
Poptip Joins Palantir - zachh
http://blog.poptip.com/post/93241017288/poptip-joins-palantir
======
JPKab
Yay! Now you can use your expertise to continue to help Palantir undermine the
privacy rights of people all over the globe.

~~~
tptacek
Exactly what is it that you think Palantir's products do?

~~~
JPKab
Palantir is a private company whose product's development was incubated and
developed at taxpayer expense following 9/11 (they essentially researched all
of their technologies on the taxpayer dime on govt contracts, then took those
technologies and created their product). It's an asshole company that doesn't
give a shit about the constitution or human rights.

They also use Congressman Hunter as a paid shill to push their product all
over the government as if its a panacea to every data integration issue. Its
not.

~~~
tptacek
The set of companies that benefit from taxpayer-funded research is enormous,
and it does not follow from membership in that set that a company "doesn't
give a shit about the Constitution or human rights".

You didn't answer my question.

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markhall
Congrats on the acquisition but I'm still a little confused/surprised by this.
The two (seemingly)disparate markets that Poptip and Palantir operate in have
little cross-over. Is there a longer-term vision that I'm not seeing?

~~~
samstave
The USG will use PopTip technology to parse the online conversations of the
billions they are spying on better.

Yet another reason to loathe palantir.

~~~
n09n
Hardly. Even if you are worried about personal privacy, why on earth would
less accurate spying ever be preferable to more accurate spying?

~~~
mikeyouse
If the more accurate spying is used in the same manner as the less accurate
type, then obviously more accurate is preferable. More often, the 'more
accurate' version is accompanied by significant improvements in breadth and
usability making the 'spying tool' responsible for much more spying behavior.

A good example is the history of tracking cars. Privacy concerns with police
tracking were originally non-existent since the first versions were police
literally following cars, so the number of potential targets was limited by
the number of officers. Then came tracking beacons that were physically
attached to the car, enabling a single officer / command center to track
hundreds or thousands of vehicles. Undoubtedly more accurate and detailed, but
mildly more invasive. The latest iteration of this is to simply track every
car on the road via cameras with OCR or through RFID on toll passes. After
you've collected a history of every vehicle in an area, you can pick-and-
choose which ones are interesting. This is astronomically more detailed since
you now have a history of where every baddie was at various points in time,
but I think most would agree that it's much more invasive than ever before.

~~~
n09n
Still sounds like a net positive to me. Arguments against widespread
surveillance are pretty much always founded on the assumption that the
surveillance will be inaccurate. If it's only being expanded because it's
accurate, the only problem is ideological, not practical.

~~~
chimeracoder
> Arguments against widespread surveillance are pretty much always founded on
> the assumption that the surveillance will be inaccurate.

That assumes that there exists some objective, mutually agreed-upon measure of
"accuracy".

For example, Glenn Greenwald has said that there is no definition of what
constitutes "terrorism" that is not inherently based on race[0]. This isn't
saying that the measures we take to prevent "terrorism" are racist; it's
saying that the actual _pursuit_ \- the goal itself - is inherently racist,
albeit implicitly.

The argument in support of that claim is too long to go into here[1], but
suffice to say that, if you believe that the word "terrorism" is simply a
euphemism for rationalizing racist behaviour or suppressing legitimate
political dissent, then no, you're not going to be happy when people find
_more_ accurate ways to target those individuals.

[0] You may or may not agree with this premise personally, but that's not the
point.

[1] though easy to find online

~~~
n09n
I really can't take seriously the idea that the goal of the NSA or any other
part of the US government is any kind of racial cleansing or suppression. It
seems far more plausible that using race as a judge of threatfulness is a
result of not having anything more accurate to go on. In which case, better
targeting would actually make the program less racist.

~~~
chatmasta
Re: "suppression"

I generally fall into the same anti-paranoia camp as you seem to, as in "how
bad can they really be?" But then I read articles like one posted here a while
back, which I'm having trouble finding (anyone?), that described massive,
tens-of-millions-of-dollars government research contracts ostensibly to "study
the Arab Spring." The article talked about the discomfort of researchers, who
were surprised to be pressured by the Pentagon into focusing their efforts on
"potentially disruptive" American groups like the Tea Party or Occupy Wall
Street.

Again, I can't find the article, but I remember my takeaway from it was that
the Pentagon is actively pursuing research into how to identify, control, and
suppress grass roots movements and protests in the US.

So, maybe we haven't seen evidence of suppression yet, but I suspect that's
because there has yet to be an adequate trigger event in the US, or an
"American spring" of sorts. When that happens, which I'm sure it will at some
point, we will see the NSA putting their data to use against American
citizens.

~~~
n09n
And that's a great thing. Look at the mess Egypt's government has become over
the past two years. Keep that shit out of the US please.

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rdl
Congratulations. I wish I'd visited Palantir in NYC; I've spent some time in
Palo Alto and know people in DC (and downrange), but never met any of their
NYC people. It's pretty amazing how I'd had the company pigeonholed as
"government contractor" (which is a huge business in its own right), but the
commercial stuff seems to be growing even faster.

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dmix
Having worked at a startup that failed to find a customer base in the consumer
world for the NLP software that analyzed social media, I'm not surprised the
only application turns out to be defense industry.

There doesn't seem to be many uses for that type of NLP other than
surveillance and brand monitoring.

~~~
misiti3780
what startup?

------
bane
Let's talk business here, because I find the numbers behind Palantir both
astonishing and fascinating.

Their burn rate looks to be around $275m/yr based on employee head count and
they've received ~$900m in funding:

    
    
       - Seed - In-Q-Tel (~$2m)
       - Debt Financing - $8.3m
       - Series C - $35m
       - Series D - $90m
       - Secondary Market (unk amount, 137 investors)
       - Series E - $50m
       - Series F - $70m
       - Series G - $56m
       - Secondary Market (unk amount, 137 investors)
       - Private Equity - $196.5m (Founders Fund)
       - Private Equity - $390.4m (Feb 2014)
    

Their last round was almost $400m in Feb of 2014. That's almost as big as all
other rounds combined. Their "valuation" (for whatever that's worth) based on
the last investment round is ~$9billion.

As of August 2013 they were not yet profitable but estimates for 2013 revenue
were around $450m and <$300m in 2012.

Other revenue estimates (they're all over the place honestly it seems like
every time they give an interview it's a different number)

    
    
       - 2010 - $50m - >$80m
       - 2011 - $250m
       - 2012 - <$300m
       - 2013 - $450m
    

They've publicly announced several time they have no interest in being
acquired or go public. Yet one of their investors claims on Quora that they'll
probably go public in 2015 or 2016.

Some questions for people who understand this mess better than I.

\- What's their exit strategy honestly look like? At $9b valuation, I can't
imagine too many companies who might be interested in buying them.

\- All the private equity investment tells me they're burning money faster
than they can find investors, keeping it private keeps their financials
private, which smells like trouble to me if they were to go public. Am I right
in this analysis or wrong?

\- Does dilution basically make everybody who has shares or options through
_11_ (eleven!) rounds of investment basically holding onto worthless paper?
Even if they go public? A review of glassdoor on the company says that people
are underpaid and salary capped, they must be holding on for a big payday
somewhere. Are they going to end up disappointed?

Anything else that might be interesting to discuss? Their fundraising seems
really crazy and unusual from anything I've seen before.

Here's a longform history [1] of the company which shows they spend over
$1m/yr on lobbying (IBM spent $6m, Raytheon $7.5m, Lockheed Martin, $14.5m,
Boeing, $15m). To put that in percentage terms, if Palantir is worth $9b

    
    
       Palantir spends .012% of their value on lobbying
       IBM spends .003%
       Raytheon .026%
       Lockheed Martin .027%
       Boeing .017%
    

This article also lists 16 distinct financing events, bringing dilution of
early investor shares even more to mind.

1 - [http://www.mausstrategicconsulting.com/topical-analysis-
blog...](http://www.mausstrategicconsulting.com/topical-analysis-
blog/a-pretty-complete-history-of-palantir)

~~~
rdtsc
Palantir is a govt contractor. They need to be big to be heard and be in
charge. They want to be Lockheed, Raytheon and Boeing. They can't be big
without hiring tons of employees so they are hiring tons of employees.

~~~
JPKab
Exactly. Government contracts don't require the number of people to get the
job done. They require the number of people they SPECIFY are required (whether
or not that number is correct) to get the job done. Translation: Government
contracts are by their very nature overstaffed as fuck.

Butts in seats baby, butts in seats.

------
0xeeeeeeee
Palantir is pretty mysterious to me. Frankly, I don't see the demand for their
software being high enough to warrant their size and number of employees.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see what happens.

