The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 8 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
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.”
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.”
Evaluating Top Talent Requires Being Within Two Standard Deviations of Their Ability
“Is you can't really appreciate a talent unless you're within two standard deviations of it. So you think of talent as being on a normal curve for any typical, typical skill. It could be for math, could be for podcasts, whatever it is. And like, so you kind of …”
Luckey: SpaceX and Palantir were the only defense unicorns in 35 years
“In the last 35 years, there were only two unicorns before Anderil in the defense space and 35 years, not just being chosen arbitrarily. It's basically since the end of the cold war during the cold war, we did turn small defense companies into major players. Bu…”
Lonsdale: Blended Reasons Mean Founders Have Not Found Core Strategy
“Usually there's like one reason that dominates everything else. And that's just the nature of the world is that when something's successful, It's kind of like the power law rule, right? Like in a venture capital, like fund, even there tends to be one thing tha…”
Lonsdale: Founders cannot lead with substance alone when approaching institutions
“I get a lot of young people maybe underestimate the substance is important, but it's, you can't lead with substance because substance is not taken seriously. So you have to have the substance to win, but you have to have all the trappings of why they're taking…”
Lonsdale: Early commercial partnerships often cap startup upside and hinder iteration
“A lot of startups, when you're getting going, you want to like, you get really excited about some partnership on the table and you think it's going to really help you. But a lot of partnerships will cap your upside. A lot of partnerships will limit your abilit…”