Palmer Luckey on why founder-led companies win

June 24, 2025

Palmer recalls Mark Zuckerberg investing in Facebook’s AI research lab as early as 2014 or 2015:

“A lot of people — including the public markets — saw it as a folly. They saw it as Mark working on this ridiculous thing, burning money, that was totally a waste of time.”

Ten years later, it was obviously the right call. Palmer believes this is why founder-led companies are special:

“These founder-led companies can make bets that a hired executive would never make. You would never have hired CEO from the outside — who’s also thinking about what his next job is going to be — burn billions of dollars on this technology that everyone thinks is a total waste of time when they’re going to be punished for it quarter after quarter.”

He continues:

“None of those guys are usually even around long enough to see the fruits of that labor, and even if they were, there are probably safer bets they could make. But founder-led companies can afford to do that because they can say, ‘This is my company. I care more about it than anybody. And I’m going to do the right thing for it in the long-run.’ It’s a powerful thing.”