A dropout living in a trailer, he got $1 million from Peter Thiel at 19—now he's a billionaire who says the American Dream isn't dead

Photo of Palmer Luckey (Credit: Getty Images)

The billionaire Oculus and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey says he’s living proof the American Dream is alive and well. He went from a teen college dropout who was living in a trailer to selling his first company to Facebook (now Meta) for $2 billion by just 21 years old—and he says that rags-to-riches rise could happen only in America.

“I was a 19-year-old kid working a minimum wage job with no college degree, living in a 19-foot camper trailer, and Peter Thiel gave me a million dollars when nobody else would to start Oculus,” Luckey told the Hoover Institution. “That’s not happening in China, I’ll tell you that.”