Palantir took a decade to reach $1 billion in revenue

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 12:06

   Or was it, again, like, listen, went in, loved the team, loved the mission, and kind of knew it within 10 or 15 minutes? Not at all. So, yeah, I was kind of laughing internally when you opened this up by saying that I had this very successful trajectory of good decisions. That was not the case at all. I was at Palantir, as I said, kind of running the sales side of the business, really for most of the time that I was there, it was really hard. Like, I can't even begin to explain how hard it was. You guys were not a cool or sexy company for a very long time.

2. 12:40

   No. And I think that actually, like, we should talk about this in this conversation, like the difference between Facebook and Palantir. Because like Facebook, things just worked. Like, you know, users are coming on. The company always had a lot of money. Palantir was not like this at all. Like, you know, it took us five years to get our first 10 million in revenue. It took us 10 years to get to a billion. You know, the company is accelerating now. It's kind of been figured out, but we needed cultural change with our customer in order to win, which is not a great place to start a business. Like if you're requiring on something that you can't control for the company to work, like it's going to take a long time. And so we tried everything. We hired retired generals. We hired former ambassadors. We brought on consultants in Washington, D.C.

3. 13:27

   who were supposed to be able to do this for us. I spent a lot of time with SpaceX, like sharing notes about what was working, what wasn't working. We tried to do partnerships with the big primes. Like, you know, we had a partnership agreement thing with Boeing and Booz Allen and Deloitte and Accenture and SAP and none of the, nothing worked. I mean, it was like death by a thousand cuts. We were sure that it just was going to die. And I was exhausted after six years. And so it's like easy to look back in hindsight and be like, wow, like, you know, when I left, we had a billion dollars of revenue and like, gosh, that probably says something about Trey and Sean figuring this out. Actually, like, no, it was bad. We sucked. We were terrible at this. And you could maybe blame the customer for some of that as well. But like, it was really hard. And there were moments

4. 14:20

   where like, I would leave a meeting with Dr. Karp and Dr. Karp would be like, wow, you are bad. Like, this is not working at all. And so I was constantly talking to Peter, where I would have like these biweekly calls where we would catch up and he'd be like, okay, what is the thing that we're running into now? How do we get through this hurdle? And so I played Ultimate Frisbee at Georgetown, and we had this alumni Ultimate Frisbee game. And I kept getting calls from Peter during the Ultimate Frisbee game. And I was like, I'll talk to him after. But he kept calling. So finally, I answered the phone. I was like, is there a problem? Do we need to solve something?

5. 14:54

   And he's like, I would like for you to leave Palantir and come join me at Founders Fund. And I'm like, I don't know anything about venture capital. I don't know anything about finance. Like, I haven't taken a math class since high school. I do not understand why you think this is a good idea. Am I being fired? Like, technically, you're my boss at Palantir, but you want me to leave? Is this a soft landing?

6. 15:18

   Yeah, I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm being fired. This is really weird. And he's like, just meet the team. And so a couple of weeks later, I went up to New York. For some reason, the Founders Fund team was there. And I sat down with Lauren Gross, who's the CEO. She runs CEO. She runs Founders Fund. And she's like, why am I talking to you? And I'm like, I don't know. Peter asked me to talk to you. And she was like, why are you interested in venture capital? And I'm like, you misunderstand. I am not interested in venture capital.

7. 15:46

   And so I had like this nine month process where everyone was just confused. And then on Thanksgiving Day of 2013, Peter called me and he was like, OK, you're going to join Founders Fund. And I'm like, I don't understand. There's no offer. I haven't agreed to leave my job to join Founders Fund. And he's like, no, you're going to join January 1st of the year. You're going to move to San Francisco and work at Founders Fund.

8. 16:13

   I'm like, great. All right. I guess that's what I'm doing. So it was not the good decision that you made it sound like. I mean, nine months is a long time.