6 ms·

Poptip Joins Palantir

54 points by zachh 12y ago

sscalia 12y ago
Creepy. More data for Palantir to dissect, categorize, attach to individuals and provide to governments, corporations, etc. See my last comment re: Palantir, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856482
JPKab 12y ago
Yay! Now you can use your expertise to continue to help Palantir undermine the privacy rights of people all over the globe.
- meritt 12y ago
  I've always though it was a bit weird that Palantir is a "Luminary Level ($10k+)" supporter of the EFF. https://www.eff.org/thanks https://www.eff.org/thanks
- tptacek 12y ago
  Exactly what is it that you think Palantir's products do?
  - trhway 12y ago
    Generate SARs (as result of "fusing" and analysis of the data from license plates readers and the likes) Poptip will expand their ability to "fuse" various unstructured data like social feeds and phone conversation transcripts. And what exactly is it that you think Palantir's products do? :)
  - JPKab 12y ago
    Palantir is a private company whose product's development was incubated and developed at taxpayer expense following 9/11 (they essentially researched all of their technologies on the taxpayer dime on govt contracts, then took those technologies and created their product). It's an asshole company that doesn't give a shit about the constitution or human rights. They also use Congressman Hunter as a paid shill to push their product all over the government as if its a panacea to every data integration issue. Its not.
    - tptacek 12y ago
      The set of companies that benefit from taxpayer-funded research is enormous, and it does not follow from membership in that set that a company "doesn't give a shit about the Constitution or human rights". You didn't answer my question.
markhall 12y ago
Congrats on the acquisition but I'm still a little confused/surprised by this. The two (seemingly)disparate markets that Poptip and Palantir operate in have little cross-over. Is there a longer-term vision that I'm not seeing?
- lukasm 12y ago
  Acquihire
- samstave 12y ago
  The USG will use PopTip technology to parse the online conversations of the billions they are spying on better. Yet another reason to loathe palantir.
  - n09n 12y ago
    Hardly. Even if you are worried about personal privacy, why on earth would less accurate spying ever be preferable to more accurate spying?
    - NotAtWork 12y ago
      Because you believe the danger of government targeting dissident or other unpopular groups accurately outweighs the benefits that the proposed program adds to terrorist catching. Terrorism is a low risk in the US, these programs seem to add little to just having investigators follow leads and intentionally infiltrate groups or paying informants or similar, and the US government has a long record of targeting groups that the powerful don't like.
      - n09n 12y ago
        You're missing the point. Even when the spying is used in "bad" ways, it's better for the spying to be accurate. For example, rather than randomly throwing students in jail for searching for the wrong library books, they'd only be jailing real dissidents. Of course it's wrong to do either, but if they're going to do it, everyone is better off if they do it right.
dmix 12y ago
Having worked at a startup that failed to find a customer base in the consumer world for the NLP software that analyzed social media, I'm not surprised the only application turns out to be defense industry. There doesn't seem to be many uses for that type of NLP other than surveillance and brand monitoring.
- misiti3780 12y ago
  what startup?
bane 12y ago
Let's talk business here, because I find the numbers behind Palantir both astonishing and fascinating. Their burn rate looks to be around $275m/yr based on employee head count and they've received ~$900m in funding: - Seed - In-Q-Tel (~$2m) - Debt Financing - $8.3m - Series C - $35m - Series D - $90m - Secondary Market (unk amount, 137 investors) - Series E - $50m - Series F - $70m - Series G - $56m - Secondary Market (unk amount, 137 investors) - Private Equity - $196.5m (Founders Fund) - Private Equity - $390.4m (Feb 2014) Their last round was almost $400m in Feb of 2014. That's almost as big as all other rounds combined. Their "valuation" (for whatever that's worth) based on the last investment round is ~$9billion. As of August 2013 they were not yet profitable but estimates for 2013 revenue were around $450m and <$300m in 2012. Other revenue estimates (they're all over the place honestly it seems like every time they give an interview it's a different number) - 2010 - $50m - >$80m - 2011 - $250m - 2012 - <$300m - 2013 - $450m They've publicly announced several time they have no interest in being acquired or go public. Yet one of their investors claims on Quora that they'll probably go public in 2015 or 2016. Some questions for people who understand this mess better than I. - What's their exit strategy honestly look like? At $9b valuation, I can't imagine too many companies who might be interested in buying them. - All the private equity investment tells me they're burning money faster than they can find investors, keeping it private keeps their financials private, which smells like trouble to me if they were to go public. Am I right in this analysis or wrong? - Does dilution basically make everybody who has shares or options through 11 (eleven!) rounds of investment basically holding onto worthless paper? Even if they go public? A review of glassdoor on the company says that people are underpaid and salary capped, they must be holding on for a big payday somewhere. Are they going to end up disappointed? Anything else that might be interesting to discuss? Their fundraising seems really crazy and unusual from anything I've seen before. Here's a longform history [1] of the company which shows they spend over $1m/yr on lobbying (IBM spent $6m, Raytheon $7.5m, Lockheed Martin, $14.5m, Boeing, $15m). To put that in percentage terms, if Palantir is worth $9b Palantir spends .012% of their value on lobbying IBM spends .003% Raytheon .026% Lockheed Martin .027% Boeing .017% This article also lists 16 distinct financing events, bringing dilution of early investor shares even more to mind. 1 - http://www.mausstrategicconsulting.com/topical-analysis-blog/a-pretty-complete-history-of-palantir http://www.mausstrategicconsulting.com/topical-analysis-blog...
0xeeeeeeee 12y ago
Palantir is pretty mysterious to me. Frankly, I don't see the demand for their software being high enough to warrant their size and number of employees. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.
rdl 12y ago
Congratulations. I wish I'd visited Palantir in NYC; I've spent some time in Palo Alto and know people in DC (and downrange), but never met any of their NYC people. It's pretty amazing how I'd had the company pigeonholed as "government contractor" (which is a huge business in its own right), but the commercial stuff seems to be growing even faster.

54 points by zachh 12y ago

Creepy. More data for Palantir to dissect, categorize, attach to individuals and provide to governments, corporations, etc. See my last comment re: Palantir, here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856482 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6856482

JPKab 12y ago

Yay! Now you can use your expertise to continue to help Palantir undermine the privacy rights of people all over the globe.

meritt 12y ago
I've always though it was a bit weird that Palantir is a "Luminary Level ($10k+)" supporter of the EFF. https://www.eff.org/thanks https://www.eff.org/thanks
tptacek 12y ago
Exactly what is it that you think Palantir's products do?
- trhway 12y ago
  Generate SARs (as result of "fusing" and analysis of the data from license plates readers and the likes) Poptip will expand their ability to "fuse" various unstructured data like social feeds and phone conversation transcripts. And what exactly is it that you think Palantir's products do? :)
- JPKab 12y ago
  Palantir is a private company whose product's development was incubated and developed at taxpayer expense following 9/11 (they essentially researched all of their technologies on the taxpayer dime on govt contracts, then took those technologies and created their product). It's an asshole company that doesn't give a shit about the constitution or human rights. They also use Congressman Hunter as a paid shill to push their product all over the government as if its a panacea to every data integration issue. Its not.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    The set of companies that benefit from taxpayer-funded research is enormous, and it does not follow from membership in that set that a company "doesn't give a shit about the Constitution or human rights". You didn't answer my question.

markhall 12y ago

Congrats on the acquisition but I'm still a little confused/surprised by this. The two (seemingly)disparate markets that Poptip and Palantir operate in have little cross-over. Is there a longer-term vision that I'm not seeing?

lukasm 12y ago
Acquihire
samstave 12y ago
The USG will use PopTip technology to parse the online conversations of the billions they are spying on better. Yet another reason to loathe palantir.
- n09n 12y ago
  Hardly. Even if you are worried about personal privacy, why on earth would less accurate spying ever be preferable to more accurate spying?
  - NotAtWork 12y ago
    Because you believe the danger of government targeting dissident or other unpopular groups accurately outweighs the benefits that the proposed program adds to terrorist catching. Terrorism is a low risk in the US, these programs seem to add little to just having investigators follow leads and intentionally infiltrate groups or paying informants or similar, and the US government has a long record of targeting groups that the powerful don't like.
    - n09n 12y ago
      You're missing the point. Even when the spying is used in "bad" ways, it's better for the spying to be accurate. For example, rather than randomly throwing students in jail for searching for the wrong library books, they'd only be jailing real dissidents. Of course it's wrong to do either, but if they're going to do it, everyone is better off if they do it right.

dmix 12y ago

Having worked at a startup that failed to find a customer base in the consumer world for the NLP software that analyzed social media, I'm not surprised the only application turns out to be defense industry. There doesn't seem to be many uses for that type of NLP other than surveillance and brand monitoring.

misiti3780 12y ago
what startup?

bane 12y ago

Let's talk business here, because I find the numbers behind Palantir both astonishing and fascinating. Their burn rate looks to be around $275m/yr based on employee head count and they've received ~$900m in funding: - Seed - In-Q-Tel (~$2m) - Debt Financing - $8.3m - Series C - $35m - Series D - $90m - Secondary Market (unk amount, 137 investors) - Series E - $50m - Series F - $70m - Series G - $56m - Secondary Market (unk amount, 137 investors) - Private Equity - $196.5m (Founders Fund) - Private Equity - $390.4m (Feb 2014) Their last round was almost $400m in Feb of 2014. That's almost as big as all other rounds combined. Their "valuation" (for whatever that's worth) based on the last investment round is ~$9billion. As of August 2013 they were not yet profitable but estimates for 2013 revenue were around $450m and <$300m in 2012. Other revenue estimates (they're all over the place honestly it seems like every time they give an interview it's a different number) - 2010 - $50m - >$80m - 2011 - $250m - 2012 - <$300m - 2013 - $450m They've publicly announced several time they have no interest in being acquired or go public. Yet one of their investors claims on Quora that they'll probably go public in 2015 or 2016. Some questions for people who understand this mess better than I. - What's their exit strategy honestly look like? At $9b valuation, I can't imagine too many companies who might be interested in buying them. - All the private equity investment tells me they're burning money faster than they can find investors, keeping it private keeps their financials private, which smells like trouble to me if they were to go public. Am I right in this analysis or wrong? - Does dilution basically make everybody who has shares or options through 11 (eleven!) rounds of investment basically holding onto worthless paper? Even if they go public? A review of glassdoor on the company says that people are underpaid and salary capped, they must be holding on for a big payday somewhere. Are they going to end up disappointed? Anything else that might be interesting to discuss? Their fundraising seems really crazy and unusual from anything I've seen before. Here's a longform history [1] of the company which shows they spend over $1m/yr on lobbying (IBM spent $6m, Raytheon $7.5m, Lockheed Martin, $14.5m, Boeing, $15m). To put that in percentage terms, if Palantir is worth $9b Palantir spends .012% of their value on lobbying IBM spends .003% Raytheon .026% Lockheed Martin .027% Boeing .017% This article also lists 16 distinct financing events, bringing dilution of early investor shares even more to mind. 1 - http://www.mausstrategicconsulting.com/topical-analysis-blog/a-pretty-complete-history-of-palantir http://www.mausstrategicconsulting.com/topical-analysis-blog...

0xeeeeeeee 12y ago

Palantir is pretty mysterious to me. Frankly, I don't see the demand for their software being high enough to warrant their size and number of employees. I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

rdl 12y ago

Congratulations. I wish I'd visited Palantir in NYC; I've spent some time in Palo Alto and know people in DC (and downrange), but never met any of their NYC people. It's pretty amazing how I'd had the company pigeonholed as "government contractor" (which is a huge business in its own right), but the commercial stuff seems to be growing even faster.