This $3B Founder Is The Next Elon Musk (#499)

TL;DR

Brett Adcock sold Vettery for $110M, then invested nearly all proceeds into Archer Aviation (eVTOL aircraft, went public at ~$3B valuation) and later founded Figure (humanoid robots). He repeatedly went nearly bankrupt funding these ventures, learned hardware from scratch by cold-calling 300 experts and taking courses, and argues that hardware is simpler than software because physics constrains th

Key insights

• Adcock put virtually all of his Vettery windfall into Archer and later Figure, living off cash with no salary for years and taking a second mortgage on his house to fund Figure.
• He learned aerospace engineering by building a spreadsheet of 300 people (NASA, professors, industry experts) and cold-calling them for six months, plus attending a two-day electric aircraft design co
• He nearly went personally bankrupt during Figure’s first year: his Archer stock was locked up, stock price dropped 75%, burn rate was seven figures per month, and he had to sell stock daily to pay pay