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Joe Lonsdale

Founder & Managing Partner, 8VC · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderhostexecutive@JTLonsdale ↗LinkedIn ↗joelonsdale.com ↗Wikipedia ↗YouTube ↗

He co-founded Palantir Technologies, as well as software platforms Addepar and OpenGov. Through his venture firm 8VC, he invests across defense technology, life sciences, and enterprise infrastructure.

20statements → 12claims → 4claims resolved → 25%fully supported → 3.6/5average certainty → 1.8/5average debate potential → 4.1/5argument clarity · the sources → 1said about them ↓

1 supported 2 partly supported 1 contradicted 1 not yet assessed 7 not checkable as stated how the 12 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

12 assertions · 1 opinion · 5 insights · 2 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 12 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, 1 is not yet assessed, and 7 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Joe argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Lonsdale: Palantir built internal clouds in 2005 for government requirements
“Palantir in 2005 had to create the concept of an internal cloud because basically that's the only way to make it work for governments because they're not willing to use the external clouds.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 24:48 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
Lonsdale: Over 1,000 partners are building on Palantir's platform
“I think there's over a thousand partners now, actually, building on top of Palance here”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 22:23 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
33% certainty 3
100% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.1 / 5 directness 4.5 · coherence 4.1 · precision 3.9 · compression 3.4

answered every one of 8 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

321 words/min while actually speaking · 7.5 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 5,855 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Joe Lonsdale said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Lonsdale: Startups must be an order of magnitude better than IBM
“It has to be something that they desperately need, and it has to be an order of magnitude better if you're a small company. You can't just come in and have a slightly better solution than IBM and then somehow win an RFP. It just, it never works.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 15:43 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Disclosure
Lonsdale avoids poaching Palantir talent until the company's growth slows
“I, I'm not poaching from Palantir yet. I always told Palantir, if they stop growing really quickly, I'm going to take their best guys, but I can't do that yet.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 19:06 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lonsdale: Combining AI with human investigators cut PayPal fraud by 90%
“We had, like, a 120 investigators using technology, ah, to see what was going on, along with the AI. And that combination cut down the fall by 90%”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 2:44 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Lonsdale: Enterprise startups need older leaders for institutional sales
“You do have to include like older people probably for these institutional sales and who actually have a big role in the company. Otherwise they don't take you seriously.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 14:34 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lonsdale: Palantir won a $100M contract replacing a $500M banking system
“We eventually were able to get, get past that and, you know, charge a hundred million dollars for something that would have cost five hundred million dollars, and that, but that was like multiple years into it before you can get contracts that size.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 17:21 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Lonsdale: 80% of top tech talent comes from 20 universities
“Yeah, I think there's like, 20 top tech schools that were like, 80% of the talent comes from,”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 19:16 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Joe Lonsdale: Commercial business makes up about half of Palantir
“I started the finance side of Palantir, which became the commercial side, which is about half of Palantir's business now”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 3:59 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Partly supported
Lonsdale: US government spends $45B annually gathering intelligence data
“The government, for example, spends, like, I think, forty-five billion dollars a year now gathering data for intelligence and defense purposes.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 9:30 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Lonsdale: Enterprise startups cannot win giant contracts immediately
“You can never really get the giant contract at first. Whenever you're starting these companies, you, like, get really excited because there's, like, this, like, big contract you're going after, and in my experience, that never happens. It's always, like, a lit…”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 14:51 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Insight
Joe Lonsdale: The best data startups replace existing, budgeted enterprise workflows
“The data companies I tend to be most excited about, Are the ones that are focused on, I guess, focused on, like, replacing a specific workflow. So it's like, there's something that people are already doing in industry and are already budgeted towards, or that …”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 23:15 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Supported
Lonsdale: Palantir built internal clouds in 2005 for government requirements
“Palantir in 2005 had to create the concept of an internal cloud because basically that's the only way to make it work for governments because they're not willing to use the external clouds.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 24:48 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Opinion
Lonsdale: Tel Aviv and Seoul are top international tech innovation hubs
“If you're gonna go outside of the U.S., I think probably Tel Aviv and Seoul are the two strongest innovative areas in my opinion from what I've seen.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 25:51 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lonsdale: Palantir did almost no marketing in its first five years
“So, I think that, I actually think that for the first five years, we almost, did almost none of that.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 27:34 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lonsdale: Pentagon subway ads provided top ROI for early Palantir marketing
“And I think probably one of the best ROIs was, like, renting out, like, all of, like, the subway ads around the Pentagon or something.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 28:02 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lonsdale: PayPal alumni have started about 17 successful companies
“I guess there's like 17 or so companies now that my colleagues have started that have done quite well out of PayPal.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 1:58 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Joe Lonsdale: $20B spent annually on wealth management technology
“There's about twenty billion dollars a year spent on private wealth management technology,”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 4:14 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Partly supported
Lonsdale: Palantir has roughly 1,500 employees across 18 global offices
“Palantir has about, I guess, 1500 people and 18 offices around the world. It's like half in global defense of about 18 countries, I guess where it's working in defense and intelligence, and it's working about half in finance and other commercial areas now.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 6:28 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Disclosure
Lonsdale: Building Addepar's core platform took three years and 30-40 engineers
“I thought this was going to be actually relatively easy after the Palantir stuff. It turns out it took us about three years with a team of, like, you know, 30 or 40 really talented, you know, product engineer people to get, like, the basic systems to work at t…”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 18:07 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lonsdale: Palantir replaced a 1979 legacy system at a bank
“When Palantir went into one of the banks, we actually replaced one system from 1979.”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 20:31 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)
Assertion Contradicted
Lonsdale: Over 1,000 partners are building on Palantir's platform
“I think there's over a thousand partners now, actually, building on top of Palance here”
Joe Lonsdale Dec 5, 2013 ▶ 22:23 Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Capital)

The other half of the tape: Joe Lonsdale's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on the MAD Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Matt Turck 1

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
0011112013episodesmentions
0112013episodes it came up in
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2013 1 mention in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Joe Lonsdale, Formation 8 // Fireside Chat at Data Driven NYC #20 (Hosted by FirstMark Cap Dec 5, 2013 20m
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