What it Took For a 17-Year-Old to Transform the Automotive Industry ... and Become the Youngest Self-Made Billionaire

When I first met Austin Russell at his Hacker House on a hilltop in Portola Valley in 2015, he told me his aspiration was to build a category-defining company that improves automotive safety and saves lives—and take it public. Last week, Austin did it. And in the process, he also became the world's youngest self-made billionaire.

At Canvas, we initially invested in Austin in Luminar's Seed round and then the Series A. My partners and I are always looking for the best founders poised to create real, meaningful value in areas that require the most bold thinking and creation. The bet on Luminar was not obvious at the time, and Elon Musk was actively speaking out against LiDAR. But I saw something very special in Austin. At his core, Austin sees the world differently. Entrepreneurs like Austin are set apart by this kind of perspective; it is what enables them to build companies that transform technology and transcend the norms. Austin reminded me of the early stories I had heard about Gates or Jobs.

As a VC, our job is to pattern match. As such, I thought it would be helpful to shed light on what sets Austin apart so that we can all spot the next brilliant entrepreneur building a company poised to change our lives for the better.   

Austin sets legitimately audacious goals. He set out to create the uncrashable car. To do so was not trivial. Along the way, he had to reinvent every major component of the LiDAR stack from the chip up - including the receiver, scanning mechanism and laser - as well as develop the software it runs on. Any single piece of the stack would be significant. He built it all from the ground up because it was necessary to meet the incredibly high standards of the automotive industry. As a result, he has created a formidable moat and holds the largest patent portfolio of any LiDAR company, more than the top 5 others combined. 

Austin didn’t look for validation from others. In our first meeting, Austin explained that other LiDAR companies would have to “defy the laws of physics” in order to work. As a chemical engineer who spent time at a nuclear research reactor, I appreciated his explanation and dug in to understand his approach and the technology. Austin didn’t care that Elon Musk and others declared that LiDAR was unnecessary. The claim that cameras were good enough did not make sense - they only see in 2D rather than 3D, and don’t work well at night or in poor weather. Austin was confident high performance LiDAR provided the solution, and it could be produced at a reasonable cost. When other venture capitalists did not invest because they saw it as too risky, Austin was unphased.

He recently told me, “Everyone in venture talks about backing bold and transformative technology. They really don’t do it. They just make incremental bets with short time horizons.”   

Austin has a long time horizon. When I was 25, I remember feeling that five years was eternity. However, Austin embraced the long-game needed to work with the automotive industry. When I met him, he had a handful of initial pilots. We explained that working with automakers would take years. He understood and didn’t flinch. Five years later, Luminar has landed 50 commercial partnerships including 7 of the 10 large automakers. They have production deals with Volvo, Daimler Trucks and Mobileye. These deals were years in the making, and the production cycles can be five years out. Austin understood and embraced the timeline as necessary from the beginning. 

Austin ALWAYS asks questions. Over the years, I have learned that nothing in Austin’s life was ever “conventional.” Even on the most basic of assumptions, he asks “Why?”. He does so without arrogance - he truly wants to understand and run it through his own filter. His parents deserve a lot of credit here - they gave him “floors and not ceilings.” As a result, Austin took a non-traditional and largely self-guided path following his interests, and he had no fear of failure or concern about being on a different track. He didn’t complete a traditional high school education, and instead he spent much of his time on independent optics and computing projects while also performing research at the Beckman Laser Institute. By the time he was 17, he was recruited into Stanford by professors in the Applied Physics Department, while also founding Luminar to translate his technology concepts into real world applications. He then left before completing his first year as part of the Thiel Fellowship, going all-in on Luminar.  

Austin doesn’t stop. Some founders would see an IPO as a victory and take a break. Austin is not that person. He is full of ideas about what he’s doing today, tomorrow, and in the next few years to see this technology become the standard for next-generation automotive safety and autonomy starting in 2022. He knows there’s still a lot of work to be executed on, and yet he’s as energized today as he was five years ago when I met him. 

I’m equally energized for what’s next. I will always be looking to meet others with attributes like Austin. And I sincerely hope that my fellow VCs and I will continue to make the bold bets to support these kinds of critical innovations that will save so many lives and their often non-traditional, visionary founders.