
Palantir Technologies Raises $70 Million At $2.5 Billion Valuation - shaurya
http://techcrunch.com/2011/10/06/palantir-technologies-raises-70-million-at-2-5-billion-valuation/
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redthrowaway
I don't think I'll ever be able to hear the name Palantir without thinking of
the HBGary fiasco and the plan to discredit Wikileaks. I wonder if it's a
widespread sentiment, or if others wouldn't know about the situation, or would
be surprised by its prominence in my mind.

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cellis
Despite reading about that back when it was news, I had completely forgotten
about that. At the forefront of my mind when I heard "Palantir" and "2.5
billion", was "wtf". How can a company that simply makes data visualization
software be worth that much?

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lawnchair_larry
Don't forget that they are funded by the CIA. Not like "facebook is a CIA
tool" conspiracy theory, but actually funded by the CIA, from the beginning.

They're a private spying company that provides services to the FBI and CIA,
among others.

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rdl
While I'm happy for Palantir, this seems like another strong datapoint
supporting US equity markets are broken. Palantir is exactly the kind of
company which should be publicly traded; preventing individual investors from
having access to growth companies is going to make public market equity
returns even worse.

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bane
It's not really clear that they _are_ in fact growing. Nobody even knows if
they are or could be profitable and they both won and lost several large
multi-million dollar purchases of their software in the last year.

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rdl
They seem to be doing well enough that I'd be interested in investing if I got
the numbers. Their software IS much more useful than the alternatives, and
their customers have large budgets and a desire to deploy this kind of
technology. It's possible they're not executing well, but knowing the people I
know there, I think that is fairly unlikely.

Of course, if they were a public company, we'd know these numbers (at least,
they'd tell us numbers, and if they lied, and got caught, someone might go to
jail).

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fbuilesv
Palantir has some big names in the industry. Its investors include Peter Thiel
from Paypal. Their CEO is Alexander Karp and Michael Lopp (a.k.a. rands) is
also working there. I'm glad to see the high valuation, from what I've heard
their revenue has increased a lot in the last two years.

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pnathan
There was a link here a week or so ago about a fairly grueling hiring process
Palantir uses.

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nivals
Congrats to the Palantir team. Some of the smartest folks I've encountered and
a very inspiring and important product. The technical challenges these guys
have tackled are impressive.

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retrovirus
Although it's more substantiated than, say, Groupon's, this valuation still
seems crazy to me.

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garry
It is difficult to determine how substantiated a valuation is without access
to the books of a company and a sense for its future revenue and cashflows.
Being a private company, these books are not publicly available.

Given that, it would make sense to withhold judgment pending further data.

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nnythm
I hope you've held onto your shares!

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bane
Interesting comments about this company here:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ks1qu/how_to_ro...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ks1qu/how_to_rock_an_algorithms_interview/)

