Transcription
This question comes from another OG, Tom Nash. Um, yet another OG. I feel like, yeah, I feel very special today.
Yeah, well, you know, the OGs ask really good questions. And Tom asks, "A century from now, when people look back at Palantir's impact, what do you hope will be its defining legacy?"
All right, folks, we got to talk about Alex Karp's legendary AMA—ask me anything—on Twitter. Now, if you don't know who Alex Karp is, first of all, what are you even doing on this channel? The second, if you're new here, well, he's the co-founder and CEO of Palantir. He's one of the most legendary and misunderstood CEOs in existence. He's a controversial figure.
He's also the guy who took this from a $6 stock to a $120 stock within a couple of years. In this AMA that's playing on the screen right now, I actually got to ask Alex Karp a question. Not only that, my question was the final question that ended the whole AMA, which was a huge honor. So we'll get to that in a second—my 70 seconds of fame, so to speak.
But this dude, he doesn't hold back. He talked about anything. He answers any question. He's absolutely respectful of retail investors, and he doesn't hold back, which is exactly why you love this man. No fluff, brutal honesty, my way. Exactly. So let's go.
So, number one, you know, the beginning of the discussion was mainly about why kind of Palantir exists, where the whole point started. He kind of acknowledged the power there of individual investors, which I have not heard any other CEO of a $200 billion company do before.
That basically talking about individual investors, the respect, and the fact that they help build this brand—not hedge funds, not private equity, not VC. It was retail that basically launched this brand and made it a household name. Not a lot of CEOs in existence would have said that because it goes against everything Wall Street believes. Retail investors are supposed to be sheep being led to the slaughter and not that important.
We rarely see CEOs pay respect to individual investors, and I think it's important because I think Palantir, from the beginning, which is something that attracted me to this company, was against everything that's kind of rotten in Silicon Valley.
And was rotten in Silicon Valley for years. Now we're seeing this shift. We heard Alex Karp talk about founder mode before it became a new Silicon Valley thing. Of course, nobody gave him credit for that, but he was talking about that about six months before it went viral in the usual Silicon Valley circles.
Nobody believed Palantir when they moved out to Denver, when they did things differently. And that's the story of Palantir that excites the community because they were always the underdog. And now that they're winning, that legitimacy is finally there.
But Alex actually talked about how the whole thing started and why a lot of people within the organization call him Dr. Karp. That was because he has a PhD, and essentially they had so little credibility in the beginning that the PhD was some sort of a grasp to his credibility.
Now, he was probably half-joking, but with him, you never know. He might be just saying the truth. It doesn't matter. Palantir survived. Now Palantir is thriving, and they proved everybody wrong.
Now, in the second part, he talks about recruiting, which is a part that gets often overlooked with Palantir here because people just kind of accept the fact, "Well, they have top three talent." Right? There's, you know, top three destinations for people to work at in the tech industry. Palantir is one of those companies, and everybody just takes that for granted.
Not a lot of discussion happens on that topic, and I found it fascinating because they were talking about the fact that Alex actually hired the first 500 people. And that was not even the most controversial part because he was saying, "Look, most of my interviews are under three minutes."
Now, somebody who went through interviews in corporate America and went through three-day interviews with lunches and dinners and callbacks and second interviews and third interviews—I mean, I think that's refreshing.
And why does he do it? I think his answer is absolutely brilliant. He says, "Look, folks, I know within two minutes if this guy or girl has original thought, if they're open-minded, if they're going to say what they think. Within three minutes, I know."
"If we speak for another 15 minutes, they're going to end up just agreeing with me on anything, and it's not going to be that much use to me. So I want to see right away what you're made of, if you're original, if you can solve problems. That's how he hires people."
And so far, you know, 2025, he hasn't been wrong. I mean, the team in Palantir is a top-tier team, right? And I think his ability to spot originality is one of the things that most CEOs in Silicon Valley never, never will have. It's impossible to teach. He has it.
Elon Musk has it. Jensen has it. There are a few guys who have it, and this is why Palantir is different, folks. I think this company doesn't really follow the trends like other companies do.
Like you were seeing out of Facebook—sorry, Meta—and Mark Zuckerberg following what Elon Musk does with Donald Trump and Tesla. Palantir creates the trends, right? They do it before everybody else talks about it. Founder mode was one thing. The whole Silicon Valley rotten culture was another thing.
They basically were saying, "Hey, we're in war. You know, in a state of war, we have enemies. You know, the world has been at peace for 80 years. It doesn't mean we don't have adversaries and enemies, and we have to start thinking about it in an adversarial fashion before it's too late."
And when he was saying this 15 years ago, people were laughing in his face. Now, with everything that's going on in China, Russia, Iran, Europe, and the Middle East, everybody understands that he was right.
So Palantir has always been ahead of the curve in anything—AI, geopolitics, you name it. Now, actually, here's where the part actually became a little bit funnier because Karp said that he thinks most analysts are actually personally biased against them, and that's why they kind of suck at evaluating Palantir objectively.
I'm not going to debate that or argue because I don't know. The only analyst I really pay attention to is Dan Ives and Tom Lee. I can't think of any other analyst that I've listened to over the past few years that actually made me say, "Oh, this guy knows what he's talking about." And both those guys seem to be very much fond of Alex, so to me, that all that matters.
And then he actually talked about why Palantir is so misunderstood, and I felt that was pretty cool. He said, "Look, we're not normal. We're not standard Silicon Valley. We're not a copy-paste business."
And this is something I spoke about with Sham Sunkar from Palantir when I did the podcast with him. He basically said, "Look, Dom, we don't build a product and then try to shove it down the throats of our clients and shoehorn our product into their needs. We figure out what their needs are ahead of time, and then our product is going to be fitted perfectly to what our clients need."
"Our ability, our flexibility to do that at scale is what sets us apart from everybody else." And right now, you're seeing by the numbers he wasn't bullshitting.
Right now, also, Alex was asked a question in German, which is not a huge surprise. Obviously, he's fluent in German. He basically goes off on Germany, rightfully so.
And he essentially said, "Look, folks, you guys had the lead. You were the most developed country in Europe. You were the leaders in engineering, in culture, in anything, right? And now, all of a sudden, I look at you guys, and you've given up on all of that voluntarily. You did this to yourself."
"Right? You've given up on your energy independence on your own, and you completely ignore the immigration problem you have. It's self-inflicted."
And he's basically saying, "Look, you're also behind on the AI race that every other government is currently running at, in which the US and the West are leading hugely, obviously. But he said, 'Hey, Germany, where you at? It's time to reclaim your rightful spot. You got to wake up.'"
Basically, it was a wake-up call to Germany from Alex. And of course, there was my question, which I think was right at the end, the last question.
I basically asked Alex, "Look, if Palantir is talked about 100 years from now, what do you think, and what do you want people to remember from Palantir 100 years down the road?"
That the superiority of the West was in it, it put into software production and made Western countries, especially America, healthier, wealthier, stronger, fairer, more meritocratic, and scared every enemy of these countries to the point where they woke up every morning and wrote on their front window and sent—wrote on X—we are not actually your enemy; we are your friend, even if they're not.
And please do not randomly take out our leaders just because we thought that we might be plotting things against you. Great.
And that people look back and say, "Yeah, Palantir played a huge role in both the software production and the people."
And by the way, then people like pointing like, "Oh, isn't that the OG apparently living in that mansion?" Yeah, that'd be great.
And he said two things. Number one, he said, "Look, number one, we want to be remembered as the guys who have made the West and the allies of the United States stronger, wealthier, and more secure."
And I think in this post-World War II 80 years of peace, all of a sudden that becomes a huge thing. But here's the best part. He actually said two things which no CEO would ever say.
One was, "Hey, we want to be remembered as the guys who made our enemies fear America and fear what we can do and essentially kind of instill fear in all of our enemies."
And then he said, "And then I want them to look at our OGs and say, 'Oh, that man, one of the investors, the original investors of Palantir, the retail investors, they used to live in that mansion.'"
And I think that was funny because it plays into the meme, and I get it. I get it. It's a joke, but it's a good joke.
But overall, the AMA was as hardcore as I've ever seen. I think it was top-notch. I think Alex nailed it. He basically summarized in about 30 minutes everything that we love about Palantir.
Palantir is not normal. Wall Street doesn't get it. Traders will never get it. Europe is falling behind, and he doesn't care what you think about him or his company. He just wants to win, and so far, he's been winning.
Now, if you ask me, I take a lot of, you know, a lot of shots from traders and people who, you know, talk to me about, "Oh, get in, get out, bro." Look at the performance. We're up from, you know, I can say $6 because that's the bottom.
But let's talk about the moment they went public. So they went at $10, which is where we all started buying heavy. They're currently at $120. I don't think anybody's complaining from the OG long-term investors of Palantir, right?
I love this guy, and whether you own Palantir stock or not, I think you can admire the absolute conviction he has in his opinions. I think that matters.
And at the end of the day, you can like him, you can dislike him, but here's the thing: him focusing on American leadership in the AI space and him talking about the importance of getting into the AI world as number one because that's going to be the next battleground.
The US cannot afford to stay behind, and their allies, Germany specifically, in this AMA can't be left behind. So he's doing a lot of important work, much like Elon Musk is doing important work with the government stuff.
He's doing that on the AI front, and I think the main takeaway from this AMA for me was they got to, at some point, work together. I think Alex and Elon are so aligned and are in this very similar mindset.
They have to find a way, figure out a way to collaborate, work together, and figure out the problems and the solutions. I think that would be epic, and I think at this point, it's almost inevitable to see that happen.
Can't wait. Can't wait for Palantir's next five years, next ten years. Can't wait for all the haters and doubters the minute the stock drops 30-40% to tell me I was wrong.
And then the whole story is going to be again, I don't care. At the end of the day, it's all about long-term investing, not trading, not quick profits. Long-term investing.
If you love Alex Karp, if you hate Alex Karp, for the past few years, he has delivered, and I think it's going to continue to deliver.
But again, hey, anything can happen. Do your research, you know, look into these stocks, analyze. Maybe it's not for you; maybe it's for you.
Again, if you want to learn how to do this better, you know, just join the Patreon. All the details are below, patreon.com/nash. We have a few spots left in the academy.
Would love to have you there. We'll teach you how to analyze stocks. I talked about it today. It's not the only stock we talk about. We hit HMS from $8 to $46. We had AET, we had CrowdStrike, you name it—so many stocks, a lot of opportunities.
You don't have to be a Palantir investor to join the academy. We would love to see you there. And as always, stay safe. I'll see you in the next one. Peace.