Palmer Luckey is best known for the billion-dollar sale of Oculus and for building defense giant Anduril. But long before those headline-grabbing bets, he had a side hustle, a retro-gaming project he started as a teenager that is now reportedly in talks for funding at a $1 billion valuation.
The Teenage Hobby He Never Dropped
ModRetro did not begin as a polished startup deck. It started as a teen-run online forum for video game console modifications, built around Luckey’s obsession with old-school gaming hardware. Years later, even as he built Oculus and then Anduril, he kept returning to that side project instead of letting it die in the usual graveyard of “someday” ideas.
That is the real lesson here is that not every side hustle begins as a startup idea. Sometimes it starts as a nerdy fixation you keep feeding on nights and weekends while your main career does the heavy lifting. Luckey later said he had been working on the “ultimate Game Boy-inspired device” off and on as a hobby for almost 17 years.
How A Passion Project Became Real Money
That hobby turned into ModRetro Chromatic, a $199 handheld launched in 2024 that mimics the original Game Boy while remaining compatible with classic Game Boy cartridges. The company is now led by former Anduril and Oculus engineer Torin Herndon and raised $19 million in 2024, according to a Financial Times report last week.
Now comes the question of scale. The Financial Times reported that ModRetro is discussing a new round that could value it at $1 billion, with a reimagined Nintendo 64-style console expected next.
What Everyday Builders Can Take From It
Luckey’s story is not about quitting your job and chasing a dream without working out the basics. It is closer to building the thing you cannot stop caring about, even when your résumé gets louder than your hobby. It’s about the possibility of a side hustle quietly becoming a major sequel in the background.
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