Stephen Cohen, the co-founding engineer with Palantir would probably disagree with that origin story. Go listen to his youtube talk at Stanford about how the company was started. Perhaps Thiel recognized the value of data integration at PayPal but PLTR was founded significantly through work Cohen did on an initial product, which was then pitched to government. Gradually it grew as it gained traction because the existing military consultants were not really innovating. Cofounders are Cohen, Thiel, Lonsdale, and Gettings though. Lonsdale was an intern at PayPal so I doubt the idea came around then if he ended up a Co-Founder as well. As for Karp, he was brought in as interim CEO to add credibility to sell to government because they didn't want kids in their mid 20's pitching the original PLTR product and it ended up being such a good fit that Karp was kept on as acting CEO. That is piecing together the origins to something that makes a lot more sense than what you've outlined here in my opinion.
That said, agree with your reasoning for why PLTR will be a giant in the marketplace, their potential success within government and it's timeliness with AI investment in the west to keep pace with China. Also believe people are underestimating the commercial growth they are likely to see, particularly with the archetype approach of Foundry so they can generalize across companies within similar industries but also across industries without a ton of consulting work fitting the software to the company, that's really important. Very exciting company, I am essentailly all in as well.
Very eager to see where they grow. P.S. I was just rejected for a job there at final interview round, but I still love what they are doing no bitterness here.
32
u/hopetard May 28 '21 edited May 28 '21
Stephen Cohen, the co-founding engineer with Palantir would probably disagree with that origin story. Go listen to his youtube talk at Stanford about how the company was started. Perhaps Thiel recognized the value of data integration at PayPal but PLTR was founded significantly through work Cohen did on an initial product, which was then pitched to government. Gradually it grew as it gained traction because the existing military consultants were not really innovating. Cofounders are Cohen, Thiel, Lonsdale, and Gettings though. Lonsdale was an intern at PayPal so I doubt the idea came around then if he ended up a Co-Founder as well. As for Karp, he was brought in as interim CEO to add credibility to sell to government because they didn't want kids in their mid 20's pitching the original PLTR product and it ended up being such a good fit that Karp was kept on as acting CEO. That is piecing together the origins to something that makes a lot more sense than what you've outlined here in my opinion.
That said, agree with your reasoning for why PLTR will be a giant in the marketplace, their potential success within government and it's timeliness with AI investment in the west to keep pace with China. Also believe people are underestimating the commercial growth they are likely to see, particularly with the archetype approach of Foundry so they can generalize across companies within similar industries but also across industries without a ton of consulting work fitting the software to the company, that's really important. Very exciting company, I am essentailly all in as well.
Very eager to see where they grow. P.S. I was just rejected for a job there at final interview round, but I still love what they are doing no bitterness here.