Name: How Palantir Continues To Innovate While Navigating Controversy
Uploaded: 2019-12-11
Duration: 14 min 23 s
Description: Palantir has long been one of the most secretive Silicon Valley companies. But it now finds itself increasingly having to explain what it does.

Ryan, thanks so much for being here with us today. And I think, just for starters, I realized that not everybody lives and breathes Silicon Valley. And so how many of you are familiar with palantir and what the company does a pretty good number actually. A good number Do you want to just quickly explain it in your words? Because this Yeah, one of the topics of our conversations is what palantir actually does and doesn't do so how do you explain it today? Yeah, so we Our mission is to help critical world institutions leverage data to solve their hardest problems. So I'm sure many people who are in the room are experiencing a really overwhelming data landscape. It's increasing in volume and velocity, and it's in many different places. And for the government, particularly the threat landscape is also dramatically changing right now. Time pressures are extreme. And resources proportionally definitely are decreasing. And so we view our role as building technology that integrates that massive disparate data into one place. So everyone from CEOs and generals Down to frontline operators who might be researching cancer drugs or in the battlefield in Afghanistan can make really good informed decisions based on all of the holistic information that their enterprise has. So the product not only brings together all these disparate data sources, but it actually helps companies, government agencies whomever To sift through it and be able to look for patterns and do all sorts of things. Yeah. So data integration is kind of the first step. And then on top of that, we have a rich suite of tooling, that enables a bunch of different types of users and a variety of workflows and contexts, to really understand and leverage that data. To collaborate with each other across that data and to share the influences that they're coming up with. Back into an ecosystem so that a knowledge asset is almost being built as opposed to disparate bits and bots all around an enterprise. And explained, you're on the product side and on the government side. Yes. So, by the way, real quick, the names of the two products. Palantir Gautham and Palantir foundry. You know about foundry wasn't always foundry was it? Foundry has an origins and in a previous product called metropolis. Okay, that's awesome out of travelers. Yeah. They're pretty cool things. Yeah. So what is your role within the organization? So I run product for Gotham, and Gotham is our main government platform. So this is the original product, it was founded in 2004. Our original funding came from In- Q- Tel, which I think there's someone here from In- Q- Tel. Yeah, we have someone. It's the CIA's venture capital arm, and the original product was counter- terrorism, it was about intelligence We wanted in the aftermath of 911 to build the intelligence community and analytical data integration platform that also adhere to really important privacy and civil liberty problems at the time. So that all of the data could be really well protected while still fostering collaboration within the counter terrorism community. So [ UNKNOWN ] 2004, still going strong today. And that's the product that I run. And My portfolio is mostly on zero to one kind of our indeed new product so I sit at the nexus between product and business and I get to be a really creative. It's my job to find innovative new ways for us to exchange that platform, new workflows that our customers really need, new modules that we need to do to kinda keep innovating and to keep achieving their missions as the threat landscapes change, So that means teams of designers and engineers and prototyping and really getting my hands dirty in the field across our portfolio. And you're doing things like meeting with the US Secret Service to talk about money laundering, when you walk into a room like that. The secret service one was, so I've been at Palangier seven years, that was when I was 22, that was my first gig at the company. I was running a meeting on a huge money laundering case with seven secret service gentlemen. So I think what's cool about it one thing I really love about palantir is that our approach has always been build from the field. Like go to the ground truth. Go to the clients, learn from them learn from those users. And we're never in the business of building software in Silicon Valley in a lab and shipping it over the fence. I've been on military bases I've been, I spent all of 2018 and Europe with a US ally, a European allies security agency because they wanted a better way in the aftermath of a terrorist attack to communicate and share data in real time with each other. So I was in the field working and prototyping and showing that the kind of users were the counter terrorism analysts, cuts of the product, getting their feedback. And we did about eight month cycle with them and that has become part of our core platform now that we really built it close to the problem and the mission. So It's taken me to some really interesting places. I know I can currently in my career. I can imagine it. So part of that part of the origin story, though, at PALLANSCH here and this mystique. You know, the funding from the see it from the CIA and the early work with the CIA. You know, there were all these rumors which you guys have never confirmed or denied that you had a hand in catching Osama bin Laden. So it seems like that was an advantage to Palantir at least earlier on. And as you kind of went more and more into the private sector, you already had that allure. And the technology had that that, there was an attraction to it. But today, fast forward to today, there's been so much controversy about, in particular Your contract with ice and another government contracts. And why? I mean, I guess as just a starting point as for a question, why do you choose to do business with an agency like ISIS has been to workplace raids and deportation, so So I mean, our values and our mission we take on clients that align with that. And that mission is democracy. It is national security. It is those things in conjunction with privacy and civil liberties. And I think we all live in a pretty polarized climate right now. Society is heavily cleavage and I think it's means that people. Rush to various sides of debates and think of them in very black and white ways as opposed to appreciating nuance. So for the [ UNKNOWN ] questions specifically, the Obama administration brought us to [ UNKNOWN ] in 2011 for something called Operation Fall and Hero Which was an ice agent was murdered across the border while sitting in his vehicle by 12 people. And the Obama Administration called us to ask if we could help them integrate that data and figure out who was responsible for it, we ultimately were able to apprehend that individual. And the contract from there was with Homeland Security Investigations, which is a distinct group. From ice, they're not directly responsible for enforcement or worksite enforcement, and they mostly do transnational crime. And so that is things like narco trafficking or human trafficking. We El Chapo Guzman cases. Child exploitation. And I've seen some pretty horrific but inspiring cases where where ISIS done things like put 3000 child sex traffickers in jail in 2018 alone. So, do you have the ability as a vendor to this agency? Do you have the ability to say cuz I think nobody would argue that that is Yeah. That's good. Right? But do you have the ability to say to them we will sell you to this technology for these applications but not for these ones? Again, we work with HSI which is a distinct group. But now, we support the American govenment. I think our CEO has said many times that Silicon Valley shouldn't be the people who are picking winners and losers. We live in a democracy. We want that democracy to be self correcting. Many people at palantir, myself included, have rigorous debate and have many discussions and disagreements about this. But we ultimately think that the impact and the mission of HSI in particular is important enough You know, 3000 child predators and 850 kids being saved because of our work that this is it's worth sticking with the government in this instance. So would it be fair to say Sum up and say that in your view, the good outweighs the bad of what the technology is doing. I think what I'm trying to say is that we don't work for political parties or administrations we work for democratic institutions and instance. institutions that impact the lives of many people. And we think that our technology is is better you those institutions are better with our technology, privacy is more protected, they are more deliberate, they're more effective than otherwise. And just real quick, I do want to open up to you guys for questions, but going back to Just explaining what [ UNKNOWN ] does in the [ UNKNOWN ] around the company early on, do you feel like you are having to sort of revisit how you brand the company, how you communicate, both externally and internally because of the recent controversies I mean, I think on the branding question like, we've never though about that cuz we're focused on the mission, I mean our like secretive mystique is really truly because we're thinking about soldiers who are telling us that we're saving their life because they're able to detect roadside bombs with our software, like that is what we've been thinking about this entire time so I think. In terms of a brand or reset or anything like that, we are still single focused on those individuals and the people on the frontline. I think internally we have a lot of conversations, we try to be incredibly thoughtful, we try to hold complexity, we try to see the nuance in Kind of today's political environment and not rush to that black and white thinking and that's always been the case it's been very steeped in our culture from the get go and certainly more so in the in the last couple of years. But I think most people who work at palantir accept that and embrace the impact of our work in the mission, being good for society and pretty important. Questions from the audience please raise your hands if you would like to ask Ryan a question. This clearly is such a light topic. [ LAUGH ] I know that's a fun one. So Okay, so talk a little bit more about some of the, you guys have been around for 15 years and some of the conversations that I hear at least recently about [ UNKNOWN ] is very forward looking if it's not about the controversy. So I feel like we've been talking about you going public for the last 10 years or so. What do the right conditions look like for Palantir to actually go public? You know, that is a great question for our CEO. [ LAUGH ] And you will probably know the second I know but again, like it's not something day to day, my teams don't think about the IPO every day. I think we're thinking about The needs of soldiers and how near peer conflict is going to change the way the military operates. We're thinking about the human trafficking investigations that we have to integrate that next data set for for the customers, they can piece all those things together. And we focus on those individuals and real people on the front lines and you know, the IPO is not top of mind. I'm sure it'll happen someday. Yes, I think so right? Plenty of investors are gonna be happy with that. We've got a question over here. Hi. Hi, Kathy Davis. I'm really curious about the impact that the work that you're having has on the children that are In cages so not saved by the other half of the work that you're doing cuz I think that number four outweight the 800, not that the 800 is not important, but where do you see the work that palenter is doing to kind of. So again the part of Ice that works on enforcement and removal operations is called EARA, it's a different agency within Ice. And our contract has never been with that agency. When agencies have different contracts they have different text acts they have, people from that organization cannot access our Ballinger Stack with HSI. In the Trump administration ->> [ INAUDIBLE ] the other, like if you're looking at one data and it's being Kind of, I, yeah, I mean I've never seen and I've never seen a substantiated claim that [ UNKNOWN ] is directly been involved in that type of work. I think with the Trump administration, over the last couple of years, it is possible that HSI and ERO have started to do some joint operations. But our work is 99 % again about transnational crime. That's the mandate of HSI and it's the work that we do and we don't have a contract with enforcement and removal. Well, I think what has come up more commonly or has been associated has been the workplace raids and deportations. Yeah. And that's that that's the jurisdiction of Euro So, yeah .>> Not to invalidate your question in a way of because I understand it's the same agency. So, okay. Let's end it on another with just another very very quick brief question. You have been kind of pulling out of Silicon Valley a bit. Is that something that's strategic? Is it happening, what's the. It seems like there is less. So theres less palentier presence in Silicon Valley? No, we haven't pulled out of Sillicon Valley at all. It's still our headquarters. We're still in Palo Alto, we're still on 100 Hamilton. We definitely have a growing presence all around the world. We have a lot of people in New York and London and Europe. But we're still committed to Sillicon Valley and it's still the center for the company. Okay, great. Well, thank you. I hope you will come back and talk to us again next year. Thanks so much Ryan, thank you all. Thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Palantir Continues To Innovate While Navigating Controversy

Tech

Palantir has long been one of the most secretive Silicon Valley companies. But it now finds itself increasingly having to explain what it does.