
Palantir CEO Says Data-Mining Company Is Positioned to Go Public - mayneack
http://www.wsj.com/articles/palantir-ceo-says-company-is-being-positioned-to-go-public-1477498155
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entee
I'm curious about how Palantir works as a public company. It has always looked
like a data-centric McKinsey clone to me, and those kinds of consulting
companies are usually partnerships.

Granted, Goldman Sachs and other investment banks that were once partnerships
are now public. But that move hasn't necessarily been a good thing for the
companies in question, and some argue it has been damaging.

Basically, Palantir looks to me like a law firm/consultancy, those firms
typically find it advantageous to stay private, what is the advantage for
Palantir to go public except to provide a cash out to investors?

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totalZero
They have made buckets of dough at the height of American surveillance
activity and now they want to cash out while the getting is good.

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cossatot
What indication do you have that the surveillance state will shrink in the
near future?

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totalZero
It doesn't have to shrink for Palantir to lose share to newcomers in a growing
industry.

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stock_toaster
Or for certain classes of their customers (maybe governments?) to develop in-
house solutions that become "good enough" that they expect to lose those
customers in the future.

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mwfunk
I'm curious if going public would lead to more transparency about what they do
and for whom. Enron was famously opaque to its own investors until it was too
late, but I would hope that public companies have greater requirements for
transparency nowadays.

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williamscales
I don't think that Palantir being a public company would necessarily give the
kind of insight into what they do to satisfy our curiosity. As far as I
understand, Palantir could be very financially transparent while still keeping
mum about who their clients are and what they are doing for them.

I think it's worth remembering that Enron was public.

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SapphireSun
I agree with you on the whole, but Enron was pre Sarbanes-Oxley which
initiated a raft of reporting requirements on companies, so Enron is often a
poor comparison to the present day.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes%E2%80%93Oxley_Act)

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hendzen
Main takeaway from that article - Alex Karp is a really odd guy.

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hkmurakami
You should watch his interview with Charlie Rose.

He's not your usual corporate leader, but there's an unmistakable intellect in
the way he articulates himself which must work for both leading this
particular workforce as well as selling to this particular customer base.

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6stringmerc
Anybody with first-hand knowledge able to explain to me the difference between
Acxiom[1] and Palantir in the grand scheme of things?

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/technology/acxiom-the-
quie...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/technology/acxiom-the-quiet-giant-
of-consumer-database-marketing.html?_r=0)

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throwaway746878
Palantir doesn't own any data whatsoever. It is in no way a data mining
company, which makes it strange that it's constantly referred to as such. It
makes software to allow organizations to do analysis on their own data, which
Palantir has varying degrees of access to.

Another crucial difference is that marketing is a tertiary use case for
Palantir, at best.

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a-no-n
"Government (political), law-enforcement and security agency software company
whom happens to use data-mining"

Perhaps this is shaking the trees of institutional/sovereign wealth
funds/investors is in order to make them seem like they'll miss out.

IPO, these days, is a move of desperation and often a murdering of remaining
agility.

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snissn
Is Palantir a "Data-Mining Company" or is a military, law enforcement and
surveillance company?

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krona
You could define Palantir more easily by which customers buy its products (Nat
sec/law enforcement/military intelligence), and who specifically in those
organisations use their software (mostly intelligence analysts.)

By saying they are a "Data-Mining Company" is an obvious (to me) sign that
they want to be able to position themselves in the public sector (e.g.
banking, retail) with counter-fraud services/solutions, and perhaps more
generic cyber security solutions for large organisations.

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jsprogrammer
Palantir has been deployed into banks for years.

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jorblumesea
Can someone shed some light on the asian claim? Seems like a really weird
thing:

a) to bring up at all b) to bring up in an article about ipo

what does it have to do with the company going public?

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throaway0xff
I will shed light on the fact that at one point over 70% of my team were
extremely bright and talented Asians and South Indians.

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iambateman
$10 says 'throaway0xff' is, in fact, Alex Karp himself.

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rhizome
_Palantir’s workers “need to know they will have liquidity at a fair price,”
said Mr. Karp_

Unless there's a subtlety I missed, isn't this more likely to be driven by
their VCs?

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dsl
It sounds like the IPO is employee retention driven.

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rhizome
They're famous for underpaying and overworking, which I supposed could affect
hiring, but yeah, maybe the subtlety is that employees were carrot-and-
stick'ed with promises of IPO and now word has got around about work
conditions there. Still, it's usually because VCs want their payday.

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jpeg_hero
> saying he is focused on customers who can promise accounts worth at least
> $100 million.

What!?! Is there a market for that? Who pays that much? Republic of Turkey
Secret Police?

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throaway0xff
Yes - there is a market. Legitimate companies that make things you use and
ride in every day.

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user5994461
And here comes the paywall.

Can't read it from direct link, can't read it from web link, can't read it
from private browsing.

:-(

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gregoryrueda
Copy the title of the article then put it in a google search and click on the
first result. You should be able to bypass the paywall.

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Arnavion
That's what the web link does, that user5994461 said they tried.

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gregoryrueda
Close the paywall ad by clicking the x on the top right corner and it lets you
read the article.

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yomly
Try web link + incognito / private mode?

