Transcription
[Applause] Good evening, everybody. I don't know if, well, all those claps are—is there a lot of Palantir Tyrians in here that are stockholders? Is that what's going on? Just yeah, me too. See, you really don't—we were backstage, and we were saying, you really don't need an introduction. I said, "How many people here do you think really know what Palantir is?" Of course, born after 9/11, to go after terrorists, but it sounds like the room knows. Well, thank you. I actually can't see you guys because of the way the lighting is, but it does look like there are a lot of friends and supporters in the audience, and I really, I really appreciate that.
Um, well, it's it's a privilege to be here, and uh, it's a privilege to interview Alex. Um, and as they mentioned, we've now had the opportunity to have conversations uh for many many years. I think maybe at least a dozen or maybe more years we've been—we've been—you were one of the first people to give me a real stage when people thought you were crazy, and now you're not. And the company was a failure. Crazy is okay, but poor in this country—maybe crazy? Yeah.
Um, well, there's there's about a hundred things uh to talk about in this book. Uh, the book is called *The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West*. And as I mentioned, Palantir in many ways was born uh out of 9/11, to go after terrorists and to uh effectively hate—help the West wage war. Uh, but you've also been engaged in thinking a lot about almost a rhetorical war inside this country, I think, um, about what's happened to this country, about where we are in the West, and specifically where Silicon Valley is. And I I wanted—I want to start this conversation, if you'd indulge me, with a quote from the book itself, um, because I I think it's going to allow us to get into a lot of different places. You write the following: You say, "An entire generation of executives and entrepreneurs that came of age in recent de—in recent decades, and really since 9/11, I think was essentially robbed of an opportunity to form actual views about the world, leaving us with a managerial class whose principal purpose often seems to be little more than ensuring its own survival and recreation. The atrophying of the mind and the self-editing that often accompanies such decay are are corrosive to real thought. The result is that corporations selling consumer goods feel the need to develop and indeed broadcast their views on issues affecting our moral or interior lives, while most software companies with the capacity and perhaps duty to shape our geopolitics remain conspicuously silent." How do you think this happened?
Um, well, I mean, the core thing I I'm trying to say there—uh, with Nick and I are trying to say—and by the way, Nick and I worked—we've kind of been in the trenches uh working together on all sorts of writing projects for the last decade—um, and did a tremendous job. I mean, I I think the fair division of labor is 95% of the ideas are mine, but a lot—most the writing is his, and that's why it's not—doesn't feel like it's written by a dyslexic, because it's not. Um, and uh—um, so a topic we want to talk about the way—yeah, so—um, it's—the the central—I I think people who were RIS—so what the book really is about—one of the main topics is like how would you build a company that's transformative? How would you build a culture that's transformative? How would you build a charismatic culture, and one—or how do you build a country that's working? And one of the things that I think happened in my generation was people learned that the first thing you do if you want to be successful is become political and the sophist, and um, and you trade whatever your belief structure is—they—there was a general sense you should have no belief structure. Um, and um, and the way that that played out in many many many contexts—a lot of times when you're debating somebody uh currently or in the past, you're not really debating them; you're debating the fact that they don't actually have an opinion that's theirs. And and I tend to think this—I mean, I don't want to link everything to uh, you know, the enormous damage uh kind of pagan beliefs did to our university structure, but one of the reasons that these these thoughts were so effective was on the other side of the equation, people actually had no belief; they just had a belief that they should pretend they should have a belief. And um, and and and then that played out in a lot of ways, but the context here, of course, was, you know, uh, we're building this company in Silicon Valley, and um, and then working—building the company was really really hard because um, the mere fact that we thought we had—we—you had to have beliefs meant—signal to the world—"Well, that can't be valuable." Um, and then uh, and that was a just an incredible disadvantage until it became a huge advantage because while no one else really was building like software or really tech though at the time—this—the people came—mostly Elon came—and then—but it's like, you know, built on what—what is the value you would create for the institution, not not what is the fake value you'll pretend to create. And that led to us being differentiated on one side, but on the other side, um, it it's just—and and you just look at whatever structure you're skeptical of—like I think one of the things that got the university presidents into trouble—the ones they got fired—I think if they were being honest, they just didn't know what they were supposed to pretend they believed. It wasn't—it wasn't that—it's—"I don't actually believe that there was anti-Semitic"—as they appeared. I think they just—they were caught in this thing—they're like, "I've been taught to not have a belief structure; my belief structure is I advance"—that's my belief structure.
Wasn't that always a sort of—I mean, in the business context—a sort of Milton Friedman-esque view, which was that you're supposed to do whatever is best for the company, and therefore you were not supposed to have a view? And then when it became politically attractive to have a view—even come 20120, let's say—then some of these sort of views, which I think you think were F—the the standard—so it's—that's a complicated question because there's a question of whether society should have a—whether capitalism should orbit—value be the arbiter of value based on a normative schema—I think is different than whether the people creating the value have a normative structure. So if you look at the institutions that are great in this society—universities—uh, actually the structure of capitalism, how it was built—um, the best companies, the best artists, the best interesting people—they almost always have a very very strong belief structure. I I maybe I'm still Manning Milton Friedman, but my version of that was he didn't want governments deciding which values are better than others; he wanted the market to—but that's different than creating the value. And um, and and I I I feel like I'm not as in contradiction with um the classic liberals where—where I think your point becomes uh accurate is there was a sense in which if capitalism should not be uh uh—if the normative controls on capitalism shouldn't be a government—some people thought, "Well, building the capital—or building the thing—should also not be governed by belief," and I think that's actually not only not wrong, but it's not workable because—and I—and and by the way, you know, I've—I—one of the blessings of having been involved in building Palantir is I've interacted with thousands and thousands of organizations—clandestine organizations, military organizations, police organizations—thousands of commercial organizations. I have yet to see one that functions at a high level where internally there's not a very strong belief structure—not one.
Let me ask you a question about belief structure, because—and and to your credit, you—I would argue that your your personal belief structure and the company are about as aligned as they could get. There's very few companies that have publicly, for example, put out full-page ads in the *New York Times* and elsewhere in in favor of Israel. No other company was doing that, but it was aligned. Not only was your own belief structure—was—not only was your own belief—and a real belief—it was something that the company leaned into because it was to the benefit of the company. Are there ever times you think, "No, no, just—I want to like—just okay"—the the the pro-Israel thing that I did—by the way, first of all, not everyone at Palantir agrees with me, so—and we are not a monoculture, and there are people at Palantir who do not agree with a lot of policies. And I would say also my support of Israel—the one C—I would say is that is a decision I made where I was convinced it might not be good for Palantir. So what do you think could happen? We're a publicly traded company, and October 8th, the streets are filled with people protesting, you know—I—my view is there—protesting that there's like—"Well, the Jewish state and Jews are weak, so we're going to go out and and and and persecute and prosecute"—um, but you're a publicly traded company. We have customers; I have employees; we—we have all sorts of customers that are also publicly traded companies. There's lots of people who could say, "Hey, we're not going to work with them," that could cause us revenue; that could cause me problems. It's like, "Well, how do I explain to my investors," you know—I mean, in purely Milton Friedman-like terms, you're not supposed to do something that could anyway cost you a customer—ever—by—by the—by the way, I think one of the things that cost you a lot of customers is never doing anything that will cost you a customer, but you know—um—and uh—so no, no, I think for me—and again, I don't want to—one of the things I think a lot about in my mind's eye is, you know, we've made a lot of decisions at Palantir. I was involved in the co-founding—as a co-founder—uh, involved in building Gotham, which is our first product—not as involved in our first commercial product, but definitely around Apollo, Foundry, ontology—and then being pro—sticking up for—"You know, we should have a border"—being involved in supporting Project Maven—um, and then—I—I—of—and and then Israel—just to get—I—I—what I found to my own surprise is the decisions that I've made where I thought, "Oh, this could cost us a lot"—like AI was a joke when we got involved; Israel looked—and still is—dangerous, and there are a lot of people who are variantly anti-Israel; blindly anti-Israel—a lot of—some—many of them, but not all of them are just blindly anti-Jewish—uh, but not all—I'm not saying every anti-Semite is—everyone who's anti-Israel is an anti-Semite, although it's important to know every anti-Semite is anti-Israel, and it's increasingly hard to tell the difference on some days. And also, if you're anti-Israel, you are very comfortable hanging out with anti-Semites, so—but there still is an analytical theoretical distinction. But the—the—the um—the decisions that—where it really did not look like always like the best decision—like when we built Gotham—the—we were—we were—we had—had licensed from our investors to build an analytic product. We found from the customer—in this case, clandestine services, you can think of—who—that they didn't really need an analytic product; they needed a data integration engine with a very robust security model that could also deal with unstructured text. That was a three-year build; it was suicide to go to the investors and say, "Hey, you already don't believe in us"—besides Peter, who is a phenomenal uh and supporter—Peter Thiel—Peter? Yeah, my co-founder and legend—um—uh—it—that—that—that was a—the worst business decision you could ever make. Another bad business decision—suicidal from the perspective of getting a multiple—something that some people believe we succeeded at 20 years later—um—uh—was having forward-deployed engineers. The reason no one had forward-deployed engineers—like to make the product actually valuable—especially before AI, you needed people on the front line to customize the product, but then have the discipline to productize the things you were customizing, which is really hard. Um, the the flat hierarchy we have—which still have—which makes sense to no one and pisses off people, and people leave because they—they don't get the power they want. Um, the equity—we distribute tons of equity to Palantir—more equity than any other company I've ever even heard of—from my perspective—like investors, you know—you know—like that causes them dilution—and uh—we were pro-Israel and pro-American when it was not popular—uh—and—but any case, there—it's an endless list of things that were the worst business decisions ever, but looking back 20 years from that—from—from Genesis—every single one of those that looked terrible ended up being the best decisions we ever made. And what—what I find fascinating about that is the closer the—the decision was to what you could call a pure values decision—of course, there's execution—the more valuable it ended up being 5, 10 years later—indirect correlation. So—um—and and that—the places where we made compromises—where we hired somebody—maybe thought someone thought we should hire—or—um, you know, we used to have all these people—their sole job was controlling me from saying things in public—but but like, we had 200 of them. You know, when people ask why our margins are so good, we have like one person controlling me now—um, she's back there—she's—but Lisa—she's very expensive—very good—uh, but not as expensive as 200 people.
Let me ask you this about the the culture that you've built and and how you think about it relative to what you describe as Silicon Valley companies, which really I think take a lot of criticism in this book, right? I mean, I think a lot of what you've been doing is calling out Corporate America, universities. You've moved Palantir headquarters from Silicon Valley to Denver to try to get away from it all, and it's a criticism of these—of these social media giants born out of the valley. And I I'm curious why you think they've succeeded. And the reason I ask that is because your story is very much at odds with theirs. Well, you're not supposed to use the MW—but uh, they ended up with a very structurally strong market position, uh, and then they could f up almost everything else. Um, and the the thing that makes Palantir better to learn from is we had the worst market position you could possibly imagine. Our clients didn't want us; no one believed in data; no one believed you should work with the government; they thought it was immoral; they thought if it was worse than immoral, you were going to go broke—that's the Venture perspective—uh—and um—and we had to scrape and cling and figure out things, and there was no playbook that could possibly work for us, and no one with a playbook wanted to work at Palantir. So that's the other like big advantage we had—all these big companies—all the right credentials—adults—they all wanted to work at these companies; they found their way in, you know, where they didn't want to work at Palantir. And uh—and so we have—we had the benefit of just like, you know, it's like we were, you know, in this desert, and we had to make it work, and we did. And by the way—and then—and again, I—I—like things have gotten so much better, and like our relationship with the with the US government now are very strong, but nobody—it was strictly forbidden to talk to Palantir for like a decade—like people always—you know, we have this hilarious thing—like we have a pretty big business in Europe; it's growing slowly; it's like growing 10x slower than America—but any case—sometimes we'll deal with like European clients and are like, you know, like—"Well, the US government—it must be so easy for you"—it's like—"No, like we sued the US government twice"—twice—we won, and then they went back to court because they hated us so much. Yeah, that's a completely true story.
Let me ask you a question about both your relationship with the US—but you know—just sorry, D—but it's like—um—it's uh, you know, I viewed it as an act of love to sue the US government—not because I really care about this country—and the French have this great saying, *ktis*, which means if you really are care—if the French speak—you'll be very exacting. It's not caring to not sue if that thing is going to really screw up our nation. And you know that—that—that double suing the US government opened the door to all these great defense tech startups; innovation broke down the door, and I would not have done it. There was another act of like complete stupidity—the most important—if you turn on the news and see National Security advisers—every single one of them came into my office and sat just like this, and they're like, "Hey, Alex, it's nice to meet you, and nice to talk to you," and they said exactly the same thing: They're like, "If you sue the US government, everyone will know you're an"—I'm like—"But I don't think people think I'm an"—it's like—"No, no, it's not—not a problem; it's okay; we like creative, but we don't want everyone to know it." It's like—"No, I actually care, and we're going to sue those, and we're going to win." And and by the way, when we sued them, we did not sue them to buy Palantir—this is one of the most important things—we sued them to get meritocracy. It was not—"You buy Palantir"—if we win the suit—it was—"You will have a meritocratic process"—that's what we were fighting with the US government about—to—to make sure the playing field of play was somewhat even. We—we were—I told our lawyers like—"I don't even need meritocracy; they can shoot down at us, but they can't be dumping stuff from a skyscraper down; we have to be able to shoot back." And then—that—that—that changed—that changed the way procurement works in this country and is one of the main reasons why we have battlefield superiority in certain areas.
Okay, given this new administration, would you sue today? I don't have to. There—there—like—we—but again, the reason—the reason I asked the question is I think there's a lot—lot of people have lots of questions today. You—you actually do have a very good relationship with—with this government and this administration. Um, I was going to ask you how you think the American public should think about the relationship that Big Tech—we take you out of it—that Silicon Valley has now with the US government—with this administration—so many of those CEOs had better seats than the cabinet members at the inauguration, and I'm I'm so curious just how you think that we as a public think about that and and whether those companies and their—and leaders of those companies—their views are—do you think they're—those views are genuine? Do you think that they aren't genuine? Yeah, I—it's very hard to look into the hearts of men and women. There's—there's a famous radio show in the 50s—um—uh—uh—"Who knows what looks in the hearts of men"—the Shadow knows. I'm not the Shadow. And so what I think is important is the primacy of the US government in deciding who does what, and what I care about—whether it's genuine or not—is the—every single tech company in this country should be ashamed to not supply their tech to US soldiers. That's what I care about. And for some people, that's just not genuine—but—and for many, it is, I think. Um, but what matters is what happens. And uh, what happened in the past was the best tech companies in the world refused to work with the US military. By the way, I don't have to give anyone a lecture on the US military—probably here—but the first institution to integrate—in arguably at scale—in the world was the US military. The US military integrated along racial lines in the Korean War and maintained meritocracy all the way through decades before anyone else did. So if there's like one institution you really have to support—like I would almost be okay with people like—"Hey, we like the military, but we don't like X"—but for me, the drawing—the—the dividing line is—"Will you defend soldiers who are going into battle to make sure they come home safely? Do you—will you—or will you refuse to use—to—to sell them your tech?" And last, not least, if you do not sell the US government—especially US military—or tech, do you sell it abroad? Because what was happening in the past was somehow these companies could not work with the US military, but they could sell to adversaries—that—where there's no distinction between military and civilian. So that—that—that has to change. I think that has changed now. I would say, in fairness to Silicon—to Silicon Valley—America—and America—America is an enormously flexible place, and I think currently there's not a single large company that uh would refuse to sell the US military—that's a US-based company.
Why do you think that is? Because I embarrassed the—out of them—and other things. Well, let me ask about the other things because I think there's a—there's a lot of people who have uh questions about some of the other things. I I think it's fair to say Corporate America is undergoing a remarkable shift, including—and you've been critical of DEI policies and other things that are being dropped—but I think there's also um a fear among CEOs to speak out right now—that's why I asked you whether you would uh be willing to sue this administration—to—to speak out against this administration—for fear of retribution, right? Like that is part of what's happening here. I I mean, like I do not see that—I don't honestly—do not see a difference between like fear in this administration and last administration. Do you know the number of people did not agree with Biden that did not speak up on like a whole myriad of issues? Oh, sure, yeah. So I think there's—in general, corporate—look, if you're—if you make the standard—C courage—you're going to find that institutions that are designed for profit maximization are not going to be as courageous as they should be, and that's just a generalization. Um, and and again, I would say I do think the Israel issue is the single best issue on—kurs—you think you've even more outspoken—I mean, even in the past—I mean, I think underneath this book is a shift even in your own politics. No, I don't see—I—I—if you want to know what my personal shift is—I don't think the Democrats are serious. And you used to—and you would argue you used to be a Democrat. I've been a Democrat most of my life. I have no faith in the Democratic Party to reform, and I—I could give you like—I sat on the sidelines in the last election. Um, I gave a small amount of money to Biden; I didn't give anything after that, but I—I think I—I think we—the—there's been no inward-looking about why the election went—did—like there's just a lot of things that make no sense that you're not allowed to talk about in the Democratic Party, and I do not feel like anyone's listening. And so, you know—and then I would say globally—um—like we were talking about the Green Party—again, to the book—what—what I—what—what I—what I uh—I think has happened is—I don't know—how—there's been a lot of discussion about Germany—um, the the Green Party has—in theory—a wonderful, noble agenda—except for in practice, the sole non-negotiable thing they believe is that immigration policy is can never be changed because to discuss it honestly would be racist or bigoted. And then what they've set up a paradigm where the main parties cannot vote on immigration policy because you would need the votes of the far right, and to get those votes—uh, you would—to get policy that 90—85% of Germans want—and therefore they control the party; they control the policy on immigration—and that policy is a policy that really almost no German wants—than 15% of Germans that want that—vote for the Greens. And I think this is happening globally, and uh, and I think that's a problem for our democracy. Um, and and so it's—it's a hard situation because I—I do—do not believe—I do not see reforms happening, and I—and I think—and then I don't view it as my—so one of the things that's really important about this book—so I'm not—maybe no one reads it, but there—it is really important to have an ideology that could win. So what would you do? And we can go back to Germany in a second, but what would you do if you were trying to create an ideology for Democrats today that you think would win? You have to be—first of all, somebody—somebody who's a real political candidate has got to stand—get up and say to the left—"This doesn't work; it's not popular; Americans don't want it; we voted on it; it's not going to work. And you can go believe in this stuff in your Berkeley campus, but we do—we—it has to be really clear." And I'll tell you an example that's a complete disaster for the Democratic Party—I don't know if they turned down uh Governor Shapiro because he's Jewish, but I do know that everyone in the party thinks that they might—that's the Democratic Party right now—that you cannot talk about race and religion every day, all day—and then the—the person—and then look who they picked in—in favor of him—complete joke—it's like—and then, by the way, that's before you get to—there's a gender divide in this country. I—I can tell you I did not view their pick as a dude as being very doodle, and I'm just going to like—so it is a complete—"Don't come to me and tell me I C—buy into this thing when you're playing to lose; I don't have any interest in it, and I'm not—nor should you guys—especially if you're Progressive—you got to stand up"—like one of the big lessons in universities is we did not stand up; we did not stand up against these people, and then they're corroding every institution. You know, as a matter of theory, the United Nations should be a great institution; our universities should be great institutions—uh—are—why do we have a legitimacy crisis in this country? The part that I think is—as much as I did—I wish I had done more—it's like—and it is not virtuous to accept bigotry and accept ideologies that can never work, especially when they're intertwined.
Okay, let me ask you a question. You're talking about the Green Party, and we're talking about the far right in Germany. I think there's a lot of Jews in the world who look at that party and say, "You know, they tolerate bigotry because they tolerate," you know, whether it's a small group or a large group—they're—there are people in that—in that group—you mean Alternative für Deutschland? Yeah, yeah—that—that will carry uh, you know, Nazi flags with them, right? You know what—I—I—okay, but let me give you a lesson that I think is actually important in my little book. Okay, he's—Shorin is bringing up—very talented person—um—is bringing up what I would call an ideology here: You have to be—it's like—con—sounds completely reasonable but will absolutely allow you to become the product of a radical or misaligned ideology that is not reasonable. So he's bringing up a point that is true and is reasonable—in the uh—the Alternative für Deutschland is basically two factions: one is reasonable, and one is—they don't like me—obviously, they do have some Nazis—um—okay, this is obviously true—okay—but the—the—the—the flaw in the logic is if you focus on the obvious fact that the—there are people that do not like you in that party and that you don't—you shouldn't—you essentially outsource all your power to a party that is absolutely committed to a country that will never work. And by the way, that party—and one of the lessons here for America is that party's got 15% of the vote, right? A party in America with 20% of the vote are called losers, right? A party in Germany that has 20% of the vote is called the Green Party, and they control your immigration policy, and nothing works in the whole country because nobody wants that policy. And so one of the lessons in the book is you must never become a product of someone else's ideology, and one of the ways people get you to be a product of their ideology is they point to people with whom you would—you do not want to have anything to do with—and because you don't want anything to do with it, you transfer all your power to the reasonable—seemingly reasonable—people who are not reasonable at all. And this—by the way—there's a software version of this—like the reason why all these software companies post-IPO—that all the hedge funds loved—have massively underperformed—I won't name names—you all know them—and the reason why we've done a little better than they have is because they all fell into this trap—they all built—there's a famous saying in—in software—was a little bit vulgar, but it's like—"You want the client to feel like they're getting laid while they're getting"—and this is exactly what the Green Party is doing to Germany, and this is exactly the way the software companies are built. You buy this little thing; it feels like a great ride—the ride is smooth; the technique—it's all great—uh, people love it—and what happens actually is you have a venereal disease you cannot get rid of. And this—this is literally—this is literally—this—this mantra works—is how companies—you're taught to build a company. We were so removed from everything normal; no one explained this to me—I'm like—"Oh, yeah, we should build a company that works; should make it valuable for the client; you know, it should be two-way pleasing"—we used to—you know—"Two ways—both sides benefit"—you know, maybe some more than others—people have different techniques—it's uh—um—and and uh—and then—but this is—there—there's a societal version of this, too, and it's—and and and be very careful of this because the people who uh who are selling you that wonderful pleasure—you are their product, and the whole society will become parasitic. And this is what happened to universities; it's what's happening to the Democratic Party; it's what's happening to the German immigration situation and the Green Party, and it will happen to you. And if you're building a business or want to build a business or whatever you want to do—if you to be an artist—something really—a novelist—you—you must build your thing around what it means for you and think very very deeply about that and do not allow yourself to go into—"But this person is bad, and therefore I can't make the right decision"—because the people who get you to do that—they monetize that—they end up—in the past—they ended up with this—and the—by the way—the whole jig worked really well in software because what they really did is these businesses have essentially—you get a multiple on revenue—that's how you value a business—so businesses have variable multiple revenue based on lots of variables—some of them fake, some of them real—but they basically got businesses to transfer their low-multiple revenue with very little value to this organism called a software company that basically had a high multiple and did nothing—but you couldn't get rid of them because you were addicted to that fund. And this happens everywhere in society, and if you want to know what parties need to do to get better—Democratic Party, European Parliament—the first thing they have to say is—"These are my interests, and I will partner with whoever I have to to defend these interests, and I'm going to fight for these interests, and I'm going to win." And and then the winning part is really really crucial. And you could say, "Well, winning is not moral"—okay—but actually, if the Democratic Party had fought to win—would fight to win—they would—the first thing they'd have—have to do is go to the pagan left and say—"You're—you want to—you can have your pagan religion; we have a First, and we have a Fourth Amendment, and you can defend it with the Second Amendment, but you cannot destroy our party."
Okay, I want to go back to the—the—the getting laid and getting, you know, uh, at the same time. Uh, let me ask you this—a personal question—actually, as I was—as I was watching you um give this amazing—amazing answer, I thought to myself, "Do you ever worry about what you're saying?" No, I mean—I mean this genuinely. I mean, have you ever walked off a stage and said, "I shouldn't have said that"? Because you have a remarkable confidence, and I—I was actually thinking even when we first started doing, you know, doing interviews—probably back in 2010—you would say pretty provocative stuff. I mean, where's that come—I don't—I don't know—once I get going—exactly where it's going to go. Um, I—I'll tell you what's really funny—CU—I—I—I barely go out—especially now—it's actually great—as—Inver—once you're famous, you're like—"I just can't go out; too many people know me; I gotta stay home; can't go out; security reasons; I can't do anything"—uh—but whenever I—on occasion—go out and I meet people, they're like—"Wait a minute—that's not an act"—like people are like—they—you know, people who work with me closely are like—"No, no, no—it's full-time; we're—we're taking days off"—um—and uh—but um—I don't—like—honestly, I really don't like offending people, but sometimes it's necessary. And uh, I don't really—I really don't—I feel like—I feel—I do—I do like legitimately—kind of afterwards—I'm like—"Well, God, I, you know, like"—somebody was visiting the office, and they were kind of, you know, I was making fun of a lame company they happened
Year ago? Yeah, it was written a year ago. But one of the things I think, one of the things that's not in the book that kind of is a way of addressing this point, is people who kind of like look at, say you're, say you're in Germany and you're thinking about the tech scene. What you say in private is, "Yeah, it sucks, but the pendulum will swing back." I've heard this a thousand times. But what I tell them is, you're thinking of software in kind of the old school way. But in this pendulum swing, the pendulum may never swing back. You've got to run now. And so I think we're just in a completely different world where, you know, um, if if people, um, oh, we have questions. If people, like a lot of people are waiting out the clock for the pendulum to swing back, I think that pendulum is going to accelerate, but not swing back. And um, and so you you you're going to find that GDP growth and um, and I think the, so then I think the big issue for the US is how do you make sure more people participate in the GDP growth? That what worries me in the US is the winners win more; the non-winners also do much better, but it's societally very difficult when one any group does better, even if everyone else does much better. So we we do are going to have to think a lot about how do you get AI to work. You can use AI to to train and skill workers, but that is really important for this country because we do not want to be in a country where we're doing much much better than every other country, but the average American doesn't feel, see the benefits. And so that's that's uh that that's got to be a central focus of what people who are building things think about. And and there are a lot of good answers, but it's not, but but we need to think about it more than you would think we have to think about it because it's, if the winners win 10x and everyone else wins 3x.
Well, let me ask you about that because you you're you want to win; you wake up to win. That's that's the goal at Paler. Um, but in the context of geopolitics, I was actually, I was in Davos a couple weeks ago, and I sat next to a Chinese executive who said, "It's very interesting, Andrew, you know, for a very long time, we, meaning China, we were fine or we were happy with the US uh being the leader of the world. Um, we're less fine with uh them being the winner of the world, because if they're winning, it means other people are losing." What do you think of that? I don't think in win-lose; I think in domination. So I don't like this win-lose thing because it it it kind of presupposes it's okay to lose. I like your, and I think domination is important, important because it's very hard to build, like it's very hard to build a business. And one of the real reasons it's hard is you've got to sit next to someone who is annoying you every cell in your body every day, and they may be right. So it's like every day you're dealing with somebody who is really annoying, and on and and they're wrong nine times out of 10, but the 10th time they save your life. And so I think if it's just about money, if it's just about winning, if it's just about having prestige for me, that's not enough to do that that I could have just like, you know, like I don't know, that's not enough because that is just real, and it's super humiliating, like you know, I we have this thing where a lot of PAs are getting wealthy, and I have I I I used to do a lot of therapy for people, largely in the beginning, to explain to engineers why their social life wasn't as good as their IQ. And uh, this is not even like me making it up; it's completely true. It's like, yes, I know I know you have 180 IQ, but I know they should like you more, but they don't. Um, and uh it's uh um it's online. Uh, so um but like something, I mean it's kind of a great problem to have, but like a conversation I've now had 50 times in the last two months is like, yes, and the more successful you are and the more money you have, the more humiliation you're going to deal with every day, and the more you're going to feel it. You know, I get I got these people around me. No One Believes it, but like every all day, "No, you're wrong." Yeah, well maybe maybe the other left or whatever, however they want to humiliate me. It's a dyslexia joke. No, no, go turn turn the other left. Um, and uh um and uh but it's it's that you to get important complicated technical things. And by the way, the other thing is to make things work, you've got to have your every every part of your body and every part of your mind focused on this for like five years. Try that; it's really hard to do. And so to organize yourself around doing that, you're you need a higher purpose. And I also think you often need a lower purpose. Like the higher purpose for me, what's the lower purpose? Well, I love the idea of getting a drone and having light fentanyl-laced urine spraying on analysts who tried to screw us. So that's my lower purpose. And uh, yeah, but and others uh but the higher purpose for me was to get this nation to be the preeminent power in the world, because whatever whatever faults we have, they're nothing like anyone else's. We got some amazing questions from this audience, um, and we got we got a bunch of Palarians in the room. So here we're going to go. Are you ready? This first question, it's as if Peter Thiel were here, I think. Um, the question is, what are the two most important insights for running a company that most people would disagree with? A very, it's a very Peter question because one of his famous interview questions. Well, the it depends what you, I think they mean a tech company. So the most people believe that building a company is you need someone who's actually good at business; it's not just being good at tech, and you will fail if you just have a tech person or just have a business person; you will fail. And you you so your co-founding team, you need business, tle, it won't work otherwise. You think people would disagree with that? I think people in tech. Ian, I had this, I was talking to a very very talented person who's a legend, and we were debating in like a very private forum, and this person was telling me like, basically, just go to Caltech and hire the smartest person you've ever met, and then you'll get, and that's just, it's not true, just, and that's what people believe. Yeah, okay. So this is a different one, also mentions Peter. Uh, what would a 25-year-old Alex and Peter, oh, by the way, the other thing on that, um, is it's crazy important to do partner selection in your personal life, which is another thing people do not believe. What do you mean by that? Explain. Like you you you got to find someone who actually likes you in your personal life, and that's really hard because most many people who are founding, doing things that the person they're with doesn't like them, and and like you will it or be alone, but like you can't you can't have like this thing at home that's bad; it won't work. I won't disagree with that. Um, what would a 25-year-old Alex and Peter today start and work on if they had the chance? So you're so you're 25 years old now, and it's today, it's 20, very self-serving, but I think I think you can I say you cannot choose Paler. Well, we got to get to three tril; we're we're we're at 10%. Uh, well let me let me, I don't know the answer to that, but like I believe it might actually be that because but I'll I'll try to get a less self-serving answer. But the thing is, a mistake I've seen people make over and over is you assume the best thing is the new thing, when in fact maybe the thing you know could be 10 times bigger. And again, I saw this at Paler, like I rever everyone who was at is at Paler, and most people who left, uh, and I certainly never badmouth a Palerian who left, even though of course there are a couple that you know, whatever, but uh um uh but I think I do think a mistake that I've seen people make is they think the new thing was going to be better than the thing they had, and I I in my experience, just in general, you want to hang on to dear life to the thing you have that's working. So that is actually my real answer. But one of my things I think answers that are true are often not persuasive, like that's a true answer, I think, is probably not persuasive, but it is true, but not persuasive because I think I don't think there's anything in the world that I or Peter and I could work on together, uh, and we still are working on it. So that proofs in the pudding, like, and Stefan is is, you know, the three of us are still at Paler, so it's like that's a really good example of true answer, demonstrably provable true, and No One Believes it because it sounds like, well, of course we should be saying startup number 56 that everyone could join. Um, but if it couldn't be that, I don't know, you know, most of my conversations with Peter are actually just about philosophy and like politics or like at a high level, not who does what, mimetic conditions. Um, there there's there there are alternate universes where Peter and I were like still in some permutation fighting, like when I we met at Stanford, like our relationship now and our relationship then uh is jarringly similar. Like we get on the phone, it's like, yeah, okay, but I think this, you think that, uh, and we disc, it's probably a little less who wins that when that happens. It really, it's very hard by how you determine who wins, hard to know who's right till like three or four years later. Um, and um I think if you talk to him, he'd be like, "I was right most of the time," but if you talk to me, I would think I was right. So um I I actually think it's pretty even, but the the the the thing that's actually really important about the dialogue is, um, and honestly, it doesn't matter because without Peter, he was right about one thing, picking me. I might not have picked me. So it's like, no, it's like he can be right all day. Um, and uh uh and um uh I think the most important thing about my relationship with Peter though is just like there's a way in which the rer you need to get far with him in argument, and I would argue conversely, it seeps into Paler, like like you can't just make a superficial argument and think that's going to fly in any way, even if you're you say, "Peter, let's assume he's right, I'm wrong," but it the rigor of the argument would matter as much as who's right or wrong in the argument, and that's really important. I think it's been very important for Paler because things that are we believe at Paler and do it Paler have to survive a lot of rigor and people contesting them. Okay, so here's a great question that relates to this. This is somebody who says, "I've worked at Paler for 10 years," in the audience right now. Uh, many people ask me how much our culture has changed in that time, and for me the most notable thing is how much it hasn't changed. How have you uh uh persevered this company culture for so long? Do you think there's something you specifically do? I mean, I don't know, it's uh the look, I do fight for Palarians in ways they see and ways they don't. Um, I legitimately really care. We have a set of broad precepts that I try to enforce, including pushing responsibility to the front, giving responsibility to people who deserve it, um, meritocracy, radical rical meritocracy, uh, openness, honesty, very low corruption. I mean, like obviously we don't do any normal corruption, but like, well, lots of people do; we don't. The laws are changing on that, by the way. I don't know if you you're heard. Yeah, we're we're a very, is that going to be bad or good for you? By by the way, I don't, at Paler, we're allergic to anything that looks like internal corruption, and I would say um and that includes like, for example, we have prominent PE, we have children of very prominent people at Paler, we have children of people who are from the, you know, pretty bad situation. Everyone at Paler, I have never been part of a decision where someone said, "Oh, we're not going to promote or give this person on any other reason besides accomplishment," and we and I would say and we are I am completely allergic to anything that's other than that and as our most PA. Um, and uh I think if I tried to do something or someone at Paler tried to do something that was low integrity on those vectors, most PAs would be like, "This stops," or "I quit," or "This will stop," and Palarians would unionize or something around that. So uh I think you can't do that if you want complicated products. So it's like the we build like PG, Apollo, Foundry, ontology are some of the most complicated software products that have ever been built, and if there's any monochrome of dishonesty, non-mar gratic behavior, Uh, purposeful non-fair, which I would call forms of corruption, uh, bigotry along any race, religion, gender, you will see that the product does not reflect the honest situation, and then your company fails. So like on that stuff, not to mention PAs have no tolerance for that. Um, I P here, anyone disagree with that? Yeah, so that's we're complete zealots on this, and I would say that's one of the reasons people are skeptical of investing in us, and maybe they should have been, uh, but like in the end, that's why we are doing such a good job winning. Um, before we wrap up on and why so many Palarians, by the way, like you know, look at PAs everywhere. Um, before we wrap up, I wanted to actually mention one other thing, uh, which is something you mentioned at the top almost in passing, um, and it's something that's dear to my heart only because I am it too, as is one of my a couple. Um, it's a joke, dyslexia. I want to talk about dyslexia because you mentioned that you you know would have struggled to to write this book, and you run the company, you're dyslexic, and I think you think of dyslexia as genuinely a superpower. I wish my son was here actually to see you talk about this right now, but what is it that you think is the superpower that you have as a result of this? And when did you figure all this out? Well, I mean, I was in the closet about being dyslexic uh until about five or six years ago, and then a buddy of mine actually in Germany uh kind of I was like, you know what, I'm just tired, like, God, why do I have to be in the closet about this? It's like, so any case, but it was you want to talk to people about it? Uh, no, I just was tired of like I don't know, it was like, but you knew you were dyslexic kid? I I was tested, and I I had special stuff when I was a kid, and uh and no no, I was very dyslexic, and there's a longer story there, and I'm happy to talk about that, but but but I when I came out and started and then my one of my buddies was like, I was talking to one of my like, by the way, I'm dyslexic. He's like, "Could you pass the salt?" And I was like, "Oh man, I'm such an idiot; no one cares; I don't know why." So really helped me just by not caring, caring so little. He's like, he F afterwards, he's like, he's like, "Oh, I should care." I'm like, "No, that's what exactly what I wanted to hear." Um, and uh uh and uh but at the time, okay, this is slightly, we have five minutes, I'll just give you the slightly longer version of this because I I actually think it's something that is reasonably interesting. But at the time when I was coming like out of the closet, I just thought dyslexia was the main advantage. I would have told you is I never do things I'm bad at because I can see the Delta between where I'm good and where I'm bad, and I still think, and then you you develop a lot of discipline. Like I actually live a fairly disciplined lifestyle, and I think that's part of like training around that. But but now but then I I then my next phase on this, which is what I thought until recently was, um, you know, if you compare the way I solve problems to my very kind of high IQ family, they they solve problems where they their compute structure has more data, but at the end of the structure where you would be confronting uh things where there is no data or sparse data, I have an enormous advantage because I would process the sparse or non-existent data way before anyone else could and much much much much quicker. And so like like people, I always asked one of my colleagues, I'm like, well, you know, it's like, well, you know, we spend two days working on this, and you decide in, you know, a minute. And there's there's some dangers in that; that's why sometimes need minders, but de facto, if you're doing something years before other people. So that I thought that was that's a huge obvious advantage. Now I have an like a post-ontology addendum to this, which is that was that was really true till large language models came, and there was obviously why you see so many dyslexics in business. Um, uh, but now what large language basically do is they commodify everything that's not original. So your core value proposition, at least if that's defined by someone will pay you for it, it's going to be what you do that's culturally or individually particular, like so particular, idiosyncratic, one-off talents become 50 times more valuable because the large language model cannot do that, but it can do everything else. And when you're dyslexic, you have an attenuated relationship to taxonomies. So you know, if you're dyslexic, I'm dyslexic, what it's, you could define it any way you want. I would define it as a non-dyslexic reads, and they are one-to-one with the taxonomy. A dyslexic, even someone who's, you know, I wrote a PhD in German, got a reasonably good grade, I've done very, I've used to do all the writing, you do all this writing, no matter how successful you are, you don't have the relationship to a a a lexicon or a tonomy that's one-to-one the way a a a non-dyslexic would. Well, you could think of what what are we navigating now? We're navigating a world where all taxonomies no longer quite work. You know, it's like the taxonomy of of what it means to do build a tech company, how you build it, what it means to be a nation, how you organize it, how you fight on the battlefield, how you defend yourself on the battlefield, none of the playbooks, like the Playbook does not work. So everyone's good at doing the Playbook; that's kind of an LLm. Everything else is the dyslexic. And this is why I I kind of think we are going to be teaching everyone to be dyslexic, like like literally everyone. It's like you have a one-to-one relationship with or you broadly speaking with uh how to learn, and then for us that one-to-one thing was always kind of we had to use extra compute to get that; we need 10 years of computing someone needs to. So basically, you have to have a lot more effort, but actually now when you're talking about what does an enterprise do, what does a nation do, which nations are out going to outperform others, which institutions are out going to outperform, which people are going to outperform, what is actually valuable? It's all going to be the the people who are specific as as opposed to particular. By the way, this is yet another reason why this nation is just going to fly because we're okay with calling ourselves a nation, and so that's much harder in Europe; it's much harder in Germany. Why does Paler accelerate? Because we have a completely unique culture filled to the rim with completely unique people. Why did individual investors outperform the commoditized institutional investors? Because they're unique; because they looked at unique insights; because they processed themselves. Why why do why do people who invest in their own thought, why do they have more happiness, why do they have more freedom, why do they have more wealth? Is that going to accelerate? And these are all metaphors for basically, if you want to be corny about it, being your own individual dyslexic. And none of that worked well six months ago, even at quote-unquote my level; it was very attenuated at a high cost; I was losing energy and and basically because there was a one-to-one glove fit, but now there is, and that's completely revolutionary for for every institution and every individual, and exactly what we have to invest in, and it is actually what works now. The other stuff is suboptimal; it's like like even if you say, well, like it you know, so many people who invested in Paler, you know, are just freethinkers; they weren't trained. But but that's being a free thinker is where is like 10 times more valuable, being your own individual, your own country, your own way of doing things. Like you see this on the battlefield; the Ukrainians, Israelis, Americans, Brits, they all fight differently; they all want to fight; they need to fight; they have culture-specific ways; clandestine services without all of them are organized in completely different ways, even if they have the same mission, because they're culturally specific. And and then then of course you have a universal guardrails, of course. I I you I believe in that meritocracy, rule of law, uh, various other things that are necessary, our constitution in America, but it's the it's the attenuated nature to the standardization, or you could call it in classic social reification; it's like the individual, the attenuation with the broader tonomy and phenomenology of of that you're that surround you is where all the value is, and that is actually the value of being dyslexic now, and it it's just completely shifted. It's like, yeah, the book is called *The Technological Republic*. He was by the way going to call it, do you remember what you were going to call it? The Revenge of the Dyslexic? Oh, no, yeah, no, that yeah, if it was done now, yeah, *The Revenge of*, yeah, Alex Karp, everybody, thank you.