Copy paste of Joe_Doe's comment. Which seems dead but sais "[noobtor]" instead of [dead]. Never seen that before?! However should he have registered via tor to leak a bit of insider info I don't want to let this die because of tor flagging.
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Palantir is trying to raise another ~400mm to finance their operations. And I honestly think this just another PR stunt to attract investors. The 'secretive' attitude is just a game of deception. They are deceiving investors into believing that the company has a real product. However if you talk to any FDE or Embedded Analyst, you'll immediately realize that this is a consulting company. Which should be valued at far lower multiple than a real product company.
Every new contract requires dozen extra people...That's why they are on a hire spree right now, (because of a large 'consulting' contract with a an oil company, that should stay unamed). However, with oil trading at 50s, they are scared and they trying to get some cash to cushion a possible contract cancellation.
> Palantir is trying to raise another ~400mm to finance their operations. And I honestly think this just another PR stunt to attract investors.
That was my reading as well - Techcrunch essentially reprinted marketing materials as incontrovertible fact for this story (continuing a long tradition of similar journalistic excellence). One particularly troublesome sentence:
"...[Palantir] is capable of building comprehensive models of activity to detect suspicious anomalies and is even able to provide immunity to fraud thanks to strategies the founders learned while still at PayPal."
Well there's an objective, accurate statement. Even Paypal itself is far from "immune to fraud". Palantir appears to be doing some interesting things, but this article is ridiculous.
Comments by new accounts posting from Tor IPs get autokilled because of past abuses by trolls. We restore the legit ones when we see them (or users tell us about them), and mark the accounts legit so future comments won't be killed. That's what I've done here.
It is more of an "under moderation" thing than a "dead" thing. It's on our list to make that explicit and to provide a mechanism for the community to make most of the moderation decisions.
So, in case I need to be truly anonymous on HN, I need to register by a non-tor exit node IP (say an I2P address?) post a couple of comments (but how many?) and then I can use tor freely?
So that's what....$1.3b in funding over a lot of rounds?
I'm not sure I can think of many software companies with that kind of startup investment.
WP says they have about 1,200 employees, or a burn rate of about $300m/yr. Those figures are old, so this new round must be for another year of operations.
I believe I had heard in a previous discussion that they were planning on going public in 2015, so this is a bit of a surprise.
Last I heard they were still also a Java client application for the analytics. They appear to have had an HTML5 client in development several years ago, but that doesn't appear to be the current product (even videos as new as a month old still use the old client which they had up as a free demo for years on their site). [1][2]
So is this just for continued expansion or is Palantir some kind of hi-tech charity case people prop with more money than sense continue to prop up? My guess is the former, but there's some arguments it's really the second.
It's interesting to see that the HTML5 client never went anywhere evidently -- I interviewed there for an internship in 2013 and remember that they were showing it off a lot.
Honestly, it sounds like traditional enterprise software and should be valued similarly. Software like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or Electronic Health Record (EHR) always require very expensive integration/training/support. The contracts take forever to negotiate but are very lucrative with a huge lock in and expensive support contracts.
I've heard this as well. They essentially hire customer-facing engineers to go out and scope specific contracts and literally implement custom solutions with small generic software frameworks they developed in house.
I would debate that...if your 'product' takes a team of stanford engineers to actually deploy at an enterprise, then it's probably closer to a dev framework.
No, it's a bog-standard on-premise "Enterprise" product, like Oracle, SAP, etc. This is how that business model works. The customer pays _both_ for the software _and_ for the on-site engineers, usually through the nose.
Well, they need a way to get up-to-date data into the system from whatever it's coming from. That alone requires someone to write code. They probably also do some customizing of what data is displayed; maybe via a GUI or maybe via code. But that's just the last mile (on each end) that needs customization.
I don't see how you can simplify that into calling it a "dev framework".
> if your 'product' takes a team of stanford engineers to actually deploy at an enterprise, then it's probably closer to a dev framework
Fair enough. But you may be underestimating the value of production-quality fast-development dev frameworks in enterprise.
Remember, these are guys who are used to seeing 5-year project timelines for anything that touches more than one system. (And every business case touches more than one system...)
One other thing to note is that while they build these custom solutions, the second you touch their stuff that support policy goes out the window, not unlike what Oracle does.
Hm, I don't see nothing deceptive about this. It goes without saying that some software must be custom given the (rather obscure) market Palantir is in.
EDIT: n/m @dang answered this indirectly a couple of comments below.
They are deceiving investors into believing that the company has a real product.
To be fair, this description makes it sound like an ETL tool, just like Ab Initio, Datastage or Teradata, where the companies involved all make serious amounts of money from consulting (and the server licenses don't come cheap either!).
These tools can be pretty powerful if set up and programmed correctly; it's definitely not as simple as pointing them at a bunch of data sources and expecting magic to happen.
If Palantir haven't found a magic way to integrate data sources without any configuration, it does sound rather deceptive.
That said, if they manage to get systems up and running without 30-stories-high stacks of never-to-be-read paper, that'd be a revolution in itself.
Ever worked with ERP or other enterprise data products? Nothing is plug and play. These guys have to analyze data sets to first understand how to connect the dots, and then they have to integrate with whatever front-end their "product" is.
On the plus side, it is extremely difficult for another provider to provide a business case for replacing Palantir once they're (Palantir) in place due to the upfront analysis, implementation, and data migrations required.
Yeah I have. You know who actually does that low margin work? Deployment companies, consultants and implementors, outsourcing firms. There's a reason why "SAP Certified Specialists" exist. There's a reason that there are programs and credentials that teach people to deploy this stuff. Because SAP and Oracle are actual software companies unlike Palantir.
Palantir hires young smart (but not street smart) Ivy league engineers that have no clue how actual enterprise software works ... much like the founders and management team of Palantir.
> You know who actually does that low margin work? Deployment companies, consultants and implementors, outsourcing firms.
Not always. A lot of software companies that provide enterprise-level software but aren't the SAPs and Oracles of the world often supply in-house implementors, who work for weeks or months with customers to integrate those products into existing system (at a cost).
Wouldn't be surprised if this is an idealisticly minded young employer. I have seen them agressively interviewing on campuses, conferences. Perhaps in light of Snowden's releases and other leaks, maybe some of them were a bit dissapointed in what they saw there and decided to do something about it...
In-Q-Tel as an investor doesn't mean much, IMO. It does mean the product is of interest / value to the government, but that doesn't imply any sinister motive (or a ton of control). I work for a company that was invested in by In-Q-Tel, and the only influence I've seen from that was really to benefit the users in the community and develop a project for RBAC in Big Data - which is something I really hope the NSA has in place internally.
edit: and I'm a Libertarian, so I'm biased against reaching this conclusion based on my own observations.
I have some firsthand experience with this overseas. Palantir creates intelligence products for the US military and other government organizations such as the "State Department"...
Well, they do actually have a product but it's my understanding that almost every purchase requires a set of engineers to integrate it. So I dunno if you could call it a consulting company but there is truth to this.
Palantir is trying to raise another ~400mm to finance their operations. And I honestly think this just another PR stunt to attract investors.
The 'secretive' attitude is just a game of deception. They are deceiving investors into believing that the company has a real product. However if you talk to any FDE or Embedded Analyst, you'll immediately realize that this is a consulting company. Which should be valued at far lower multiple than a real product company.
Every new contract requires dozen extra people...That's why they are on a hire spree right now, (because of a large 'consulting' contract with a an oil company, that should stay unamed).
However, with oil trading at 50s, they are scared and they trying to get some cash to cushion a possible contract cancellation.
This sounds more like a leaked Palantir press release; but then again, that's pretty much what a prospectus is.
> "It’s the combination of every analytical tool you could ever dream of."
> The Pentagon used the software to track patterns in roadside bomb deployment and was able to conclude that garage-door openers were being used as remote detonators.
> With Palantir, the Marines are now able to upload DNA samples from remote locations and tap into information gathered from years of collecting fingerprints and DNA evidence
> The leaked document cites a 2012 study where 96% of the surveyed war fighters in Afghanistan recommended Palantir.
Yeah they probably just can't disclose this 'confidential' stuff as a company in a normal press release. So they had to act like it was a Snowden-style leak which just happened to make them look awesome.
Insiders are selling shares to private wealth management firms / asset management firms. It's amazing how much hype can do in the private finance world when you have the perception of momentum and herd mentality. Look at Clinkle raising $30mm ... this is the same thing happening at a bigger scale. Look at Groupon... same thing.
Morgan Stanley took over $25mm in fees to arrange these sales... the reason for that is because they know that there is no way Palantir is going to have an IPO in the near future -- or else they would be salivating to do this kind of transaction for free to gain favor with management.
The fundamental problem with Palantir is that they are a government contractor masquerading as a product company. $200mm in government contracts comes with enough overhead that there is not a ton of margin. You can see tons of defense contractors in the midwest doing hundreds of millions in revenue.
Take a look at their revenue numbers for federal government (which is likely a major portion of their ~$420mm in revenue):
http://goo.gl/v7JzT5http://goo.gl/AzZeuR
>Its primary purpose is to increase the efficiency and fairness of the securities market for the benefit of investors, corporations, and the economy by accelerating the receipt, acceptance, dissemination, and analysis of time-sensitive corporate information filed with the agency. source: http://www.sec.gov/edgar/aboutedgar.htm
"Delaying" the filing of required disclosures makes it more difficult for investors and potential investors to make informed decisions, and possibly defeats the purpose of requiring its disclosure in the first place.
Here is an interesting video from them talking about data analysis of Iranian arms deals used to show off some of their tools used by the intelligence community
It may be intrusive and it may end up being used for the wrong reasons, but as a technology community we've got to give it to them. It's very impresive.
It's impressive, but without meaningful and effective restraints on its use it's potentially dangerous. There is a large focus on secrecy seemingly within the organization itself (Palantir) and the organizations it works with (NSA, CIA, FBI, etc.). One important question is, why is Palantir arming secretive organizations with very powerful technology?
If the analysis capabilities are so great (and they appear to at least be good), then there is likely tremendously more good that can be achieved by opening up the code to the software so that anyone can use it to tackle local and global problems around the planet. Instead, the company is using it to arm secret police organizations and financial organizations.
> why is Palantir arming secretive organizations with very powerful technology?
They get paid handsomely.
> more good that can be achieved by opening up the code to the software so that anyone can use it to tackle local and global problems around the planet
This attitude bothers me. Palantir is not a charity. Why are you holding them to these standards?
>> more good that can be achieved by opening up the code to the software so that anyone can use it to tackle local and global problems around the planet
>This attitude bothers me. Palantir is not a charity. Why are you holding them to these standards?
I fail to see how that statement is an 'attitude'. I'm also not holding them to any standard in that statement. As far as I can tell, it's only a statement of fact. Or at least, perceived fact.
You're implying that they should give up their competitive edge over the market so that they can help the world "tackle local and global problems around the planet". That sounds like you're saying they should give to charity and/or forfeit profit for some noble good.
And yes, it's an attitude/opinion though it sounds like you're just nitpicking words. I'm not the OP you responded to, but it's clear your attitude/opinion towards this topic is that this software should be given away for free, with the sole reason for that being that it would "[do] more good".
They invented it, they didn't steal it (presumably), and they're choosing to use that product of their intellect in a way that makes them profit. Heck, you could argue that they're already doing good by making it available to law-enforcers while still profiting. In which case your entire point is that they're not doing enough good according to your opinion.
I think it's well within the US Federal Government's purview to require source code from its contractors such that any citizen (who has paid for this product) can inspect the code or use it themselves.
I consider them closer to SAP than the usual DC area style contracting company. What does distinguish them from most of the companies in the area though is that their product tends to work and scale somewhat which I can't say for the vast majority of government contractor produced software for the government at their (very, very schizophrenic and oftentimes misleading) direction. Actually hiring engineers that can codifies instead of asking for a clearance first makes a monumental difference in how you structure your company and lines of business. It lets you at least create a working project first because you can actually reject most of your candidates instead of being pressured to due to being jerked around by the terms of the contract requiring certain levels of clearance first. The government isn't run by completely retarded people and they're seeing now how it's probably easier to have actual software companies produce software and then go through the integration and compliance paperwork later - it's how GovCloud fundamentally became an option in Intelligence Community projects. You thought the Terremark cloud was one nobody used that's terribly overpriced? Wait until you see the "clouds" the big defense contractors came up with at orders of magnitude more dollars (most of it probably going to compensate those poor people filing documents and paperwork meant to protect the government but now entrapping it to work primarily with parasitic companies).
Look online for people with DCGS on their profiles, you'll be able to trace it all back to trying to reproduce Palantir down to the web GUI. Some decent journalist should be able to piece a lot together if they just trolled LinkedIn. A lot of it is unclassified but technically FOUO so not quite cleared for public consumption. The reason I figure it hasn't been researched thoroughly is because it's extremely boring DC area "tech" news that is more about topics that are of little interest to the tech community and is boring even by DC tech standards. Almost every company here is some Big Data bullshit company that's writing something about 8 - 14 years behind private industry timelines from an engineering standpoint and held back by politics, funding, and sheer disorganization endemic to enterprises but especially bad in the bloated Pentagon budget.
being lax with vetting has cost TLA's a lot but then police forces are second tier players.
And the actual codfiying isnt hard it undersatning the domain problem and how to apply the verious tools.
Having engineers that will want to work in this area and can pass the citizenship requirements is harder back in the day in the UK noprmaly all 4 gradparents had to be citizens from birth for DV (TS)
Dismissing coding from being "difficult" makes sense to most of us on HN that are somewhat competent. However, most of us haven't experienced truly terrible programmers that are very commonplace in big corporate and government shops (this is changing as we finally start adopting platforms at least semi-interested programmers pick instead of "I need a job" programmer types). At a point, if your engineers are so slow and unproductive even without the typical hoops of enterprise dysfunction, it is a bigger problem than if you don't have someone that knows the business well. Good engineers can be misled by just bad business requirements for a while and pivot back around quickly because their code is far, far easier to refactor, re-architect, and reframe. Most enterprises treat programmers (due to their cultural DNA of massive, over-managed projects like in big construction projects) like assembly line workers where output and skills mostly only differ by age and individual skill is not a significant factor (it's part of how we keep seeing houses constructed by low-skill labor despite many higher skilled, probably more efficient skilled laborers present yet constantly unemployed or underemployed). Better programmers also translates to less ugly hacks and better long-term solutions and designs as well (I said better, not more clever). And lastly, they can just plain code away some terrible hacks for the sake of a demo to keep everyone paid if the situation calls for it. Business domain rules and systems being very people-driven typically (by virtue of the people that wrote them typically being centered around people-first, not process-first) and with very imprecise human language by default are really, really slow to enact typically too. Besides the cost issues, a good engineer's work is far, far easier to sell anyway to where a mediocre, barely competent sales person should be able to get similar results with the usual sales guy pitching <random $1M suite of ERP software with $150M professional services over 6 years>.
So in short, good engineers with ineffective domain knowledge might make a great solution... that sadly doesn't solve what the person with the check wants up-front but you can put the most capable domain experts and managers to lead a team of bad engineers and the software will be both expensive to maintain (raising prices for the unfortunate customers) and perhaps just plain not work very often, causing more band-aid "solutions" that riddle cash-strapped bureaucracies and pass the dysfunction onto us as customers. I'm confident that tech is not the solution for most dysfunctional organizations and that IT projects just bring out the worst in them.
Unfortunetly I have :-( I used to work in house as a consultant for a big publisher and unfortuntly most of the devlopers wher in the lower two quartiles and required a rediculous amount of handholding.
BTW I was "banned" from writing any code that would go into production as a condition of my director being allowed to employ me.-
Reads like the intro to "Person of Interest". This capability has been on the 'want list' for ARPA forever, and I first heard about it as the "total information awareness" program. Mining deep sources of periodic data can be very very enlightening with respect to people's activity. Too bad these guys aren't subject to federal oversight with respect to personal privacy rights.
Well they apologised, I guess. No resignations, no charges, no referring evidence to police. But yeah, they did apologise for it, so they got that going for them.
Didn't know they had connections to HBGary at some point. Quite telling, if you dealt with these "bottom of the barrel-guys".
I pitched in front of some people from ManTech once and knowing that they acquired HBGary made me somewhat uncomfortable - and made some negative things I heard about ManTech all the more believable.
I'm kind of surprised that TechCrunch acts like Palantir's role was never out in the open - if anyone ever browsed a job opening there for engineering, they have you check out a tool that steps through using the product to uncover the 9/11 attackers in a mock but plausible scenario. It is very obvious what their role is for intelligence analysis.
I've attended Palantir tech talks before and they try to "hide it". Everyone in the room knew and the person giving the talk kept talking about the other uses of Palantir beyond government things. However all the examples they use were based on war scenarios in Iraq.
I have a friend that works here. Apparently the job interview process is tough. Very technical. Tons of questions involving algorithms. I'm tempted to apply just for the challenge.
The perks are nice. They have an onsite chef so you can have a catered meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Apparently a masseuse comes in every month(?) or so for free massages. Seems like a nice gig for the programmers.
> They have an onsite chef so you can have a catered meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Apparently a masseuse comes in every month(?) or so for free massages.
That's a bad deal. Ask for enough money to hire your own chef and masseuse instead.
I think the convenience is worth it. For me, my most valuable commodity is my time, not money. Not to mention they probably get a better deal on the catering and masseuse than you would individually.
If I could go into work and not have to worry about preparing a good, healthy meal for myself (or drive somewhere to get one), that would be great.
Catering and masseuse is pretty standard with many bay area companies, it doesn't make palantir special. The chef part is more a function of how large the company than anything else.
You'll actually start to curse the catered food part if you want to actually conform to some sort of diet, weight loss or otherwise. The food can create a culture of longer working hours, so leaving earlier so you can go make your own dinner will create career challenges later on. SV is a large suburban place, not catering lunch just wastes a shit ton of time for the company itself and creates a lot of traffic.
And the masseuse service isn't that expensive for the company to hire once a week.
No one's arguing that the perks are THE BEST PERKS EVER. Just that they are "nice."
They have a chef available if you want your meal prepared there--no one's forcing anyone to eat at work. Also, from what my friend tells me it's not like one thing is being served each day. You have many options and they cook what you order. Seeing that he's seriously slimmed down while eating most of his meals there, I don't think his diet is suffering at Palantir due to the catering.
I don't really get what your point is other than to split hairs over how "nice" the perks are.
EDIT: Perhaps this quote from the website will explain the catering: "At Palantir, you will never be hungry. Chefs craft weekly menus consisting of organic and local foods, and we serve three meals a day. Family, friends, and guests are always welcome, and to-go boxes are always available."
TechCrunch: "Look, guys, we just totally randomly found this document that says how awesome Palantir is. The document about the negatives was lost due to water damage".
Honestly, I don't understand the excitement over this. For all the conspiracy theories, Palantir is pretty open about their basic work. Their website is pretty vacuous, but that's not shocking for what is essentially enterprise software. They had (have?) a fairly comprehensive "try it out" tool on their site, and give example-based demos at a host of college campuses.
All of this indicates that there's no big mystery here - they built a relationship-analysis tool that doesn't suck horribly. When you're selling to banks and the government, "actually works as promised" is rare enough to make you a billion dollar company.
Palantir is more hush-hush about some of their work, though this seems to be more 'competitive advantage' and less 'military secrets'. New initiatives and project restructuring are kept fairly quiet, and their customer lists are obviously secret, but none of this is shocking.
TechCrunch seems to have discovered what looks like a 'secret' press release about how great Palantir is, and it's being spun as dark secrets instead of info that any Palantir employee or tech talk is happy to divulge.
The only question I have is how could investors be this dumb?
I have heard that some investors in the prior round (all of what, 12-18 months ago?) are trying to get some/all their money out after seeing the curtain pulled back. It has to be somewhat of a stampede for the door gaining momentum.
Still, while it is a cushy place to work (smart people, nice perks, okay money and stock that is supposedly valuable on paper until everyone rushes for the door), I also don't understand why smart people work there - unless they don't.
Maybe the smart employees are the ones who left 2-3 years ago.
Ah, the Paypal mafia at it again. Well atleast they're bringing the money to the valley. Funny how a lot of Libertarian Thiel's companies are funded by govt. contracts. Same goes for Elon.
A more interesting journalistic question would be: why does an 10-year-old software company with existing products, paying customers and an international presence need yet another $400m?
It lets people without analytics know-how type a query in human language and target killer drones on result set? Do they at least have Palantir False Positives Victim fund?
All watched over by machines of loving grace. Just like here on HN where algorithms take care of people using Tor or links that get too many votes too fast.
It is a bit ironic that Peter Thiel is backing Palantir, and is the biggest investor in the marijuana trade. They seem like opposite ends of the spectrum.
I find that not entirely contradictory, both are tools of societal control. From a perspective of power, whether you legalize marijuana or not is not a question of personal liberty but what is of greater utility to your immediate political goals. I think it is an open secret that the 1960-70s criminalisation of drugs was not really because of concern for the health of the users, but because it was an effective way to suppress and ultimately eliminate the threat of the emerging counter culture.
Maybe in light of growing inequality and youth unemployment marijuana is seen as one of the diversion tools to prevent the poor from taking political action. Especially because it has roughly the intended effects, when used regularly. Note that it is not entirely out of the question that people in power think that way, for example the 60-70's were perceived as a "Crisis of Democracy" in parts of the establishment.
This. Almost all work of the three lettered agencies could be classified as "revolution prevention" = mechanisms for supressing backslash from society at the controlling elites.
You obviously don't know too many potheads. Unbridled, foaming-at-the-mouth libertarianism seems to be the endgame of long-term marijuana-induced delirium.
First screenshot shows a system running Windows XP. Not a good sign that a product serving such confidential information is running on an operating system no longer supported with security patches.
Current day job is performing service IT for a security-paranoid bank that nevertheless runs XP exclusively internally, so I guess I'm just hypersensitive :D
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Palantir is trying to raise another ~400mm to finance their operations. And I honestly think this just another PR stunt to attract investors. The 'secretive' attitude is just a game of deception. They are deceiving investors into believing that the company has a real product. However if you talk to any FDE or Embedded Analyst, you'll immediately realize that this is a consulting company. Which should be valued at far lower multiple than a real product company.
Every new contract requires dozen extra people...That's why they are on a hire spree right now, (because of a large 'consulting' contract with a an oil company, that should stay unamed). However, with oil trading at 50s, they are scared and they trying to get some cash to cushion a possible contract cancellation.
To be continued...