21 ms·

Inside Palantir

569 points by JimDash2145 10y ago

vonnik 10y ago
This article is much more interesting than its fairly predictable headline implies. While the secrecy of Palantir has served as clickbait for many years, there's actually real news in this. And the news is about the difficulties of scaling a services-heavy, on-prem software company that basically rents out forward-deployed engineers at 10s of millions of dollars per year. Especially when the software is an open-source stack, and the engineers are increasingly junior as the companies grows. That said, it's still great at sales. Big numbers there...
- dang 10y ago
  We took the questionable baity bit out of the title.
- openplatypus 10y ago
  It seems to be perfect (and unfair to clients) business model. Same was described by Zed Shaw about ThoughtWorks. 1) Get expensive contract 2) Drop in junior (riding the fame that you only hire top engineers) 3) Train them on the job and bill the customer 4) Move trained consultant to work on internal project/high value stuff, replace with fresh blood 5) Repeat
- amiraliakbari 10y ago
  > Especially when the software is an open-source stack Is there specific information about stack used by Palantir? I just saw a few videos presenting their products.
  - vonnik 10y ago
    Apache Hadoop, Hive and Pig, among others. https://www.palantir.com/wp-assets/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Palantir-Solution-Overview-Cyber-long.pdf https://www.palantir.com/wp-assets/wp-content/uploads/2013/1... And actually, it's usually an enterprise distro such as Cloudera's CDH rather than Apache Hadoop itself, which is kind of a nightmare.
Analemma_ 10y ago
Apparently they're not doing well. Good riddance. Palantir is creepy as hell. For all the snark about how startups and places like Apple are run like cults, like in The Circle, Palantir is the one outfit I know of where the stereotype is really true. And in the post-Snowden world where we know for sure just how all-devouring the US intelligence's community's desires are regarding our privacy, the last thing we need is Silicon Vally outfits helping them out. Assuming Karp can't right the ship again, I will not be sorry to see them go.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  It's a great article but I agree with you: to heck with Palantir.
  - noir_lord 10y ago
    To hell with Palantir and the people who work for it. I'd sooner serve fries than contribute to the shit they do.
  - secfirstmd 10y ago
    "Spies Sans Frontières? How CIA-linked Palantir is gaining ground in the aid industry (and why some humanitarians are worried)" https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2016/03/07/spies-sans-fronti%C3%A8res https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2016/03/07/spies-san...
    - stevenbedrick 10y ago
      Software like Palantir's is a classic example of a dual-use technology.
- api 10y ago
  Sure it's creepy, but there's also something else I've been suspecting about all this surveillance for years: it doesn't really work. Moral, ethical, and political problems aside is mass surveillance snake oil? Is there really any credible evidence that mass surveillance has stopped any significant terror attacks? Can you really find needles in haystacks reliably without drowning in false positives?
CydeWeys 10y ago
> If you have information or tips, you can contact this reporter over an encrypted chat service such as Telegram, Signal, or WhatsApp, at 310-617-1302. You can also send an encrypted email to will.alden@buzzfeed.com, using the PGP key found here. This is the best "contact me if you have juicy insider info" slug that I have ever seen. He can take PGP-encrypted email! And this is on Buzzfeed!!!
- jauer 10y ago
  Buzzfeed's long-form journalism is pretty good/interesting/relevant, you just have to hold your nose long enough to get past the foul stench of click-bait.
  - Ftuuky 10y ago
    The tennis racket article is very good. https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/the-tennis-racket?utm_term=.lmrV6KDkZ#.uvWMbYyw2 https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/the-tennis-racket?utm_te...
  - Lxr 10y ago
    They seem to be putting quite a lot of effort into producing actual journalism lately, and I agree it's good (I also enjoyed the tennis piece mentioned).
  - Nanite 10y ago
    Well that or use HN to curate for you, the extremely rare well written pieces are not worth frequenting Buzzfeed, Techcrunch etc for
  - beatpanda 10y ago
    That's how the economics of journalism has always worked. Going after people with a lot of money at stake will never, ever pay the bills and is a great way to rack up a lot of legal fees. So in the old days you surrounded the real news with classifieds, comic strips and movie listings, and these days you surround it with cute animal videos.
- akhilcacharya 10y ago
leroy_masochist 10y ago
This article was way, way better sourced than I thought it'd be. Especially for Buzzfeed of all places.
- nilkn 10y ago
  This is a trend I've noticed. BuzzFeed has had a number of excellent longform pieces recently.
  - l33tbro 10y ago
    They're diversifying their offering. The clickbait stuff won't change, but they're looking to build credibility with those longform pieces you mention to shed their poor reputation.
  - deleted 10y ago
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- vonklaus 10y ago
  for me, buzzfeed is like hyundai. Hyundai had the reputation prob anytime before 8ish years ago of being total unreliable shit. However, they made a massive set of enigineering improvements, created better styling and started standing behind their products with the best warranty in the industry, 100k miles. They even created a luxury line under the hyundai brand and started offering more expensive cars. During hte period, their stock started actually doing well[0]. It has since, gone down a bit and I won't say it is 100% the point I will make next,but it factors in. Buzzfeed is a lot like Hyundai. While Hyundai killed in the low-cost market, no middle class consumer wanted a hyundai. Their brand had negative value. Just as quality longform content is not read by the same people who read buzzfeed. So they(bf) will not adopt users, just as hyundai slipped a bit after the marketing relaxed and consumers remembered that the "image" conveyed by hyundai was low-income/cheap. While they had erased the real problem, shitty engineering, the image was just as important. So buzzfeed should rebrand or meta-structure itself if, at least in my non-expert off the cuff opinion, it wants to ever sell content. Obviously, ancilliary advertisements are will be dead very soon, but buzzfeed is really good at writing advertising copy, they call it journalism i think. However, as stated above and evidenced by this very article they are breaking some good stories, and are funded by a16z. They have quality journalists who have access and are equipped & talented to write great articles. I just think that most of the people who would value that article, would never read it from buzzfeed. buzzfeed should channel out services like vox and rebrand. tl;dr know your customer [0]http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=005380.KS+Interactive#symbol=005380.KS;range=my http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=005380.KS+Interactive#sym...
jbob2000 10y ago
I want to see what Palantir actually produces. Like does Coca-Cola get a monthly report that says "Hey, you guys should bring back Cherry Cola in Montana for an expected 4% increase in sales" or what? What does $1mil/month actually get you?
- nicklovescode 10y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ooAUeTlzdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ooAUeTlzdU here's a quick demo of one of their products edit: this is 2012, likely way out of date
  - jbob2000 10y ago
    Oh my god, what the hell is that thing! For all that money, they couldn't have hired a product management/design team?
    - ethanbond 10y ago
      Note the timestamp on the video... their products look sweet now.
      - freyr 10y ago
        > Ethan Bond > Palantir, Product Designer; Starting June 2016, New York City, NY I realize you're not technically a Palantir employee quite yet, but there's definitely the opportunity for bias here.
        ethanbond 10y ago
        Yes, true. I removed the claim re: the quality of the team, hopefully it's a bit less misleading.
        gaius 10y ago
        By the way, if Palantir's product actually works, your manager already knows you're talking about them.
misuba 10y ago
At least they have the decency to tell you who they work for right in their name.
- Tossrock 10y ago
  It always kind of amazed me as a pick for a company name. Like, they realize palantirs are a tool of the bad guys, right? They're not a good thing! It's like naming your company "Stormtrooper", or "Dementor".
  - s_m_t 10y ago
    Actually the palantiri were created by the elves as communication tools, even before the sun and moon were created, and used by the good guys for several thousand years before they fell in the hands of the bad guys about halfway through the third age.
    - avn2109 10y ago
      Just like how a lot of computing was built by the good guys as communication tools/for fun, before the sun and moon were created back in the 1970's, and used by the good guys for several decades before computing fell into the hands of the bad guys aka surveillance state. I've always interpreted it to mean that Thiel dislikes bullshit, so he's kinda sheepishly telling everyone who is sufficiently detail oriented/nerdy exactly what his new company is all about, right there in the name.
  - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
    The explanation I've seen is that a palantir itself is value-neutral. However, because Sauron and Saruman each had one and used them regularly, using any of them became risky, because they were a channel through which information and influence could leak. But that, in turn, is arguably a great metaphor for the chilling effects of advanced persistent threats and abuse of surveillance capabilities by our ostensible/former allies.
  - xapata 10y ago
    There's a company in Boston called Vecna [0]. I always thought it was odd to name a company after a famous evil lich [1]. Though now that I'm reading the company's About page, I see both names were probably inspired by the Czech word for "eternal". [0] http://www.vecna.com/about-vecna/ http://www.vecna.com/about-vecna/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vecna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vecna
sharkweek 10y ago
Will Alden is shaping up to be one of the most connected journalists in startupland. First the Zenefits coverage, and now this, he's done a great job getting lots of great sources at some of the more interesting companies. Credit to BuzzFeed for building up a pretty solid news team.
- laxatives 10y ago
  Buzzfeed was also respnsible for outing tennis fixing in The Tennis Racket using statistical analysis of players' matches.
  - DasIch 10y ago
    Buzzfeed is shaping up to be the one of the best sources for investigative journalism. Who would have thought?
    - striking 10y ago
      A lot of other places can't pull it off because investigative journalism doesn't pay all that well. But it looks like drawing a strict line between "clickbait" and "investigative" while serving both is actually a win for Buzzfeed. Clickbait makes money from "most people", investigative journalism encourages thought and shows off how good Buzzfeed can be.
      - DasIch 10y ago
        Indeed. It looks like modern publications need not just a separation of church and state but also the bar across the street from the church to bring some foot traffic in the area.
    - twoodfin 10y ago
      AFAIK, that was always the plan. You need a huge audience to have the revenue to do great journalism online, and one of the few proven ways to build that audience is with clickbait and listicles. So while it may seem like Buzzfeed has a split personality, it's very much intentional.
marmaduke 10y ago
How can they ask for such high prices?
- beeboop 10y ago
  By having connections to people spending someone else's dollar with low accountability.
- melvinmt 10y ago
  Price discrimination at its finest. > "If you can pay, you have to pay us. If you are a philanthropy stopping pedophiles, we will give you the same product you would get if you are wealthy special forces unit in a very wealthy country," Karp said. > "If you're a hedge fund and you make a billion dollars and say you're not going to pay us, well, that's rapacious and we're not going to take your calls anymore." http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/free-advice-dont-go-public-says-palantirs-ceo.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/free-advice-dont-go-public-sa...
- deleted 10y ago
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rfrey 10y ago
$1 million/month. I think that would make even patio11 blush. :)
- graedus 10y ago
  Raise your rates!
insulanian 10y ago
Whatever you do, please don't discontinue Plottable.js
- gog 10y ago
  Wow, that is one great web site.
- m4dc4pXXX 10y ago
  Plottable.js is the only charting package I've used that's a real library, not just a set of pre-canned charts. Sadly, the devs don't seem to have a lot of time to devote to updating the site.
- rpgmaker 10y ago
  It's open source.
hackaflocka 10y ago
There are a lot of similarities to Theranos.
danso 10y ago
FWIW, Gawker reporters have been making FOIA requests of various agencies about their contracts with Palantir...you can see the responses on MuckRock: https://www.muckrock.com/search/?q=palantir&models=foia.foiarequest https://www.muckrock.com/search/?q=palantir&models=foia.foia... Many of those requests came back empty, here's one that produced responsive documents: the NYC Department of Finance -- $150,000 for a 6-month pilot of their "Perpetual Server Core" technology to do fraud detection: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/new-york-city-17/palantir-contract-services-24354/#comms https://www.muckrock.com/foi/new-york-city-17/palantir-contr... edit: specified that the requesters appear to be Gawker reporters doing their own investigation
jzwinck 10y ago
"Those anxieties come amid a wave of staff departures. A chart from Palantir’s internal wiki said the departures through mid-April amounted to 5.8% of all staff, or an annualized rate of 20%. That compares to a departure rate of 13.6% in 2015, 12.2% in 2014, and 9.2% in 2013. Palantir paid annual bonuses in March...." Many companies have waves of departures in the spring. Bonuses are paid (as at Palantir), holidays are over, kids are about to finish school. A 5.8% departure rate in the beginning of the year cannot be "annualized" any more than fruitcake sales from December. And if it does end up that 20% of Palantir quits in 2016, that'd be totally normal attrition for a large company. Where I used to work it was 30% among software engineers, and even this was not a problem. I imagine that a number of ex-employees go on to work in the industry whose data they analyzed at Palantir. This may help to explain why employees are willing to work for less than elsewhere. It's because three years later they will work for much more elsewhere. Especially the hedge fund analysts.
taytus 10y ago
"Although the company is not profitable"... Excuse me but, you have to be fucking kidding me!!
- dbt00 10y ago
  Nope. Pretty much any nonpublic silicon valley companies aren't -- some public ones too. They are spending more money then they have, in the short term, in order to become bigger and more successful in the long term. That's why the venture ('building something') capital ('with money') industry exists.
Lxr 10y ago
> “One of the things we did well early on was to recognize and invest in the unique talents of each Palantirian” I find it a bit weird how tech companies make up names for their employees now. Googler, Palantirian... does this make people work harder because they feel like they belong or something?
- ginger_beer_m 10y ago
  it appeals to that primitive instinct of belonging to a pack, fostering an us-vs-them mentality. this way, you are less likely to leave and are encouraged to give your 110%
  - yomly 10y ago
    It's also not just a tech thing, in consulting you have your McKinseyites, BCGers and Bainies
- tomp 10y ago
  A shortcut to avoid calling them "Palantir employees"?!
  - askafriend 10y ago
    I think in this situation, it's the less nefarious explanation that probably reflects reality. It's probably just a shortcut for "X-company employees"
- atmosx 10y ago
  Internal reports are always written in Clingon!
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Is it an American thing? We name folks from counties and states with nicknames too - Hoosiers from Indiana for instance. And folks from Cedar Rapids are Cedar-Rapidians around here.
  - 10y ago
l33tbro 10y ago
Confusing company on many levels. On one hand such huge clients, top talent (until recently), and Thiel's famous success pre-requisite of having unique offering. But then ... they go and do really, really weird stuff like making recruitment videos shot on someone's Iphone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMqPoCQ5Q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMqPoCQ5Q8 I think for a long time they got away with seeming really cloudy and potentially mis-managed because of the secrecy that is inherent to what they do. But clients are now asking tough questions about what value they can actually bring to the table for crazy dollars, and things may becoming home to roost.
- untilHellbanned 10y ago
  Seems like hardly fits the "competition is for losers" claim. Consulting firms are all about overpriced bullshit analysis. Seems like Palantir plays that game but sadly not even well.
- gkoberger 10y ago
  I have no problem with that recruitment video. When you have the reputation of a secretive, shadowy company, it makes sense to forego a polished video and instead aim for something more organic and "real". People want to work at something that mirrors Google, not LexCorp.
untilHellbanned 10y ago
Theranos, Zenefits, palantir, what's the next unicorn deflation? Is it Uber or Spotify with their Palantir-esque spend a $1/make $0.90 strategies or is it an another company with less-reported vulnerabilities?
callmeed 10y ago
My understanding is that Palantir is running an engineering mill/sweatshop using fresh out of school CS grads (particularly from Stanford). That much of their time is spent simply writing client-specific code that imports and cleans up data from disparate enterprise systems. That its not challenging, innovating, or exciting. Of course this is all anecdotal based on what I've heard from friends and a Palantir engineer I met at bar. Anyone with more insight know if this is accurate?
- rdtsc 10y ago
  They also like to recruit from around Washington DC area schools (Univ. of Maryland for example). Saw them at career fairs while also recruiting there. They all wear cool hoodies and project this agile young startup image. It seems to work, there is a decent size line of young hopeful grads wanted to work there.
  - callmeed 10y ago
    That's interesting. I forgot to also mention that, from what I've heard, if you are going to work for Palantir, their NYC office is where you want to be. That the team(s) there more direct interaction with clients and influence on solutions/architecture.
  - linkregister 10y ago
    It doesn't hurt that Palantir's offices in McLean are reminiscent of the GooglePlex while the top defense contractors' offices look like those in Office Space.
    - rdtsc 10y ago
      Yap, I agree. They are doing everything right recruiting-wise. I think only Google and Facebook had lines longer than them amongst maybe 50 companies or so.
    - drmattyg 10y ago
      The office isn't in McLean anymore, it's been moved to Georgetown. Much hipper.
tlogan 10y ago
The problem with Palantir is the following: Three letter agencies are paying and will continue to pay for Palantir consulting and products. However Palantir has been unable to fully productize their solution (it is still pretty much consulting). Thus they have hard time convincing Fortune 500 companies to pay due to the costs and depending too much on human interaction.
- n00b101 10y ago
  > unable to fully productize their solution In my experience with this type of problem, it happens due to a failure of vision and leadership. The software company focuses a vast majority of resources on POCs and "consulting" revenue (really, rent-a-coder revenues) and these "consultants" end up failing as product innovators (i.e. they contribute practically nothing to the productization or even harnessing of institutional knowledge) and they also fail as true consultants (i.e. they do not have deep industry experience or management consulting prowess to be able to deliver unique value and engage with clients). Ultimately, this happens because leadership neglects product and becomes too caught up chasing deals and burdening the organization with custom development work to close the gap between the existing product versus market needs. This is OK if your software company's consulting services are affordable. Enterprise clients tends to be quite accepting of the need for customization after product purchases. However they do not expect to pay McKinsey levels of fees (let alone $18M per year?!). An alternative business model that seems to work is management consulting, where you can charge huge consulting fees (if you have earned the requisite reputation), and you can even cross-sell relatively low cost in-house software products or services alongside the consulting work. However, high value consulting engagement like McKinsey tend to last weeks (not years), making the expense palatable to clients (e.g. around 500k fee, for 2-3 consultants for a month or so). The difference between management consulting and enterprise software is that when paying $200k for 2-3 "millennial" "management consultants" for a week of work, the client doesn't expect delivery of a complete working software solution - the client only gets a PowerPoint presentation suggesting what and how management should do in order to achieve some given goals. There is an interesting potential disruption occurring at the intersection of management consulting and software, but not much has changed yet with traditional business model divide between old-school management consulting and enterprise software, and Palantir doesn't seem to have cracked that code.
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ginger_beer_m 10y ago
> “We’re looking to do transformational work with our customers,” Gavin Hood, Palantir’s chief of staff, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “Finding the right partner to do that transformational work takes a lot of care and a lot of attention.” He added, “There’s a lot of reasons why that doesn’t always work out.” Sure it's hard to find suckers who will give you million of dollars for poorly defined return.
kwisatzh 10y ago
The article hints at a larger problem that underlies all data-science-as-a-service outfits: pricing for profitability. How can you price the generation of insights so that you; Palantir etc. can become profitable, while those insights can save on costs for the respective clients? Coke would need to generate $18M+ per year from the insights alone to justify the costs.
- jerryhuang100 10y ago
  that $18M per annum price tag is kind of steep. at that price, if a consortium of five companies pool their money together, they could have a joint venture of a "closed" consortium without sharing data with outsiders. the valuation the new joint venture would even be another unicorn, depending on the multiples you choose.
jgalt212 10y ago
That picture of Alex Karp is amazing. If I ever get too rich to never ever give a f*ck, I will dress like that. https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-05/6/12/enhanced/webdr05/longform-678-1462551369-3.jpg?no-auto https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-05/6/12...
pfarnsworth 10y ago
I'm actually surprised that Palatir paid below market rates. I heard they paid well above market rates, which justified their stance of never going public.
- Kadin 10y ago
  I hadn't heard that either. Their reputation in the DC area is that the generally pay market rate, although I think part of their recruitment strategy is that they're less stodgy than the other big defense contractors. (I.e. "we're a software company in the defense/intelligence space, not a defense/intelligence company that does software".) Not sure if that's really true as I've never worked there, but that's the pitch.
  - bane 10y ago
    What I've heard is that they pay well for incoming grads, but then no pay raises...ever...and by year 5 you're clawing at the walls for a liquidity event so you can shed your options and get out.
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eachro 10y ago
I don't see this as particularly damning to Palantir. From what I understand, Palantir is really like a McKinsey/BCG/Bain that specializes in data rich projects. If you view Palantir as another consulting firm, I'd be curious as to how its rates and deliverables compare to the that of MBB. My uneducated guess is that what Palantir is offering for its billing rate is probably in line with the standard for consulting firms.
- gaius 10y ago
  But it is pitched to investors and clients as a product company, not a services company. The two get valued very differently.
zekevermillion 10y ago
Spinning the reported facts another way, Palantir has doubled revs over last year, and could turn a profit at will. Meanwhile it is able to set price optimally at verge of pain point for some of the largest enterprise customers. Sounds like a well-run company.
swingbridge 10y ago
Saw the aftermath of a Palantir project after the client parted ways with them. What a train wreck. There was a lot of hype around them but when one looked deep into what they actually did it was a lot of smoke and mirrors and not a lot of substance. Even basic stuff like data cleaning and integration was poorly executed. Senior leadership didn't see value in what Panintir did, the project was cut off and they were asked to leave. Not surprised in the slightest to hear they are struggling.
willalden 10y ago
Hi all -- I wrote the Palantir article. It's really awesome to see all this discussion about it. As I say in the post, please don't hesitate to contact me if you'd like to chat confidentially. I am always eager to hear any tips or new information. Find me on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, or encrypted email. Contact info here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silicon-valleys-most-secretive-company?utm_term=.tmJy8Qexp#.iheRjVPw1 https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silico...
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  Do you have your PGP key fingerprint on your business card? If not, you should.
  - willalden 10y ago
    I don't! Good call.
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  By the way, your PGP key has no signatures on it. It could trivially be swapped out on your webhost if the server was compromised and no one would know the difference. You should go to a PGP key-signing party. I would offer to sign your key, but you aren't in the NYC office like I would've assumed. Fortunately there's no shortage of people to sign your key in SF!
  - rcpt 10y ago
    This seems relevant right now https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/ https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/
    - snassar 10y ago
      Signal has a nicer communication user interface for some communication compared to email + PGP but it has not really solved the verification problem that many secure communication methods have. The grandparent is advising the writer to improve the verification aspects that PGP provides. Have you tried re-establishing trust with a Signal user who wiped their device? It falls back to the same PGP problem of comparing a string of numbers over a different secure channel. Moxie addresses some problems with the OpenPGP RFC and with the GnuPG implementation, but after re-reading that post I don't see how it relates to the verifiability issue the grandparent is bringing up.
bkjelden 10y ago
20% annualized turnover does not seem alarming for a company in the valley that hires mostly fresh college grads. That implies an average length of tenure of 5 years. Very few college grads that I know stay at their first job for 5 years.
- gaius 10y ago
  The average doesn't tell the true story tho'. If you have a few old-timers in management but a majority of engineers churning in a year, then your product is mainly being worked on by people who never get fully up to speed on your codebase, supervised by people who haven't programmed in years.
ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
I'm curious if any positions require pre employment drug tests, random urinalysis, or security clearances. What a miserable life for a 20 something in the private sector!
- sw4lsec 10y ago
  You are aware there are many people out there with technical skills who choose not to use drugs for a multitude of reasons? For these people, a security clearance can add tons of job possibilities, a higher salary, and greater job security, with the only tradeoff of being more "miserable" according to the occasional HN poster.
- dbt00 10y ago
  Clearly some jobs at the org require security clearances, but most don't, and access to career growth isn't gated on that at all. Look up the forbes article from 2013 about the CEO Alex Karp (can't link easily due to adblocker BS) entitled "How A 'Deviant' Philosopher Built Palantir", and tell me again with a straight face that you'd be worried about this.
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forrestthewoods 10y ago
I know a few people who have worked for Palantir. They all agree it doesn't work. They all quit because Palantir data analysis is being used to ruin lives (throw people in jail) and they believe the whole operation to be a giant defrauding of the government.
- dbt00 10y ago
  I worked at Palantir for over 7 years, and that doesn't sound like any of the projects I knew about or any of the people that I worked with.
  - jonathankoren 10y ago
    While I'll defer to you about what people you know, I don't understand how that doesn't sound like any Palantir product you know. It's the core product. When it's sold commercially it's used to find people committing fraud, and those people could be arrested, put on trial, and if found by a jury of their peers to have committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, thrown in jail for a number of years. When it's sold to militaries and intelligence agencies it's used to make kill lists.[0] Don't delude yourself into thinking that it's founding wasn't to algorithmically create kill lists, because it founded in 2004 with funding from the CIA specifically to bring "big data analysis" to the "War on Terror". It's a scummy company. And if there's any doubt don't forget, they were implicated with HBGary in a dirty tricks plot against Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald after the the scope of NSA mass surveillance was starting to be uncovered.[1][2] [0] http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals-uses-specific-functions-and-key-clients/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals... [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-apology-2011-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-apology-20... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2?op=...
    - Anderkent 10y ago
      > When it's sold commercially it's used to find people committing fraud, and those people could be arrested, put on trial, and if found by a jury of their peers to have committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, thrown in jail for a number of years. Um, and that's a bad thing how, assuming they really committed fraud? > When it's sold to militaries and intelligence agencies it's used to make kill lists. Militaries and intelligence agencies do much more than just make kill lists. And I sincerely doubt such lists are created without human supervision. But being mostly a pacifist I've never wanted to work with those projects, so I don't know the details. disclaimer: I work at Palantir.
ktamura 10y ago
"The company, based in Palo Alto, California, is essentially a hybrid software and consulting firm, placing what it calls “forward deployed engineers” on-site at client offices." This says everything about Palantir, and depending on your perspective, their valuation is (not) justified. It's justified if you think of the equation Palantir = McKinsey + IBM. On the other hand, no consulting firm should have 20x revenue multiple.
- askafriend 10y ago
  I've often heard the Palantir narrative where they talk about a core platform or product that they build independent of the consulting work. That might explain the optimistic 20x revenue multiple. However, I don't think that platform has really come to fruition and they're still relying primarily on consulting to fuel themselves. Someone else here mentioned that they hadn't fully productized their solution, which prevents them from closing large clients outside of government contracts.
bane 10y ago
I don't think this is all that surprising. If you look at their staffing numbers and their fundraises, they appear to not be sustaining business but just growing staff because that's what startups do. > Lisa Gordon, said that “the majority of the company’s customer relationships are multiple years in length, and many are as long as 10 years.” This is not good at all. Customer loyalty is important, but considering that they've been adding staff at a fast rate, most of their customers should be new-ish. They've raised about $2.5b over an incredible number of rounds (multiple per year), and are currently bringing in about $420m. Based on my understanding, they message as a software seller, but appear to make most of that revenue off of consulting and integration services tied around their software lock-in. They also message as a big-data company, but AFAIK don't provide anything that would be called "big data solutions" these days. edit: I thought Sankar's name sounded familiar, turns out he was the guy at the very heart of Palantir's very embarrassing industrial espionage and racketeering efforts against a competitor. He was apparently punished by being promoted to company president. http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/16/palantirs-third-black-eye-i2-lawsuit-settled/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/16/palantirs-third-black-eye-...
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  They hire like a consultancy. Your topline scales linearly with the staff you can ship out to client sites.
  - bane 10y ago
    What's interesting is that despite that being the case, and they charge out their staff at huge rates (especially compared to what they pay them), they're still losing money.
dccoolgai 10y ago
Interviewed with them once: took like 2 months and it was a horrible experience. Weirdest thing was I randomly ran into this guy onsite that was a friend-of-a-friend.. and enough of an acquaintance that we had each others' numbers and went drinking a couple times... saw him there wearing the same Palantir t-shirt as everyone else (which was weird) and he barely acknowledged me... like I wasn't "one of them" yet... it was creepy enough that I was glad I didn't get an offer.
gaius 10y ago
From a linked article: "The primary payday for the best engineers is that you get to work with the best engineers," Funny how that's not the same for execs!
dschiptsov 10y ago
SAP-like scam. Highly refined, Oxford-educated sales and execs, selling with high-status deceptive techniques grossly overpriced, lovest quality outdated by a decade crap, for support and maintenance of which they are billing their victims for each hour spend by expensive suit wearing nonsense talking consultants. BTW, the guys who went there for sweatshop positions are those who barely managed to graduate. But in sales there are top tier liberal arts guys, with refined speech and behavior. These kind of enterprises is a classic social pyramid, modeled after an organized religion, especially Catholic Church, with exactly the same deceptions, dogmas and loyalty for lower ranks.
- Anderkent 10y ago
  > BTW, the guys who went there for sweatshop positions are those who barely managed to graduate Bullshit. I work at the London office, most of the FDEs have firsts from cambridge/oxford/imperial/some other top european university.
  - dschiptsov 10y ago
    Oh, come on. I have seen enough of consultants and witnessed a SAP takeover of a small retailer. This looks like as if a whole bunch of hotshots in $3k suits take you to a head office in, say, Germany, with a five star hotel, top tier restaurants and business class flights, while telling you that you are too successful and too rich to drive your own car, that only struggling, unsuccessful losers do it, etc. Eventually, one finds oneself with a few guys in expesive suits who are sitting in the car right on your lap, totally obstructing the view, but telling you when to accelerate, stop or turn, claiming that this is a much safer and the most effective way to drive a car, so they bill you for each kilometer and each turn taken. They, moreover, have replaced your car with their own ancient vehicle, to which there is not a single mechanic in a 1000 miles and the only spare parts available from their own garage, with the replacing procedure which requires to remove everything from the salon and from under the hood and then to reassemble it all back, which takes a few days and for which you are billed for each hour of each of twenty certified technicians, half of them flown from the head office at your expense. And, please, don't tell me that consulting companies are different. Btw, really smart top grads would never even come close to these scam shops, like sane people would avoid Ponzi schemes or a telemarketing crap with a hidden charges. Being fooled by meaningless titles and certificates instead of working with a cutting edge technologies and obtaining skills which could be sold later.. I can't imagine top grads being so clueless.
palandick 10y ago
There seems to be a lot of confusion here so let me clear up some things from my former several years at Palantir. 1) Palantir's product is a legitimate product that works quite well for many graph analysis use cases. If you can model your problem as a graph, chances are that Palantir will help you find some solid insights (if there are insights to be found) across your 15 disparate datasets. Software Engineers build the core platform. 2) Forward Deployed Engineers customize and extend the platform for specific client use cases and get client data into Palantir. If these customizations end up being useful, they get rolled into the core platform(ideally). 3) Palantir works their engineers very hard and the performance bar is very high. Calling it an engineering mill/sweatshop is a bit much considering you get 3 meals/day, massages, chiropractic, nap rooms, excellent events, laundry, etc and 6 figure salaries or massive stock or both. 4) Lots of people have been leaving. Part of this is because lots of oldies are hitting their 10 year marks and part of it is because Palantir went through a massive growth spurt over the last 4 years or so and now the fat is being trimmed/people are leaving after concluding that it wasn't a good fit/they don't want to work that much. If you can get into Palantir, you can get into Google: Why not go to Google? 5) If you want to see the actual product, just look around. Here are like 150 examples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCA98B156F7EFD6A0 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCA98B156F7EFD6A0 6) The bookings vs revenue thing is pretty deceptive but everyone knows that the money isn't real until its in your bank account or there's a signed contract for it to be in your account.
- triplesec 10y ago
  From your description, this is a classic Accenture-style (and Bain and other strategic) consulting and systems integration business model, though possibly with higher quality work, based on that latest management buzzphrase Big Data. Whether it can provide the perceived value of a BCG of McKinsey is another matter.
gzur 10y ago
The headline graphic really caught my attention, because my fingers have ls -latr ingrained into them. I thought it oddly fitting.
davej 10y ago
To get an idea of the kind of stuff Palantir do then it's worth taking a look at the presentation that was leaked during the HBGary leaks: http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2?IR=T#-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2?IR=...
404throwaway 10y ago
Palantir is probably worth less than the money invested. At $420 million in revenue, they would need to be worth more than 6x revenue to match the $2.5 billion invested. They certainly have "special sauce" over and above their value as a consulting firm (which are worth maybe 2x revenue). But how big is the market for that "special sauce"? The intelligence customers are low-capability, have massive datasets and really do need Palantir. But they've tapped out that market. So look at the consumer brands in their customer list: low capability, yes. But you could fit the data for any of them into the RAM on one server. Yes Palantir has super smart guys who can find fascinating relationships in the data. But there are only so many relationhips to find. And once that's done, the IT staff of the customer can do the work easily themselves. So I'm sorry but I think Palantir is a washout (worth less than the money invested). Nice offices though.
AndrewKemendo 10y ago
I used Palantir heavily in my previous work and it was disappointing at how manual it was based on what we were sold as a mostly automated platform. It had a great interface for creating network diagrams, and collaborating but it was a huge pain to get integrated. I mean if nothing else, give us keyword matching and linking!
allenleein 10y ago
FYI: What does Joe Lonsdale think of BuzzFeed's Inside Palantir article? https://www.quora.com/What-does-Joe-Lonsdale-think-of-BuzzFeeds-Inside-Palantir-article/answer/Joe-Lonsdale?__snids__=1650809443&__nsrc__=2 https://www.quora.com/What-does-Joe-Lonsdale-think-of-BuzzFe...

569 points by JimDash2145 10y ago

This article is much more interesting than its fairly predictable headline implies. While the secrecy of Palantir has served as clickbait for many years, there's actually real news in this. And the news is about the difficulties of scaling a services-heavy, on-prem software company that basically rents out forward-deployed engineers at 10s of millions of dollars per year. Especially when the software is an open-source stack, and the engineers are increasingly junior as the companies grows. That said, it's still great at sales. Big numbers there...

dang 10y ago
We took the questionable baity bit out of the title.
openplatypus 10y ago
It seems to be perfect (and unfair to clients) business model. Same was described by Zed Shaw about ThoughtWorks. 1) Get expensive contract 2) Drop in junior (riding the fame that you only hire top engineers) 3) Train them on the job and bill the customer 4) Move trained consultant to work on internal project/high value stuff, replace with fresh blood 5) Repeat
amiraliakbari 10y ago
> Especially when the software is an open-source stack Is there specific information about stack used by Palantir? I just saw a few videos presenting their products.
- vonnik 10y ago
  Apache Hadoop, Hive and Pig, among others. https://www.palantir.com/wp-assets/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Palantir-Solution-Overview-Cyber-long.pdf https://www.palantir.com/wp-assets/wp-content/uploads/2013/1... And actually, it's usually an enterprise distro such as Cloudera's CDH rather than Apache Hadoop itself, which is kind of a nightmare.

Analemma_ 10y ago

Apparently they're not doing well. Good riddance. Palantir is creepy as hell. For all the snark about how startups and places like Apple are run like cults, like in The Circle, Palantir is the one outfit I know of where the stereotype is really true. And in the post-Snowden world where we know for sure just how all-devouring the US intelligence's community's desires are regarding our privacy, the last thing we need is Silicon Vally outfits helping them out. Assuming Karp can't right the ship again, I will not be sorry to see them go.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
It's a great article but I agree with you: to heck with Palantir.
- noir_lord 10y ago
  To hell with Palantir and the people who work for it. I'd sooner serve fries than contribute to the shit they do.
- secfirstmd 10y ago
  "Spies Sans Frontières? How CIA-linked Palantir is gaining ground in the aid industry (and why some humanitarians are worried)" https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2016/03/07/spies-sans-fronti%C3%A8res https://www.irinnews.org/special-report/2016/03/07/spies-san...
  - stevenbedrick 10y ago
    Software like Palantir's is a classic example of a dual-use technology.
api 10y ago
Sure it's creepy, but there's also something else I've been suspecting about all this surveillance for years: it doesn't really work. Moral, ethical, and political problems aside is mass surveillance snake oil? Is there really any credible evidence that mass surveillance has stopped any significant terror attacks? Can you really find needles in haystacks reliably without drowning in false positives?

CydeWeys 10y ago

> If you have information or tips, you can contact this reporter over an encrypted chat service such as Telegram, Signal, or WhatsApp, at 310-617-1302. You can also send an encrypted email to will.alden@buzzfeed.com, using the PGP key found here. This is the best "contact me if you have juicy insider info" slug that I have ever seen. He can take PGP-encrypted email! And this is on Buzzfeed!!!

jauer 10y ago
Buzzfeed's long-form journalism is pretty good/interesting/relevant, you just have to hold your nose long enough to get past the foul stench of click-bait.
- Ftuuky 10y ago
  The tennis racket article is very good. https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/the-tennis-racket?utm_term=.lmrV6KDkZ#.uvWMbYyw2 https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/the-tennis-racket?utm_te...
- Lxr 10y ago
  They seem to be putting quite a lot of effort into producing actual journalism lately, and I agree it's good (I also enjoyed the tennis piece mentioned).
- Nanite 10y ago
  Well that or use HN to curate for you, the extremely rare well written pieces are not worth frequenting Buzzfeed, Techcrunch etc for
- beatpanda 10y ago
  That's how the economics of journalism has always worked. Going after people with a lot of money at stake will never, ever pay the bills and is a great way to rack up a lot of legal fees. So in the old days you surrounded the real news with classifieds, comic strips and movie listings, and these days you surround it with cute animal videos.
akhilcacharya 10y ago

leroy_masochist 10y ago

This article was way, way better sourced than I thought it'd be. Especially for Buzzfeed of all places.

nilkn 10y ago
This is a trend I've noticed. BuzzFeed has had a number of excellent longform pieces recently.
- l33tbro 10y ago
  They're diversifying their offering. The clickbait stuff won't change, but they're looking to build credibility with those longform pieces you mention to shed their poor reputation.
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vonklaus 10y ago
for me, buzzfeed is like hyundai. Hyundai had the reputation prob anytime before 8ish years ago of being total unreliable shit. However, they made a massive set of enigineering improvements, created better styling and started standing behind their products with the best warranty in the industry, 100k miles. They even created a luxury line under the hyundai brand and started offering more expensive cars. During hte period, their stock started actually doing well[0]. It has since, gone down a bit and I won't say it is 100% the point I will make next,but it factors in. Buzzfeed is a lot like Hyundai. While Hyundai killed in the low-cost market, no middle class consumer wanted a hyundai. Their brand had negative value. Just as quality longform content is not read by the same people who read buzzfeed. So they(bf) will not adopt users, just as hyundai slipped a bit after the marketing relaxed and consumers remembered that the "image" conveyed by hyundai was low-income/cheap. While they had erased the real problem, shitty engineering, the image was just as important. So buzzfeed should rebrand or meta-structure itself if, at least in my non-expert off the cuff opinion, it wants to ever sell content. Obviously, ancilliary advertisements are will be dead very soon, but buzzfeed is really good at writing advertising copy, they call it journalism i think. However, as stated above and evidenced by this very article they are breaking some good stories, and are funded by a16z. They have quality journalists who have access and are equipped & talented to write great articles. I just think that most of the people who would value that article, would never read it from buzzfeed. buzzfeed should channel out services like vox and rebrand. tl;dr know your customer [0]http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=005380.KS+Interactive#symbol=005380.KS;range=my http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=005380.KS+Interactive#sym...

jbob2000 10y ago

I want to see what Palantir actually produces. Like does Coca-Cola get a monthly report that says "Hey, you guys should bring back Cherry Cola in Montana for an expected 4% increase in sales" or what? What does $1mil/month actually get you?

nicklovescode 10y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ooAUeTlzdU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ooAUeTlzdU here's a quick demo of one of their products edit: this is 2012, likely way out of date
- jbob2000 10y ago
  Oh my god, what the hell is that thing! For all that money, they couldn't have hired a product management/design team?
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    Note the timestamp on the video... their products look sweet now.
    - freyr 10y ago
      > Ethan Bond > Palantir, Product Designer; Starting June 2016, New York City, NY I realize you're not technically a Palantir employee quite yet, but there's definitely the opportunity for bias here.
      - ethanbond 10y ago
        Yes, true. I removed the claim re: the quality of the team, hopefully it's a bit less misleading.
        gaius 10y ago
        By the way, if Palantir's product actually works, your manager already knows you're talking about them.

misuba 10y ago

At least they have the decency to tell you who they work for right in their name.

Tossrock 10y ago
It always kind of amazed me as a pick for a company name. Like, they realize palantirs are a tool of the bad guys, right? They're not a good thing! It's like naming your company "Stormtrooper", or "Dementor".
- s_m_t 10y ago
  Actually the palantiri were created by the elves as communication tools, even before the sun and moon were created, and used by the good guys for several thousand years before they fell in the hands of the bad guys about halfway through the third age.
  - avn2109 10y ago
    Just like how a lot of computing was built by the good guys as communication tools/for fun, before the sun and moon were created back in the 1970's, and used by the good guys for several decades before computing fell into the hands of the bad guys aka surveillance state. I've always interpreted it to mean that Thiel dislikes bullshit, so he's kinda sheepishly telling everyone who is sufficiently detail oriented/nerdy exactly what his new company is all about, right there in the name.
- 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
  The explanation I've seen is that a palantir itself is value-neutral. However, because Sauron and Saruman each had one and used them regularly, using any of them became risky, because they were a channel through which information and influence could leak. But that, in turn, is arguably a great metaphor for the chilling effects of advanced persistent threats and abuse of surveillance capabilities by our ostensible/former allies.
- xapata 10y ago
  There's a company in Boston called Vecna [0]. I always thought it was odd to name a company after a famous evil lich [1]. Though now that I'm reading the company's About page, I see both names were probably inspired by the Czech word for "eternal". [0] http://www.vecna.com/about-vecna/ http://www.vecna.com/about-vecna/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vecna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vecna

sharkweek 10y ago

Will Alden is shaping up to be one of the most connected journalists in startupland. First the Zenefits coverage, and now this, he's done a great job getting lots of great sources at some of the more interesting companies. Credit to BuzzFeed for building up a pretty solid news team.

laxatives 10y ago
Buzzfeed was also respnsible for outing tennis fixing in The Tennis Racket using statistical analysis of players' matches.
- DasIch 10y ago
  Buzzfeed is shaping up to be the one of the best sources for investigative journalism. Who would have thought?
  - striking 10y ago
    A lot of other places can't pull it off because investigative journalism doesn't pay all that well. But it looks like drawing a strict line between "clickbait" and "investigative" while serving both is actually a win for Buzzfeed. Clickbait makes money from "most people", investigative journalism encourages thought and shows off how good Buzzfeed can be.
    - DasIch 10y ago
      Indeed. It looks like modern publications need not just a separation of church and state but also the bar across the street from the church to bring some foot traffic in the area.
  - twoodfin 10y ago
    AFAIK, that was always the plan. You need a huge audience to have the revenue to do great journalism online, and one of the few proven ways to build that audience is with clickbait and listicles. So while it may seem like Buzzfeed has a split personality, it's very much intentional.

marmaduke 10y ago

How can they ask for such high prices?

beeboop 10y ago
By having connections to people spending someone else's dollar with low accountability.
melvinmt 10y ago
Price discrimination at its finest. > "If you can pay, you have to pay us. If you are a philanthropy stopping pedophiles, we will give you the same product you would get if you are wealthy special forces unit in a very wealthy country," Karp said. > "If you're a hedge fund and you make a billion dollars and say you're not going to pay us, well, that's rapacious and we're not going to take your calls anymore." http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/free-advice-dont-go-public-says-palantirs-ceo.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/19/free-advice-dont-go-public-sa...
deleted 10y ago
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rfrey 10y ago

$1 million/month. I think that would make even patio11 blush. :)

graedus 10y ago
Raise your rates!

insulanian 10y ago

Whatever you do, please don't discontinue Plottable.js

gog 10y ago
Wow, that is one great web site.
m4dc4pXXX 10y ago
Plottable.js is the only charting package I've used that's a real library, not just a set of pre-canned charts. Sadly, the devs don't seem to have a lot of time to devote to updating the site.
rpgmaker 10y ago
It's open source.

hackaflocka 10y ago

There are a lot of similarities to Theranos.

danso 10y ago

FWIW, Gawker reporters have been making FOIA requests of various agencies about their contracts with Palantir...you can see the responses on MuckRock: https://www.muckrock.com/search/?q=palantir&models=foia.foiarequest https://www.muckrock.com/search/?q=palantir&models=foia.foia... Many of those requests came back empty, here's one that produced responsive documents: the NYC Department of Finance -- $150,000 for a 6-month pilot of their "Perpetual Server Core" technology to do fraud detection: https://www.muckrock.com/foi/new-york-city-17/palantir-contract-services-24354/#comms https://www.muckrock.com/foi/new-york-city-17/palantir-contr... edit: specified that the requesters appear to be Gawker reporters doing their own investigation

jzwinck 10y ago

"Those anxieties come amid a wave of staff departures. A chart from Palantir’s internal wiki said the departures through mid-April amounted to 5.8% of all staff, or an annualized rate of 20%. That compares to a departure rate of 13.6% in 2015, 12.2% in 2014, and 9.2% in 2013. Palantir paid annual bonuses in March...." Many companies have waves of departures in the spring. Bonuses are paid (as at Palantir), holidays are over, kids are about to finish school. A 5.8% departure rate in the beginning of the year cannot be "annualized" any more than fruitcake sales from December. And if it does end up that 20% of Palantir quits in 2016, that'd be totally normal attrition for a large company. Where I used to work it was 30% among software engineers, and even this was not a problem. I imagine that a number of ex-employees go on to work in the industry whose data they analyzed at Palantir. This may help to explain why employees are willing to work for less than elsewhere. It's because three years later they will work for much more elsewhere. Especially the hedge fund analysts.

taytus 10y ago

"Although the company is not profitable"... Excuse me but, you have to be fucking kidding me!!

dbt00 10y ago
Nope. Pretty much any nonpublic silicon valley companies aren't -- some public ones too. They are spending more money then they have, in the short term, in order to become bigger and more successful in the long term. That's why the venture ('building something') capital ('with money') industry exists.

Lxr 10y ago

> “One of the things we did well early on was to recognize and invest in the unique talents of each Palantirian” I find it a bit weird how tech companies make up names for their employees now. Googler, Palantirian... does this make people work harder because they feel like they belong or something?

ginger_beer_m 10y ago
it appeals to that primitive instinct of belonging to a pack, fostering an us-vs-them mentality. this way, you are less likely to leave and are encouraged to give your 110%
- yomly 10y ago
  It's also not just a tech thing, in consulting you have your McKinseyites, BCGers and Bainies
tomp 10y ago
A shortcut to avoid calling them "Palantir employees"?!
- askafriend 10y ago
  I think in this situation, it's the less nefarious explanation that probably reflects reality. It's probably just a shortcut for "X-company employees"
atmosx 10y ago
Internal reports are always written in Clingon!
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Is it an American thing? We name folks from counties and states with nicknames too - Hoosiers from Indiana for instance. And folks from Cedar Rapids are Cedar-Rapidians around here.
- 10y ago

l33tbro 10y ago

Confusing company on many levels. On one hand such huge clients, top talent (until recently), and Thiel's famous success pre-requisite of having unique offering. But then ... they go and do really, really weird stuff like making recruitment videos shot on someone's Iphone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMqPoCQ5Q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhMqPoCQ5Q8 I think for a long time they got away with seeming really cloudy and potentially mis-managed because of the secrecy that is inherent to what they do. But clients are now asking tough questions about what value they can actually bring to the table for crazy dollars, and things may becoming home to roost.

untilHellbanned 10y ago
Seems like hardly fits the "competition is for losers" claim. Consulting firms are all about overpriced bullshit analysis. Seems like Palantir plays that game but sadly not even well.
gkoberger 10y ago
I have no problem with that recruitment video. When you have the reputation of a secretive, shadowy company, it makes sense to forego a polished video and instead aim for something more organic and "real". People want to work at something that mirrors Google, not LexCorp.

untilHellbanned 10y ago

Theranos, Zenefits, palantir, what's the next unicorn deflation? Is it Uber or Spotify with their Palantir-esque spend a $1/make $0.90 strategies or is it an another company with less-reported vulnerabilities?

callmeed 10y ago

My understanding is that Palantir is running an engineering mill/sweatshop using fresh out of school CS grads (particularly from Stanford). That much of their time is spent simply writing client-specific code that imports and cleans up data from disparate enterprise systems. That its not challenging, innovating, or exciting. Of course this is all anecdotal based on what I've heard from friends and a Palantir engineer I met at bar. Anyone with more insight know if this is accurate?

rdtsc 10y ago
They also like to recruit from around Washington DC area schools (Univ. of Maryland for example). Saw them at career fairs while also recruiting there. They all wear cool hoodies and project this agile young startup image. It seems to work, there is a decent size line of young hopeful grads wanted to work there.
- callmeed 10y ago
  That's interesting. I forgot to also mention that, from what I've heard, if you are going to work for Palantir, their NYC office is where you want to be. That the team(s) there more direct interaction with clients and influence on solutions/architecture.
- linkregister 10y ago
  It doesn't hurt that Palantir's offices in McLean are reminiscent of the GooglePlex while the top defense contractors' offices look like those in Office Space.
  - rdtsc 10y ago
    Yap, I agree. They are doing everything right recruiting-wise. I think only Google and Facebook had lines longer than them amongst maybe 50 companies or so.
  - drmattyg 10y ago
    The office isn't in McLean anymore, it's been moved to Georgetown. Much hipper.

tlogan 10y ago

The problem with Palantir is the following: Three letter agencies are paying and will continue to pay for Palantir consulting and products. However Palantir has been unable to fully productize their solution (it is still pretty much consulting). Thus they have hard time convincing Fortune 500 companies to pay due to the costs and depending too much on human interaction.

n00b101 10y ago
> unable to fully productize their solution In my experience with this type of problem, it happens due to a failure of vision and leadership. The software company focuses a vast majority of resources on POCs and "consulting" revenue (really, rent-a-coder revenues) and these "consultants" end up failing as product innovators (i.e. they contribute practically nothing to the productization or even harnessing of institutional knowledge) and they also fail as true consultants (i.e. they do not have deep industry experience or management consulting prowess to be able to deliver unique value and engage with clients). Ultimately, this happens because leadership neglects product and becomes too caught up chasing deals and burdening the organization with custom development work to close the gap between the existing product versus market needs. This is OK if your software company's consulting services are affordable. Enterprise clients tends to be quite accepting of the need for customization after product purchases. However they do not expect to pay McKinsey levels of fees (let alone $18M per year?!). An alternative business model that seems to work is management consulting, where you can charge huge consulting fees (if you have earned the requisite reputation), and you can even cross-sell relatively low cost in-house software products or services alongside the consulting work. However, high value consulting engagement like McKinsey tend to last weeks (not years), making the expense palatable to clients (e.g. around 500k fee, for 2-3 consultants for a month or so). The difference between management consulting and enterprise software is that when paying $200k for 2-3 "millennial" "management consultants" for a week of work, the client doesn't expect delivery of a complete working software solution - the client only gets a PowerPoint presentation suggesting what and how management should do in order to achieve some given goals. There is an interesting potential disruption occurring at the intersection of management consulting and software, but not much has changed yet with traditional business model divide between old-school management consulting and enterprise software, and Palantir doesn't seem to have cracked that code.

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ginger_beer_m 10y ago

> “We’re looking to do transformational work with our customers,” Gavin Hood, Palantir’s chief of staff, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News. “Finding the right partner to do that transformational work takes a lot of care and a lot of attention.” He added, “There’s a lot of reasons why that doesn’t always work out.” Sure it's hard to find suckers who will give you million of dollars for poorly defined return.

kwisatzh 10y ago

The article hints at a larger problem that underlies all data-science-as-a-service outfits: pricing for profitability. How can you price the generation of insights so that you; Palantir etc. can become profitable, while those insights can save on costs for the respective clients? Coke would need to generate $18M+ per year from the insights alone to justify the costs.

jerryhuang100 10y ago
that $18M per annum price tag is kind of steep. at that price, if a consortium of five companies pool their money together, they could have a joint venture of a "closed" consortium without sharing data with outsiders. the valuation the new joint venture would even be another unicorn, depending on the multiples you choose.

jgalt212 10y ago

That picture of Alex Karp is amazing. If I ever get too rich to never ever give a f*ck, I will dress like that. https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-05/6/12/enhanced/webdr05/longform-678-1462551369-3.jpg?no-auto https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2016-05/6/12...

pfarnsworth 10y ago

I'm actually surprised that Palatir paid below market rates. I heard they paid well above market rates, which justified their stance of never going public.

Kadin 10y ago
I hadn't heard that either. Their reputation in the DC area is that the generally pay market rate, although I think part of their recruitment strategy is that they're less stodgy than the other big defense contractors. (I.e. "we're a software company in the defense/intelligence space, not a defense/intelligence company that does software".) Not sure if that's really true as I've never worked there, but that's the pitch.
- bane 10y ago
  What I've heard is that they pay well for incoming grads, but then no pay raises...ever...and by year 5 you're clawing at the walls for a liquidity event so you can shed your options and get out.
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eachro 10y ago

I don't see this as particularly damning to Palantir. From what I understand, Palantir is really like a McKinsey/BCG/Bain that specializes in data rich projects. If you view Palantir as another consulting firm, I'd be curious as to how its rates and deliverables compare to the that of MBB. My uneducated guess is that what Palantir is offering for its billing rate is probably in line with the standard for consulting firms.

gaius 10y ago
But it is pitched to investors and clients as a product company, not a services company. The two get valued very differently.

zekevermillion 10y ago

Spinning the reported facts another way, Palantir has doubled revs over last year, and could turn a profit at will. Meanwhile it is able to set price optimally at verge of pain point for some of the largest enterprise customers. Sounds like a well-run company.

swingbridge 10y ago

Saw the aftermath of a Palantir project after the client parted ways with them. What a train wreck. There was a lot of hype around them but when one looked deep into what they actually did it was a lot of smoke and mirrors and not a lot of substance. Even basic stuff like data cleaning and integration was poorly executed. Senior leadership didn't see value in what Panintir did, the project was cut off and they were asked to leave. Not surprised in the slightest to hear they are struggling.

willalden 10y ago

Hi all -- I wrote the Palantir article. It's really awesome to see all this discussion about it. As I say in the post, please don't hesitate to contact me if you'd like to chat confidentially. I am always eager to hear any tips or new information. Find me on WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, or encrypted email. Contact info here: https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silicon-valleys-most-secretive-company?utm_term=.tmJy8Qexp#.iheRjVPw1 https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silico...

CydeWeys 10y ago
Do you have your PGP key fingerprint on your business card? If not, you should.
- willalden 10y ago
  I don't! Good call.
CydeWeys 10y ago
By the way, your PGP key has no signatures on it. It could trivially be swapped out on your webhost if the server was compromised and no one would know the difference. You should go to a PGP key-signing party. I would offer to sign your key, but you aren't in the NYC office like I would've assumed. Fortunately there's no shortage of people to sign your key in SF!
- rcpt 10y ago
  This seems relevant right now https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/ https://moxie.org/blog/gpg-and-me/
  - snassar 10y ago
    Signal has a nicer communication user interface for some communication compared to email + PGP but it has not really solved the verification problem that many secure communication methods have. The grandparent is advising the writer to improve the verification aspects that PGP provides. Have you tried re-establishing trust with a Signal user who wiped their device? It falls back to the same PGP problem of comparing a string of numbers over a different secure channel. Moxie addresses some problems with the OpenPGP RFC and with the GnuPG implementation, but after re-reading that post I don't see how it relates to the verifiability issue the grandparent is bringing up.

bkjelden 10y ago

20% annualized turnover does not seem alarming for a company in the valley that hires mostly fresh college grads. That implies an average length of tenure of 5 years. Very few college grads that I know stay at their first job for 5 years.

gaius 10y ago
The average doesn't tell the true story tho'. If you have a few old-timers in management but a majority of engineers churning in a year, then your product is mainly being worked on by people who never get fully up to speed on your codebase, supervised by people who haven't programmed in years.

ZanyProgrammer 10y ago

I'm curious if any positions require pre employment drug tests, random urinalysis, or security clearances. What a miserable life for a 20 something in the private sector!

sw4lsec 10y ago
You are aware there are many people out there with technical skills who choose not to use drugs for a multitude of reasons? For these people, a security clearance can add tons of job possibilities, a higher salary, and greater job security, with the only tradeoff of being more "miserable" according to the occasional HN poster.
dbt00 10y ago
Clearly some jobs at the org require security clearances, but most don't, and access to career growth isn't gated on that at all. Look up the forbes article from 2013 about the CEO Alex Karp (can't link easily due to adblocker BS) entitled "How A 'Deviant' Philosopher Built Palantir", and tell me again with a straight face that you'd be worried about this.
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forrestthewoods 10y ago

I know a few people who have worked for Palantir. They all agree it doesn't work. They all quit because Palantir data analysis is being used to ruin lives (throw people in jail) and they believe the whole operation to be a giant defrauding of the government.

dbt00 10y ago
I worked at Palantir for over 7 years, and that doesn't sound like any of the projects I knew about or any of the people that I worked with.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  While I'll defer to you about what people you know, I don't understand how that doesn't sound like any Palantir product you know. It's the core product. When it's sold commercially it's used to find people committing fraud, and those people could be arrested, put on trial, and if found by a jury of their peers to have committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, thrown in jail for a number of years. When it's sold to militaries and intelligence agencies it's used to make kill lists.[0] Don't delude yourself into thinking that it's founding wasn't to algorithmically create kill lists, because it founded in 2004 with funding from the CIA specifically to bring "big data analysis" to the "War on Terror". It's a scummy company. And if there's any doubt don't forget, they were implicated with HBGary in a dirty tricks plot against Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald after the the scope of NSA mass surveillance was starting to be uncovered.[1][2] [0] http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals-uses-specific-functions-and-key-clients/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/01/11/leaked-palantir-doc-reveals... [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-apology-2011-2 http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-apology-20... [2] http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2?op=...
  - Anderkent 10y ago
    > When it's sold commercially it's used to find people committing fraud, and those people could be arrested, put on trial, and if found by a jury of their peers to have committed the crime beyond a reasonable doubt, thrown in jail for a number of years. Um, and that's a bad thing how, assuming they really committed fraud? > When it's sold to militaries and intelligence agencies it's used to make kill lists. Militaries and intelligence agencies do much more than just make kill lists. And I sincerely doubt such lists are created without human supervision. But being mostly a pacifist I've never wanted to work with those projects, so I don't know the details. disclaimer: I work at Palantir.

ktamura 10y ago

"The company, based in Palo Alto, California, is essentially a hybrid software and consulting firm, placing what it calls “forward deployed engineers” on-site at client offices." This says everything about Palantir, and depending on your perspective, their valuation is (not) justified. It's justified if you think of the equation Palantir = McKinsey + IBM. On the other hand, no consulting firm should have 20x revenue multiple.

askafriend 10y ago
I've often heard the Palantir narrative where they talk about a core platform or product that they build independent of the consulting work. That might explain the optimistic 20x revenue multiple. However, I don't think that platform has really come to fruition and they're still relying primarily on consulting to fuel themselves. Someone else here mentioned that they hadn't fully productized their solution, which prevents them from closing large clients outside of government contracts.

bane 10y ago

I don't think this is all that surprising. If you look at their staffing numbers and their fundraises, they appear to not be sustaining business but just growing staff because that's what startups do. > Lisa Gordon, said that “the majority of the company’s customer relationships are multiple years in length, and many are as long as 10 years.” This is not good at all. Customer loyalty is important, but considering that they've been adding staff at a fast rate, most of their customers should be new-ish. They've raised about $2.5b over an incredible number of rounds (multiple per year), and are currently bringing in about $420m. Based on my understanding, they message as a software seller, but appear to make most of that revenue off of consulting and integration services tied around their software lock-in. They also message as a big-data company, but AFAIK don't provide anything that would be called "big data solutions" these days. edit: I thought Sankar's name sounded familiar, turns out he was the guy at the very heart of Palantir's very embarrassing industrial espionage and racketeering efforts against a competitor. He was apparently punished by being promoted to company president. http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/16/palantirs-third-black-eye-i2-lawsuit-settled/ http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/16/palantirs-third-black-eye-...

hkmurakami 10y ago
They hire like a consultancy. Your topline scales linearly with the staff you can ship out to client sites.
- bane 10y ago
  What's interesting is that despite that being the case, and they charge out their staff at huge rates (especially compared to what they pay them), they're still losing money.

dccoolgai 10y ago

Interviewed with them once: took like 2 months and it was a horrible experience. Weirdest thing was I randomly ran into this guy onsite that was a friend-of-a-friend.. and enough of an acquaintance that we had each others' numbers and went drinking a couple times... saw him there wearing the same Palantir t-shirt as everyone else (which was weird) and he barely acknowledged me... like I wasn't "one of them" yet... it was creepy enough that I was glad I didn't get an offer.

gaius 10y ago

From a linked article: "The primary payday for the best engineers is that you get to work with the best engineers," Funny how that's not the same for execs!

dschiptsov 10y ago

SAP-like scam. Highly refined, Oxford-educated sales and execs, selling with high-status deceptive techniques grossly overpriced, lovest quality outdated by a decade crap, for support and maintenance of which they are billing their victims for each hour spend by expensive suit wearing nonsense talking consultants. BTW, the guys who went there for sweatshop positions are those who barely managed to graduate. But in sales there are top tier liberal arts guys, with refined speech and behavior. These kind of enterprises is a classic social pyramid, modeled after an organized religion, especially Catholic Church, with exactly the same deceptions, dogmas and loyalty for lower ranks.

Anderkent 10y ago
> BTW, the guys who went there for sweatshop positions are those who barely managed to graduate Bullshit. I work at the London office, most of the FDEs have firsts from cambridge/oxford/imperial/some other top european university.
- dschiptsov 10y ago
  Oh, come on. I have seen enough of consultants and witnessed a SAP takeover of a small retailer. This looks like as if a whole bunch of hotshots in $3k suits take you to a head office in, say, Germany, with a five star hotel, top tier restaurants and business class flights, while telling you that you are too successful and too rich to drive your own car, that only struggling, unsuccessful losers do it, etc. Eventually, one finds oneself with a few guys in expesive suits who are sitting in the car right on your lap, totally obstructing the view, but telling you when to accelerate, stop or turn, claiming that this is a much safer and the most effective way to drive a car, so they bill you for each kilometer and each turn taken. They, moreover, have replaced your car with their own ancient vehicle, to which there is not a single mechanic in a 1000 miles and the only spare parts available from their own garage, with the replacing procedure which requires to remove everything from the salon and from under the hood and then to reassemble it all back, which takes a few days and for which you are billed for each hour of each of twenty certified technicians, half of them flown from the head office at your expense. And, please, don't tell me that consulting companies are different. Btw, really smart top grads would never even come close to these scam shops, like sane people would avoid Ponzi schemes or a telemarketing crap with a hidden charges. Being fooled by meaningless titles and certificates instead of working with a cutting edge technologies and obtaining skills which could be sold later.. I can't imagine top grads being so clueless.

palandick 10y ago

There seems to be a lot of confusion here so let me clear up some things from my former several years at Palantir. 1) Palantir's product is a legitimate product that works quite well for many graph analysis use cases. If you can model your problem as a graph, chances are that Palantir will help you find some solid insights (if there are insights to be found) across your 15 disparate datasets. Software Engineers build the core platform. 2) Forward Deployed Engineers customize and extend the platform for specific client use cases and get client data into Palantir. If these customizations end up being useful, they get rolled into the core platform(ideally). 3) Palantir works their engineers very hard and the performance bar is very high. Calling it an engineering mill/sweatshop is a bit much considering you get 3 meals/day, massages, chiropractic, nap rooms, excellent events, laundry, etc and 6 figure salaries or massive stock or both. 4) Lots of people have been leaving. Part of this is because lots of oldies are hitting their 10 year marks and part of it is because Palantir went through a massive growth spurt over the last 4 years or so and now the fat is being trimmed/people are leaving after concluding that it wasn't a good fit/they don't want to work that much. If you can get into Palantir, you can get into Google: Why not go to Google? 5) If you want to see the actual product, just look around. Here are like 150 examples: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCA98B156F7EFD6A0 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCA98B156F7EFD6A0 6) The bookings vs revenue thing is pretty deceptive but everyone knows that the money isn't real until its in your bank account or there's a signed contract for it to be in your account.

triplesec 10y ago
From your description, this is a classic Accenture-style (and Bain and other strategic) consulting and systems integration business model, though possibly with higher quality work, based on that latest management buzzphrase Big Data. Whether it can provide the perceived value of a BCG of McKinsey is another matter.

gzur 10y ago

The headline graphic really caught my attention, because my fingers have ls -latr ingrained into them. I thought it oddly fitting.

davej 10y ago

To get an idea of the kind of stuff Palantir do then it's worth taking a look at the presentation that was leaked during the HBGary leaks: http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2?IR=T#-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/palantir-wikileaks-2011-2?IR=...

404throwaway 10y ago

Palantir is probably worth less than the money invested. At $420 million in revenue, they would need to be worth more than 6x revenue to match the $2.5 billion invested. They certainly have "special sauce" over and above their value as a consulting firm (which are worth maybe 2x revenue). But how big is the market for that "special sauce"? The intelligence customers are low-capability, have massive datasets and really do need Palantir. But they've tapped out that market. So look at the consumer brands in their customer list: low capability, yes. But you could fit the data for any of them into the RAM on one server. Yes Palantir has super smart guys who can find fascinating relationships in the data. But there are only so many relationhips to find. And once that's done, the IT staff of the customer can do the work easily themselves. So I'm sorry but I think Palantir is a washout (worth less than the money invested). Nice offices though.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

I used Palantir heavily in my previous work and it was disappointing at how manual it was based on what we were sold as a mostly automated platform. It had a great interface for creating network diagrams, and collaborating but it was a huge pain to get integrated. I mean if nothing else, give us keyword matching and linking!

allenleein 10y ago

FYI: What does Joe Lonsdale think of BuzzFeed's Inside Palantir article? https://www.quora.com/What-does-Joe-Lonsdale-think-of-BuzzFeeds-Inside-Palantir-article/answer/Joe-Lonsdale?__snids__=1650809443&__nsrc__=2 https://www.quora.com/What-does-Joe-Lonsdale-think-of-BuzzFe...