Palmer Luckey, the virtual-reality prodigy who sold Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, says that payday granted him entry to an ultra-exclusive group chat called the "B Boys Club."
What Happened: The only password to the group chat is a unicorn-level exit: founders must have sold a company for at least $1 billion. "It's all boys who have sold a company for at least $1 billion," Luckey told Peter Diamandis on the "Moonshots" podcast. While he insists women aren't barred, none are in the thread.
That omission is striking given deals like L'Oréal's $1.2 billion purchase of IT Cosmetics from co-founder Jamie Kern Lima in 2016.
By club standards, Instagram's Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger (sold to Facebook for $1 billion in 2012) would qualify easily. So would WhatsApp's Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who fetched $19 billion two years later. Slack co-founder Stewart Butterfield dwarfs them all, exiting to Salesforce for $27.7 billion in 2021.
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Some of the planet's richest men, however, are stuck on read. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg, who’s worth roughly $226 billion by Bloomberg's latest count, never actually sold Facebook, so he's out, as are Bill Gates, Sam Altman and Warren Buffett.
What To Know: Luckey, now valued by Forbes at about $2.5 billion thanks to defense-tech startup Anduril, spends his chat time "shaming" peers into using their fortunes for more than vintage race cars.
"Guys, you have so much money. Why are you not doing what you know is the right thing to do with this capital?" he recalled messaging.
Luckey believes founders should personally build the world they envision instead of outsourcing philanthropy. Some converts are redirecting cash; others, he concedes, still prefer the fast lane. "I'm not saying everyone should become a vigilante crime fighter, but why wouldn't you use your resources to do the thing that you know needs to be done?" Luckey said.
Image via Just dance/Shutterstock
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