority is because it's only when you have the technological high ground that you can be reasonably. Expected us or anyone else to take the ethical high ground and take a basically strategic hit because you believe in doing the right in, and there's this uniquely American complex of, and it's probably manifested from movies and journalism And in terms of cultural superiority, I will say one of the things I love about American military culture is the mentality of not leaving your [01:13:00] troops behind not abandoning them, even when it is extraordinarily costly in treasure and in additional life to recover people.I I think that is something that many cultures do not have. And I think it's a very positive thing that. Treats the value of human life appropriately. There's a lot of places where the value of human life is treated as less. And I think it deprives them of so much in the long run when they treat human life, as a cog in the machine that can be thrown away rather than another chance for a brilliant person to make a big difference.
Palmer: So I know that's not what we're talking about, but it's another one of those things where I, when I think about ethical superiority, it's not just about winning the war. It's about I want to kill as few of their people as possible. I want as few of people of my people to die as possible.And you, I think that for us to value life that. you have to be in a position to act on it.
Logan: Yeah, technological superiority leading to ethical superiority or the opportunity for that leads to where's the opportunity necessarily. Yeah. Yeah. It's not inherent that's gonna be the case as China and Russian [01:14:00] will present. But there is this uniquely American philosophy with how we operate and almost everything it's, it could be a pandemic.
Logan: It could be any crisis that we're ultimately faced with that. Hey, we're if we galvanize and pool all resources to something we can, will something into existence and actually your industry now doesn't exactly work like that. And I'm sure it's manifested itself in some ways and become more commonplace with what's going on in the Ukraine, but why do we need to build way ahead of.
Logan: The need for these solutions that are actually practical from a war standpoint, why is actually prepping for what could happen the best way to prevent stuff from happening?
Palmer: Because you want to build the things that you need. Before the war happens, the whole point of the war machine is not to win wars it's to deter wars. You want to build tools that are so powerful that you're, and it like most wars happen when one or both sides misestimate the [01:15:00] strength of their adversary.
Palmer: I, if they know that they're going to lose, it's possible, they'll go to wars. And, as a matter of honor but rare usually if your adversary will win, then you will not fight him. If you think that he's weaker than he is, then you might fight him. And if he actually is weak, you also will fight him.
Palmer: So it, it's not just about being strong. It's about making sure that the other side knows how strong you are, so they can factor that into their calculus. And what I always tell people is if. What happens is you'll have Ukraine gets invaded. Everyone says, oh my God, I wanna do something to help.
Palmer: I want to build drones for Ukraine. I wanna try to help as much as I can. The time to help is not after the invasion. At that point, you're already screwed. There's already people dying. There's already cities being leveled. You wanna build things long ahead of that so that you can deter that conflict from ever happening in the first place.
Palmer: And that's especially true when you're living in a society like the United States where we've given away so much of our manufacturing capacity that we can't afford to pivot in after the fact, world war II, we pivot our entire industrial machine [01:16:00] to being a war machine. And our industrial machine is not nearly as powerful as it once was.
Palmer: That's not an option anymore. And so it's not E even if you don't believe in the deterrence factor, If you wanna win the war, you also have to start building these things far ahead of time. So that, that's my, my, my principle here, the reality is to stop the conflict. You have to build things long before the invasion happens.
Palmer: And this is the case for Taiwan as well. If Taiwan gets invaded, it will because we did not build the right things to make sure that they're two, like Taiwan doesn't need the power to beat China in a war, right? That, that's not what Taiwan wants. That's not what Australia wants. They want the tools that they need to make themselves too prickly to step on.
Palmer: That's all they want. And if they do get invaded it's because we gave them the wrong tools and they weren't prickly enough. I've talked many times about if Taiwan gets invaded and then everyone says, oh my God, how could we have predicted this? If only someone had known that this would happen?
Palmer: It'll drive me [01:17:00] nuts cuz it's very apparent today that they are not prickly enough.
Logan: so you went over to Ukraine pretty recently.
Palmer: That's right I talked with Zelensky a few times, but that was the first time I've ever been to Ukraine.
Logan: what's your opinion on the state? I assume you keep up with it pretty closely and what you can disclose or not. Yeah. What what's your view on the state of play as it stands in, whatever mid-September 20, 22.
Palmer: I think that there is a decent chance that this is going to turn into a very long term conflict, which is not what anyone wants. It's not what the us wants. It's certainly not what Ukraine wants. And then obviously it's not what Russia wants. They thought this was gonna be easy. They roll in, they take the country, they parade through the streets and they'd be done.
Palmer: The Ukrainians are fighting incredibly well, given the tools that they have shown immense courage in going. Into danger, not because they have to but because they want to stay and defend their country. And that's a that's something that we haven't really seen. We haven't really seen in, in recent times is they are well [01:18:00] a well armed modernish fighting force.
Palmer: That's willing to put themselves in that situation. I think that in the long run, they are gonna be able to push Russia out of Ukraine. The biggest issue that they're going to have is keeping some of these Eastern parts of Ukraine. Like when Putin says that that these parts of Ukraine are Russian I don't wanna give him a propaganda victory, but like to some degree he is correct.
Palmer: Culturally you do have places in Ukraine that identify as more Russian they speak Russian. They actually like Putin, it, there's probably no equivalent quite like it in the United States. Imagine if in the United States, there were like a bunch of people in Alaska who actually wish that Alaska was still part of Russia that would make it a really tough place to hold.
Palmer: And so I think the toughest thing they face in the long run may not be the Russian armed forces proper, but rather a, insurgency that is armed and funded by the Russian government over the long run in the near term. I think they're gonna be able to push Russia back out and take most of that territory back I'm very [01:19:00] optimistic.
Logan: So you're on your second wildly successful company. Anduril was most recently valued at
Palmer: We're in the middle. We're in the middle of raising a round.
Logan: Okay.
Palmer: So our last, round was 4.6 billion, Exactly twice the purchase price of Oculus.
Logan: Amazing how those coincidences work out. Those numbers work. Yeah. It's all, it's almost like the arbitrary.
Palmer: Yeah. Or that the CEO has some pride in the numbers and continuing to put doubters for help. A lot. A lot of, it's true. I've talked about this many times.
Palmer: I, I have a chip on my shoulder and so I cannot help, but. I wanna show people that I'm somebody. Yeah. That I was not a one hit wonder cuz I was terrified that's what would happen post Oculus that I would be the thing that I did, I'd be the, I'd be the, I'd be the music artist that had that one hit and was never able to recapture the magic.
Palmer: And it's not even just, it's not even just about proving that I'm somebody it's also like that would, for me be very sad if I had to confront that within [01:20:00] realize that’s all I'm good for. So I'm in a much better place ha having done well again,
Logan: you haven't actually, or for brief periods of time, you've been the CEO of what's been your role between Oculus and Anduril.
Palmer: Very brief, I, I actually started Oculus. In April of 2012. And for a while, it was just me. And that was the case through announcing Oculus and the launch of the Oculus rift. But that was when it was just me very shortly afterwards. Like I think I think in September of 2000, so I, we launched our Kickstarter in August of 2012.
Palmer: We raised a million dollars in about an hour, and then we ended up closing about 2.4 million by the end of the campaign. And then at some point in early September was when was when I gave away the job of CEO to somebody else. being CEOs. It is, it's a tough job.
Palmer: It's not the one that I want to have. So I guess as for my role, I basically have operated in both cases at my title is [01:21:00] founder and I operate. Quasi CTO capacity, except I also except I also get to metal with everything that's not technology, which most CTOs get get get chewed away
Logan: what so what is it? The CEO job I know is hard, but also it takes a certain level of both self awareness and egoless to not want that title. To some extent people wanna wear that, that crown. Is that something that you've always had? Was it something you realized in doing the job itself?
Logan: You could also call yourself CEO and delegate these responsibilities and just be like I'm the CEO, but I don't really do that stuff, which I know people do as well. How do you think about it?
Palmer: People are the result of their social programming to a huge degree. Free will is I think real, but hugely conditioned by what you've been exposed to in life.
Palmer: And. Clear, like in my value system, being a CEO is not a thing that makes me ego full. I've always like when in media I like the crazy weird mad scientist guy who builds all the tech. I like the guy who makes everything [01:22:00] go. Maybe he's the guy who's getting yelled at by the CEO to, to that.
Palmer: Now's not the time for his latest, crazy thing. And those are the people that I've always thought were the most interesting.
Logan: Yeah. You do a good job of the Hawaiian shirt and the shorts and all that. You, you lean into this, like Tony stark LARPing as a eccentric
Palmer: All, that's and the thing is, this is how I dressed all through high school and all through college. So to a certain degree, it's just me saying, look, I refuse to change. I refuse to have been changed. I want to believe that I'm still the same person, but like I've often pondered.
Palmer: If I really had any choice, but to start Oculus people are like, oh you had these breakthroughs in VR tech in AZA hobby, but why did you decide to, start a company rather because in history of the future, it might, it mentioned that Sony had a standing job offer to me to run a VR lab at PlayStation group.
Palmer: And People are like, why did you start your own company instead of taking that job and looking back? I think I literally couldn't have made a different decision because I've seen so much media what do you do when you're placed in this moment where, it's this one time where you can decide to do it on your own and, make this [01:23:00] incredible impact.
Palmer: You have to do it. I had no choice, but to drop outta school, I had no choice, but to start my own company, but I didn't necessarily want to be CEO. That wasn't part of my fantasy. Yeah. The fantasy was, taking that leap and starting the company And so I think we talked earlier about how there's people who, you know, before, before we were on, we talked about how there's people who they wanted to, they want to get into VC.
Palmer: And it's really interesting. I think a lot of people, they think it's like really cool to be a partner at a VC firm. And it's not good to get into a role cause you just want that ego booze, right? You shouldn't be a CEO because you want that CEO name tag. You shouldn't be a venture capitalist cuz you wanna that venture capitalist name tag you have to want to do the things that those jobs entail.
Palmer: And I see a lot of people who want the ego part more than the other part.
Logan: and if you chase, especially what I've seen is whatever, especially person, when you talking to ego list and giving up the CEO, however, my it's narrative centric of what what you’ve heard and where exactly.
Palmer: Yeah. Oh, It's totally narrative centric. My life. My life is a, story and I like I like the story [01:24:00] better when I'm not the CEO.
Logan: It's interesting. Now what about you've mentioned that you saw, you recognized that at one point you were at, you were the bottleneck, you were the best at doing a lot of things within your company and you thought that was cool. And then you realized actually that's fucking terrible.
Palmer: Yeah. This was a really painful thing for me to go through in the Oculus days where I realized that in order to be success, like the job of an executive is to make themselves obsolete. Your job is to hire people who are better than you at everything.
Palmer: Not just the things that you hate doing. Everyone does that. Oh, they love to hire someone to be their admin who handles their schedule. Cuz they hate doing that. You have to be the guy who hires someone who's better than you at doing the things you like doing that sucks. It's very painful because for a time I was you, there was a time at Oculus where I was the best and only optical op optical, opto, mechanical engineer.
Palmer: And I realized as time went on that as much as I liked working on the optical systems and as much as I liked, designing hardware. The, I was basically playing house. I was just doing [01:25:00] it because it was fun. And it was to the detriment of our customers. It was to the detriment of my team. It was detri to the detriment of my investors.
Palmer: Like I look, I like electrical design too. I can lay out a board, but I'm not that good at it. I should obviously hire somebody who's much better than me at electrical design, do that. And any time that I spend doing that, instead of things that I am uniquely capable of doing is time where I'm just doing it for myself and hurting everyone else.
Palmer: And that was really painful to go through to realize that the job of a tech company, founder is not to build the technology it's to build the company. It's I, when college kids ask me about, they say, oh, I Palmer, I love programming. What's your advice on starting a tech company? I say, if you wanna work on tech, you need to go work for somebody else.
Palmer: Yeah. Don't do it. If you wanna work on nonstop, bullshit, start your own company because that's actually what you're signing up to do. And I'm okay with it. Now I went into this and with. Eyes wide open. I knew what was happening. But I'm glad I got to go through that in Oculus and realized that your job is to hire people who are better than you at the things that you like doing.
Palmer: And you just have, you have [01:26:00] to be okay with that. And if you're not okay with it, I highly recommend if not working, I if not working for somebody else, at least not not trying to build, not trying to build a company, be an independent contractor or work for somebody else, but don't build a large organization around yourself.
Palmer: If what you really want to do is, type code into the keyboard or lend into the Z max. Yeah.
Logan: Palmer lucky. That's all I got. Thanks for doing this, man. Thank you so much. This has been blast. This is a lot of fun and thanks for being authentically yourself and answering all these questions for people's benefit. Palmer walked in sight unseen, all the stuff we were gonna go through and just riffing here. Yeah, really appreciate it. Way more fun having to go through a bunch of than happened. Way more fun. Thank you, sir.
Palmer: Sounds good.