Luminar This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.
Luminar CEO Austin Russell is the youngest self-made billionaire after taking his company public via a special-purpose acquisition company merger last month.
It s a Silicon Valley tale: Russell has built inventions since his childhood and dropped out of Stanford when he got the Thiel Fellowship to work on Luminar.
He disrupted innovation in an emerging industry, developing nontraditional lidar sensors that help self-driving cars see the road.
Luminar s future looks promising, but it still has a few obstacles to overcome. Russell s billionaire status depends on Luminar s ability to execute.
New class includes 24 entrepreneurs in Software, Healthcare, Blockchain and more
SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The Thiel Foundation today named 24 people into the 2020 class of Thiel Fellows. The Fellowship program, which launched in 2011, encourages talented young people to pursue big ideas and start companies instead of attending college.
“Of all the bad ideas permeating college campuses, the worst is the self-serving myth that everybody has to go to college, and pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to do it,” said Blake Masters, President of the Thiel Foundation. “This is even more obvious when ‘college’ just means wasting time on Zoom.”
Cory Levy This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.
Investor Cory Levy publicly announced Z Fellows on Tuesday, a one-week fellowship program that gives new founders $10,000 to start their own companies.
The program includes mentors like Founders Fund general partner Keith Rabois and Naval Ravikant, the founder of Angel List. I realized that a lot of people are in that position where they may be working on some stuff, tinkering on stuff, and they are in school full-time, he told Business Insider. There s no dedicated program to serve that community of people.
Author Bio
John Rosevear is the senior auto specialist for Fool.com. John has been writing about the auto business and investing for over 20 years, and for The Motley Fool since 2007.
Follow @john rosevear
In this episode of
Industry Focus: Energy, Nick Sciple chats with Motley Fool senior auto specialist John Rosevear about two recent IPOs in the auto space and the innovations they are bringing in the electric-vehicle battery and self-driving technologies. They also look at what the old stalwarts of the industry are up to. In addition, they discuss the growth potential of these two businesses and the potential challenges they may face, and whether they make good investments. John also shares the trends he is looking forward to in 2021, and much more.