
Palantir Raises $90 Million - revorad
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/palantir-the-next-billion-dollar-company-raises-90-million/
======
joshwa
Jesus Christ. Their product is straight out of every
CIA/NSA/SecretGovernmentAgency movie of the last 20 years. All that 'magical'
integration of news reports, signal and visual intelligence, financial
records, military incidents, relationships and alliances, all kinds of
intelligence, and making connections and performing analysis using a wide
variety of really cool tools (that, judging by the videos, have incredible
performance).

One can't help but think that the company started by some guy who was watching
a bunch of spy movies and said "why don't we build that product and sell it to
the government?"

~~~
elblanco
Well, they actually sell two products simultaneously. They have a flashy,
pretty good, front end tool. But what they really pitch is their very large
and super scalable integrated ontologically driven back end.

~~~
Perceval
When you say "ontologically driven", what do you mean?

~~~
elblanco
I don't know all the details, perhaps one of their employees on here can
provide a better, non-marketing-spin (please no "we're building an
intelligence operating system" nonsense again).

My understanding is, that when they deploy they build a pretty sophisticated
ontology for the customer. It's not a comprehensive ontology, but one that's
domain specific to that customer -- which actually has the potential to work
really well. So for example, the FBI would get one that targets law
enforcement (people, places, addresses, license plates, violations, prior
convictions, gangs, etc.), while the Army might get one that's focused around
military operations (people, places, rank, equipment, unit, etc.).

They then custom write Java software that connects one of the customer
databases to theirs, and probably either mirrors it and links it all to some
metadata, or if it's federated, generates a pile of metadata with
pointers/links back to the original data. The meta-data itself can actually be
very very comprehensive. For example, assume the original data is a news
report, that report might have everything from tagged people and their
attributes to photos of some of the people, videos, maps, whatever (actually I
think they just store a list of entity IDs and then store the rest of the junk
oriented around the entities, but it's not that important). But basically it's
a custom ETL tool for each data source.

I believe it's in that code that they also tell the Palantir enterprise
backend how to map individual fields from the incoming data to entity types in
the ontology. Assume instead of news articles, you are connecting to a phone
book. You have to map names to people, numbers to phone numbers and addresses
to locations (or whatever they have it called in that particular instance of
the ontology at that site), etc. If it's a yellow pages, you can map names to
businesses instead of people, etc. The ontology itself is mutable, so they can
decide post-facto that they would like to add a new attribute to a person
"place of birth". So if their knowledge base has phonebooks AND birth
certificates, when you go to inspect an entity, like a person, it'll retrieve
the place of birth and build you a nice dossier of that person.

In cases where they're consuming unstructured data (the lions share of
government reports), there's no fields to map to the ontology. So analysts
have to sift through each report and do the mapping with the front-end tool
while they are conducting analysis. I know of at least one site that's in the
process of hiring out a bunch of low-paid data entry people simply to go
through and do this tag-map operation on their reports.

 _If_ ahead of time, the reports have been run through an enterprise named
entity extractor, they _can_ leverage those to populate the knowledge base.
But in practice, quality is low, and the named entity extractors tend not to
do a good job of determining different subclasses of entities. For example,
you'll get a giant list of people from a document, but no indication if a
particular person is a scientist, a politician or a terrorist (and all three
of those categories might be entity types in the ontology for that site). In
addition, the key factor here is the relationships between entities and
between entities and their attributes. And most named entity extractors do an
even poorer job determining that than just finding the entities. So the
default at most sites is to have shifts of analysts manually tagging and
mapping documents.

On the front-end, when you search for a person in the little search box, you
can not only get documents that name might appear in, but you can call up a
dossier on them with all the little various attributes and other bits and
pieces filled in for you. Imagine a police record like you see on TV, with the
person's photos and other facts and figures and such -- except that it's
generated dynamically based on all the tagged and mapped meta-data, and come
be composed of data from several different sources at once, like a phone book,
a DMB database and a million news reports.

------
andymoe
I saw a demo of their stuff at Joel's stackoverflow.com tour in sf last year.
They were a sponsor and were recruiting. I got a save the shire t-shirt,
anyway, It's a really cool product. At least then they were going after
defense and government markets primarily. It sounded like they had oracle
prices since every installation is basically a custom setup and their system
is infinitely customizable. I don't doubt the valuation if they get traction.
I know the big financial guys are also a prime market for this kind of
product.

------
regs
Palantir is hiring: <https://www.palantir.com/careers/positions>

I'll be the first to vouch for the fact that this is the most amazing place to
work. Interesting technical work, huge impact on real problems in the world,
great culture, talented coworkers, and stock options that mean something.

------
nostrademons
Palantir is known around the valley - at least, I've heard of it from other
Googlers (some of which have spouses/friends that work there). It's mostly
known for treating their employees very, very well. Like, Google-level well.
They also happen to be working on really cool technical problems, which makes
them a big draw for talented engineers in the valley.

~~~
dpritchett
Does Google pay well? I'm under the impression that they are more about perks
and cool projects than salary and benefits.

~~~
earle
you are correct

~~~
purtyfce2
Earle, You posted the fermilabs mystery letter: full cryptanalysis, you last
comment is drink you ovaltine. I am incredibly interested in where this fits
into the code...f0be58f2fd63 6c79d2e493e6..I am trying to break a code that is
very similar to this but have no experience breaking codes so I have been
researching codes and how to break them, this is the closest I have come, but
still would love to ask you some questions, if you have time. I dont want you
to break it for me, I just need a little guidance, when thinking this thru.

------
elblanco
I'm concerned, they've pretty much started to saturate their target vertical
in the government (military/intel). I've also noticed that new installs are
starting to go in at pretty large discounts over a year ago. The government,
while large, _is_ finite in size. It doesn't take too many enterprise deals to
max it out.

If they aren't making money yet, and at their tremendous burn rate, is another
$90million really going to bring them to self-sustainment? I'd bet that the
curve on their growth rate is starting to drop off now, the next logical place
for them to push into is local law enforcement. But at their prices, compared
to the de facto competitor (i2) I can't see them getting much traction except
for maybe the very largest municipalities (I know they have one in the DHS
funded NYC Fusion Center for example).

Their going to have to put more resources behind their non gov/intel verticals
I think for this to make sense.

~~~
MaysonL
Well, I'd guess it depends on what their support/upgrade revenues are like.

~~~
elblanco
Their initial installs are quite expensive. Small orgs <50 have been getting
prices from $250k-$750k depending. I've seen larger organizations with
$5-6million per install prices, but there are fewer of those. I've heard that
their quoted maintenance fees are a bit higher than that.

I think at their last conference they said they had ~200 staff and still
growing. So their burn rate is ~$30-$40 million a year.

This latest round will keep them alive for another year or two.

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gruseom
This is astonishing:

 _There is no publicist, no sales or marketing team and Karp adamantly
believes that there will never be one. He says he is perfectly content to let
word of mouth drive his business, in press and in sales._

It means they are completely rewriting the rules for selling enterprise
software.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>There is no publicist, no sales or marketing team and Karp adamantly believes
that there will never be one.

When the press call to ask for an interview, or just for info about the
product, who do they speak to? That person/those people are your publicist(s).

Who writes copy for the website? That's your marketing team.

Who do I speak to when I want to buy? That's your sales team.

Not labelling some thing doesn't stop it from being that thing.

~~~
sachinag
Folks, their customers are intelligence agencies and the government. They
spread through referrals from the CIA to NSA to State to DOD to NIH to
whatever the hell. Then they get referrals to their counterparts at friendly
governments. The hard part was getting their first sale. Hell, I bet they're
still not on the GSA schedule, even with tens of millions in government
revenue.

Palantir Finance sells to hedge funds and financial institutions, but the
whisper referrals work in that insular industry just the same.

These guys need salespeople and marketing folks like I need a hole in the
head.

EDIT: turns out I was wrong about the GSA schedule:
[http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ffLq8fxcGdAJ:h...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:ffLq8fxcGdAJ:https://www.gsaadvantage.gov/ref_text/GS35F0086U/0HVEE7.25KU1G_GS-35F-0086U_PALANTIRGS35F0086U05262010.PDF+palantir+GSA&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESjxti9x2gZKk_OXsAIzdnayt-
fwXkGo2-3xgCf68IFXVxltcKfZo5z2Bi9dnTvORo0AHAQkJ8wnZ-
Kr5TcZUWx8_2tdE4U6ALjdzuA8ut88cpEUZ13j9VJnssnmNfo_zww3O9H2&sig=AHIEtbSHH_LfTQ9_BvxYBNE7QXcrTjE3Aw)

EDIT 2: Ha! The last page has their pricing. And it comes with a 90 day
warranty!

EDIT 3: Double ha! "Implementation Ninja Services" is the official name for
their lowest-level customer support.

~~~
RK
I used to work at a company that had basically one client, the US Navy, and it
would still go to expos to show of its products to different parts of the
Navy.

The government is not a monolith, where everyone shares the same hallway
(although the Pentagon might come close...).

------
limist
Gandalf: _A Palantir is a dangerous tool!_

Saruman: _Why should we fear to use it?_

Gandalf: _They are NOT all accounted for. We don't know who may be watching-_

------
barmstrong
Does anyone else get the feeling this sort of software is probably sold for
tons of money but rarely useful? I could be way off here but just from
glancing at it, it looks like one of those things that is probably too
complicated for the average government employee to use. So they end up having
to hire outside consultants or something. It looks like a research tool that
is one step removed from the lab.

~~~
elblanco
Most of the people that will be using this tool are intel analysts. Most intel
analysts used to be in the military at some point. To be an intel analyst in
the military you have to score relatively high on a test called the ASVAB
(basically an aptitude test). There's still lots of old guard in the field who
can't work a mouse, but the recent crop of analysts were all trained and
worked on systems of similar complexity and size (ASAS, JIOC, DCGS, etc.).

In other words, we're not talking about the typical government paper pusher.

That being said, it's still a complicated tool requiring the training and
understanding of some pretty complicated concepts that most analysts don't
know about or understand (like ontologies).

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rjett
Given the sensitive nature of some of the data they work with and the fact
that 70% of their business comes through the [US] government, I wonder if
their engineers all have at least some level of security clearance. Or would
palantir just as easily sell the same product to the US government as it would
to another government?

~~~
elblanco
Their "forward deployed engineers" need clearances to work on site. Palantir
installations are an extremely lengthy process required a couple full-time
people on-site. The places I've seen it, it's typically taken 6-12 months to
get it "turned on".

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muhfuhkuh
I smell gov't opportunity for SAS to acquire Palantir, as they kinda-sorta are
in the same industry (data mining and analytics). And, the way they treat
their employees is very similar (i.e., good work-life balance, in-house
healthcare and childcare, killer culture that is the envy of even Google):

[http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/21/technology/sas_best_companie...](http://money.cnn.com/2010/01/21/technology/sas_best_companies.fortune/)

~~~
elblanco
Word on the street is that they are trying to position themselves as an Oracle
acquisition. Their valuation seems a bit inflated, but I could see them
selling for $300-500million.

------
stuff4ben
Awesome! I know Palantir from when I was learning Groovy. Their dev blog was
extremely helpful. Good to know that they're doing well.

~~~
andymoe
Yeah, that reminds me. It's one of the best looking Java apps I've seen. Tech
Crunch screenshots not withstanding.

~~~
wallflower
Thanks! I completely forgot and was driving myself slightly annoyed trying to
remember where I'd heard of this company before.

[http://blog.palantirtech.com/2007/09/11/palantir-
screenshots...](http://blog.palantirtech.com/2007/09/11/palantir-screenshots/)

------
jawn
Are relationships discovered automatically across DBs?

Does anyone have any insight as to how this might work technically?

~~~
slashclee
Depends on the kind of relationship you're talking about, but generally
speaking, someone has to map the data from the original databases into
Palantir entities/properties/links. But—and this is kind of a big deal—the
Palantir product does not have a fixed set of entities/properties/links/etc.
So if you're more interested in tracking, say, computer systems, networks, and
packet traffic than terrorists and bank transactions, it's fairly
straightforward to define a new ontology that only contains the things you
care about.

[https://devzone.palantirtech.com/display/pgdz/Integrating+St...](https://devzone.palantirtech.com/display/pgdz/Integrating+Structured+Data+Into+Palantir+With+Groovy)
has a pretty useful overview of how you can take raw data from an existing
source (granted, this source is XML data, but it could just as easily come
directly from a regular database) and map it into a Palantir stack.

~~~
jawn
Thanks for the links and info. Great stuff.

So basically, the heavy lifting palantir does is in the presentation and data
abstraction. With a person still needed to define mappings across data
sources. Is this a correct statement?

With (seemingly) limited off the shelf mapping abilities I'm surprised that
they are looking to sell more as an appliance, and less as a turn key service
with consulting engagements etc... Neat product.

~~~
slashclee
I should probably mention that I work at Palantir, but [insert boilerplate
disclaimer here].

Yes, you definitely need a person to define the mappings across data sources.
However, this is basically a one-time setup task; once the mappings have been
established, new data from the existing databases can be continuously
imported. I don't have any stats on how long this initial setup phase takes at
real customer sites, and if I did I'm sure I couldn't share them publicly, but
the goal is definitely for it to be something that doesn't require an entire
team of consultants to deploy and babysit.

If you want to see the actual government product, and how it works, you can
sign up at <https://analyzethe.us/> for an account. This is a real live
Palantir instance with real data from data.gov and it's open to the public.

~~~
elblanco
At the dozen or sites I'm aware of, only a couple are where I'd say are in
"full operational mode" after 7-9 months. I've known a couple that have been
in a protracted (even by that standard) deployment stage for >12 months. Every
place I've seen has a 2-4 Palantir engineers working F/T there during the
deployment phase and at least 1 or 2 FTEs to maintain the ontology as mission
requirements change ("oh, now we need VIN numbers associated with vehicles!").

I'd imagine it's getting faster as staff gets trained and various little ETL
tools are built to funnel data into the backend. But it's been a very
frustrating process for most of the customers to drop the money on the
deployment and not have an operational tool for the better part of their first
year, and the maintenance tail has been reported to be some percentage higher
than the original purchase (that may have changed, I've noticed the pricing
structure has been changing quite a bit over the last year).

Of course, I also understand that when the customer says "pump data source X
into Palantir" and data source X requires a 6 month approval process to hook
up to, it can just take a while.

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MLnick
I wonder what exactly a "human-based" algorithm is? How do you not use stats,
NLP, ML and/or network based approaches at that scale?

~~~
elblanco
A very large part of their strategy is crowdsourcing named entity extraction.
Basically, as you read a report, you hilight and tag all the entities of
interest. It provides incredibly high quality entities and relationships on an
enterprise ontology.

The problem is that it scales incredibly poorly. Imagine hilighting every
person, phone number, location, etc. in a document. Then linking them all
together manually. Then imagine having a few million documents you have to do
that on. It's been an enormous problem at all the sites I've seen it deployed
at.

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brosephius
wow, not bad. interesting product, smart engineers. bombed an interview with
them some time ago :P

------
siculars
As long as congress does not allow the nsa/dod/cia/fbi to do this themselves,
Palantir will have more than enough money getting thrown at them.

Hmm... better that a private corporation has this power or the government?
Jump ball.

