Joe Lonsdale discusses testing the directed electromagnetic pulse technology developed by defense startup Epirus.
Opinion
Lonsdale: US defense primes engage in innovation theater without real competition
“What happened to defense is all these companies consolidated the 19 nineties after the cold war spending went down. So they all merged and became like these giant primes. And these primes started acting a lot more like government agencies themselves, like not …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lonsdale: Clarium Exploited BLS Payroll Flaw with 75% Win Rate
“Kevin Harrington was our head of research. He's like genius, crazy physics, biology, interesting guys. He ended up being on the National Security Council later, like super interesting, smart guy. And he like had mapped out this thing I'd helped him with where …”
Insight
Lonsdale: Early-Stage Startups Must Hire Raw IQ Over Domain Expertise
“I'd much rather hire for talent and ambition and hard work than hire for expertise. So almost, and there's exceptions, right? So if you have a company that's already really working and already really scaling, and there's like a machine that has to be run, you …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Lonsdale: Palantir's software helped eliminate thousands of terrorists
“You know, we ended up limiting thousands of terrorists, so we were happy with the results.”
Disclosure
Palantir Founders Initially Asked Alex Karp to Pretend to Be CEO
“And so we actually convinced him to pretend to be CEO for a few years. So that Peter would stop trying to hire like a really like senior, like military guy, but then he was such a good CEO. Then he actually was, he's still CEO, 20 years later.”
Insight
Lonsdale: Incubator Multi-Company Models Are Far Less Likely to Succeed
“A lot of people like to incubators cause they're like, oh, I don't want to do one company. I'm going to do 10 companies. And like, by the way, that's like much less likely to have big success cause you're not focused.”