Palmer Luckey seemed like any other kid. He was the oldest of three sisters, was homeschooled by his mom, and enjoyed electronics and engineering. however, he was heavily invested in technology; so much so that experimented with many complex electronics like lasers and railguns. these experiments sometimes resulted in some pretty serious injury, but Luckey wouldn’t let these setbacks stop him. Palmer was particularly infatuated with the virtual world. he built a gaming rig worth tens of thousands of dollars with a six monitor setup, yet that didn’t satisfy him. He wanted to change the game; was there a way to completely immerse yourself in the virtual world and create a reality where everything you saw was made of code? this is where Luckey began to chase after virtual reality. along this journey, he founded an online community that was focused on flipping old tech. he also found a job as a part time engineer at USC experimenting with cost-effective virtual reality to treat PTSD war victims. on his own, Palmer was hard at work. when he turned 16, he was building several low latency, haptic enabled headsets. how did he get the money for this? Luckey bought, repaired, and resold damaged iPhones; estimates say he made around 36,000 dollars from this endeavor. Palmer kept refining his VR headsets until he started his own company in April 2012: Oculus VR. After this, he quickly gained attention from many tech companies, including Valve and Facebook. Palmer eventually sold Oculus for 2 billion dollars to Facebook, and also a contract worth $967 million to work with the U.S. Air Force on ABMS. Palmer Luckey’s story is a real-life example of sticking to what you love to do; you never know what heights that will take you to.

Brian Chesky is one of the most influential men in the travel business. Back in the day, you had to book a small and pricey hotel room if you wanted to travel anywhere for business or leisure. Brian turned this idea on its head. He got into the entrepreneurship game during his time in college, but his ideas in school always fell through. after he graduated, he took a job at 3DID as a strategist and industrial designer. Brian ended up relocating to San Fransico with his co-worker Joe Gebbia, where they became roommates in the city. In October 2007, the Industrial Designers Society of America came to hold their annual meeting in San Fransico, which led to all the hotels in San Fransico to be overbooked. Chesky and Gebbia pounced on this opportunity; they rented their apartment out to those travelers who weren’t able to get hotel rooms in the city. They bought a couple air mattresses and named their idea “Airbed and Breakfast”, and it was an instant success. The duo continued with their idea, and eventually added another founder to their company in February of 2008. Soon after, the Airbnb name was born, which was launched with an accompanying app. Business was booming, but the trio needed some funding to continue the business at its full potential. Thus, they created some special edition cereals based off the presidential candidates at the time, who were Barak Obama and John McCain. During this first year in business, they established offices in Europe, sponsored the Summer Olympics, and eventually reached their 100-billion-dollar valuation in December 2020. There were a couple hurdles to jump, whether it had to do with housing or taxing laws, but this idea could not be stopped with mere legal constraints. Brian Chesky is a perfect example of the entrepreneur who bootstraps their company and doesn’t stop despite difficulty.

Sean Rad is a legend in the online dating world. he singlehandedly changed the landscape of online dating and dating as a whole with his mobile app called “Tinder”. as a young adult, he became interested in mobile technology, and eventually started his own company in college. Rad’s first company was call Orgoo, a unified communications platform, which incorporated tech from that early 2000’s era. unfortunately, that venture did not work out; Orgoo failed, but that didnt stop Sean from honing his entrepreneurial skills. in 2006, he founded Adly, a platform that facilitated celebrity branding. eventually, Rad dropped out of college to pursue these entrepreneurial projects. unlike Orgoo, Adly was successful, and Sean continued to run the platform for a few years. however, Rad sold Adly and joined hatch labs, which was an incubator for mobile apps. this was where Sean flourished, designing the future of the internet and social media interaction. in hatch labs, he was put in charge of Cardify, a retail card app. during his tenure at the labs, he began to contemplate the idea of a dating app based off of mutal attraction, or a hot-or-not for mobile. originally, this platform was called matchbox. after Seans dating platform idea won a work competition, the Cardify team was tasked to develop this idea furthur. at the end of 2012, matchbox was put out to the public under a new name: Tinder. by early 2013, Tinder had over 400,000 users, and a billion matches soon after. the appeal of Tinder was the gamification of meeting people. this concept was so widely acclaimed that Tinder earned a spot on the top 25 apps on the market, as well as get Sean Rad a “best new startup of 2013” award. this demonstrates a principal of entrepreneurship that Sean Rad exemplified; when you have a hunch, run with it! when you work with that, you can come up with something great.