Palmer Luckey

We knew we were gonna build these products on top of it.

What we were most concerned about was getting people in DOD and the political side

to believe in what we were doing, to believe that cost plus contracting was broken, to believe that a small player could be a large player in the space if given the chance.

Obviously, it's worked out pretty well, but I think Anduril probably has done just as much on the government relations and institutional engagement side as we have on the tech side in terms of what contributed to our success.

I think you need to think about existing systems in terms of the institutions and the people and the traditions and the politics, yes.

The technology, probably no.

Obviously, you can learn from existing technology.

But in my experience, it's good to trust people when they tell you what their problems are, but don't trust what they think the solution is.

There's so many companies that look at the solution space that exists and then say, ah, I can do that somewhat better.

I can do that somewhat cheaper.

And the reality is, is that rarely are companies

impactful businesses built on doing something a little better, a little cheaper.

If you're not that different from those guys, it means they're going to have an easy time adapting from you, whatever you come up with, because you're not competing with what they have today.

You're competing with what they're going to have after they look at what you're doing and then cross implement it or learn from what you're doing.

That's the thing that a lot of startups miss.

They say, oh, look at this, like Oracle division doing this thing, the small side of Oracle.

I think I can do better than that service.

And I have to remind them, well, first of all, guys, let's say it takes you two years to build that.

You're not competing with what they have today.

You're competing with what they have in two years.