Good government is one of the most important factors in economic growth and social well-being.
Joe Lonsdale
Hours wasted in traffic represent not only lost wages but enormous amounts of economic activity that might have happened. Congestion indirectly increases consumer prices, makes travel times unreliable for commuters and truckers, and precludes many people from accessing jobs in urban hubs.
In my experience, it's common that deep truths exist at both extremes of a dialectic, and the wisest stance on an issue will incorporate 'both of the opposites within itself.'
Engineering is the art of managing scarcity - it's easy to design and build a massive bridge that will last forever if cost is not an issue. Similarly, to build a new company, you must manage scarce resources.
Entrepreneurship is, in large part, about building something from nothing, which means creating a cause.
Being a great founder or early team member is a difficult dialectic - you have to be a bit overconfident, and a big ego isn't always a bad thing. To change the world requires pushing really, really hard and believing you and your team know something others don't.
If you can make finance more functional, make it a tiny percent better, you create a great deal of resources, which you can use for other things like education and healthcare.
Success gives you a platform for further success - suddenly everybody wants to work with you, and your opportunities and possibilities open up. But at the same time, success is also immensely challenging - it ultimately often creates pride, stubbornness, and sloppiness that beget failure, taking down people and organizations.
We adapt to technological progress by raising our minimum standards of living and working to stay above this rising threshold.
Technological unemployment is scary for those affected - but has always gone hand in hand with economic progress.
The human mind and body remains the most complex, powerful machine on the planet, and we will adapt and thrive in a world of accelerating technological change.
Engineering talent is the most precious resource for any technology company - Palantir and Addepar are successful first and foremost because of their top tech cultures, and the same is true for our best portfolio companies at 8VC.
Wealth is only ever actually created from the bottom-up, with free people employing their distinctly human creativity and finding ways to serve and employ others.
We want to inspire everyone to recognize the positive social impact they can have if they choose to become technologists.
What would I advise an aspiring young entrepreneur? Certainly I'd say read the works of great entrepreneurs and investors like Ben Horowitz, Peter Thiel, and many others. But what's more important is to get real experience at a great startup.
My personal experience with companies in the PayPal ecosystem taught me that a superb engineering culture is indispensable to building a winning business.
The reason we have so much talent in Silicon Valley building and investing in for-profit technology companies is that markets richly reward successful ideas, no matter who invents them. But to remain competitive in a free market, companies must exercise discipline to meet quantitative goals and eventually become cashflow positive.
Traditional hackathons are fun and focused on skill and competition, but we believe that events which focus on the positive social impact of technology engage a wider and more diverse set of participants.
Those who ultimately shake up an industry are often outsiders who don't know any better.
When you solve big, hard problems, problems that fundamentally improve how an industry works, financial returns follow, giving you resources to do more of the same.
Hard work enables us to improve ourselves and the world around us, to combat injustice, reduce suffering, and increase human freedom.
Palantir owes much of its success to the amazing talent of the first 30-40 technologists who joined the company, as well as to the internal leadership that helped motivate this core group to achieve its ambitious goals and to continue to attract extraordinary people.
We created Addepar because we saw a place where a multi-billion dollar global platform clearly should exist - but did not yet - to fix many of the challenges that exist in the finance industry.
I think that the culture at Stanford really shapes how you view the world, and you get a lot more out of an entrepreneurial mindset.
David and Ellen Siminoff are legends in Silicon Valley - they are two of the most influential mentors to top executives and leaders behind the scenes, with long track records of success.
Many of humanity's most intractable challenges will only be solved through market-driven innovation.
I have learned that if I only see and deeply appreciate one side of an argument, it means I am probably missing something important.
I'm always investing and building things at the same time.
There's no substitute for experiencing ups and downs - seeing how it's okay that things are overwhelming or broken sometimes and how companies recover from mistakes.
A true leader must strive towards a grand vision of human progress, but remember that the minor details of her everyday life really matter to those who look up to her as a role model.
The only way to create prosperity is to do more with less. In economic terms, an increase in productivity is an increase in the amount or quality of output generated for each unit of input. Jobs do not make society wealthier - productivity does.
We use convertible notes a lot at our fund - 8VC - so often that we just call them 'notes' to save time.
Innovative cultures transparently document spending, admit mistakes, and ask how they can do better.
My experiences building Palantir and running Addepar made me aware of serious problems with government and inspired me to build a non-profit to look into state spending.
A talented executive whose interests are aligned with the firm's and is confident in her role will always recruit stars who exceed herself in various ways, but one who is worried about her value to the firm will not.
Savvy, competitive investors able to build, buy, and fix companies will continue to stimulate growth by allowing us to do more with less - the only way to create prosperity.
America has the greatest military in the world, and it's up to our leaders to set the bar for what a 21st century military culture of innovation with transparent, collaborative leadership looks like.
When I spend a lot of time reading, discussing, or thinking about an area, I'll often really appreciate why a strong viewpoint is true and come to very firm conclusions. But if I am later exposed to a strong opposing view, I frequently find this countervailing view persuasive as well.
There are hundreds of millions of people around the globe who could safely repay loans but nonetheless do not have access to a line of credit. Financial institutions in developing economies are broken and inefficient, and hard-working people have not been given the chance to establish a credit history.
It always struck me as pretty cool that people who changed the world often knew each other. After reading them separately, hearing that David Hume and Adam Smith were friends made sense.
Funding has not kept pace with demand for expanded lanes and well-maintained roadways.
A great leader should make it clear to her team members that as a matter of culture, her job is to replace herself. A new hire should know from the outset that she will ultimately have to bring in new talent to replace herself so that she can personally better herself and achieve loftier goals.
As we progress as a species, we will unlock new means for enhancing our lives at every turn - and our conceptions of wealth and poverty will evolve in tandem.
Private equity firms working closely with venture capitalists and technologists may be able to unlock assets that others have not leveraged and build technology cultures to iterate on solutions that make these assets more productive.
We founded Palantir in 2003-2004 because we perceived a giant gap between how the defense and intelligence community was harnessing technology to achieve its goals and what we had seen was possible in Silicon Valley over the last decade.
America faces a mounting transportation crisis, and the primary culprit is road congestion. Traffic makes us unhealthy, wastes enormous amounts of time, and cripples national productivity. America needs expanded roads and transportation infrastructure, but traditional gas tax funding is no longer available.
One of my biggest intellectual influences in my life was Alex Karp of Palantir.
The inability of middle-class people to receive loans in developing countries has had a stifling effect on economic growth and prosperity around the globe.
Top technologists have a tremendous capacity - and, therefore, a tremendous responsibility - to build things that make a positive impact on the world.
There are people who are better managers than I am. I aspire to be a really good manager, but it's not my natural personality to do the same thing for 14 hours a day. I have a lot of different interests. I really like product and strategy and business strategy, and I think I'm not bad at it.
