Assertion certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

European defense procurement is slower than the US due to fairness mandates

Shyam Sankar · Shyam Sankar: The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence | E1104 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Jan 17, 2024 · at 27:34

Shyam Sankar is the CTO of Palantir Technologies. He contrasts European defense procurement timelines against US procurement.

0:00 / 0:07exact quote · 7.1s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The European process is even more slow because there's an even greater emphasis on how do I show fairness across all of the EU states.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Shyam Sankar

Prediction Not checkable as stated
AI value will accrue to infrastructure and apps, squeezing model providers
“I think they'll get a lot of the compute for sure. And that's, and I should say, I think the value is going to accrue in those two directions, infrastructure and app layer, and that the models are going to be squeezed.”
Shyam Sankar Jan 17, 2024 ▶ 1:00:46 Shyam Sankar: The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence | E1104 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Defense procurement processes fail at delivering both fairness and speed
“In an effort to have a perception of fair competition, we have created so much process that we either have fair competition nor speed.”
Shyam Sankar Jan 17, 2024 ▶ 0:11 Shyam Sankar: The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence | E1104 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Palantir refused hourly government services revenue to force software license sales
“And so, I think the great opportunity, and really, so the playbook was, look, I'm not gonna let you pay me by the hour. I'm going to refuse to accept any revenue that's services based from you, and instead, I'm gonna build a product, and I'm gonna keep investi…”
Shyam Sankar Jan 17, 2024 ▶ 11:45 Shyam Sankar: The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence | E1104 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Government software expansion is driven by product capabilities, not user licenses
“The first is that the land and expand doesn't work the way it does for commercial SaaS companies. What you're not trying to do is it very much is about expanding the product surface area. So as opposed to the license surface area, or I'm trying to get more use…”
Shyam Sankar Jan 17, 2024 ▶ 14:27 Shyam Sankar: The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence | E1104 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Software R&D costs continuously increase over time, contrary to government expectations
“Software, first of all, software R&D costs only increase. You know, it's like no one, no investor thinks Microsoft's gonna spend less in the future on R&D than they spend in the present moment. That would be crazy. But the government somehow expects that to be…”
Shyam Sankar Jan 17, 2024 ▶ 17:19 Shyam Sankar: The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence | E1104 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
1993 defense consolidation replaced venture innovation with dividends and stock buybacks
“The much more profound consequence of The Last Supper is it began a deep financialization of defense. It became about dividends and buybacks and leverage ratios. It, you know, it became about M&A. New venture formation was about spin-outs and mergers, not abou…”
Shyam Sankar Jan 17, 2024 ▶ 21:10 Shyam Sankar: The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence | E1104 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 1,200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.