Valuetainment - March 04, 2026


“We RAIDED Other Companies!” - Palantir Co-Founder EXPOSES Silicon Valley Recruiting Wars


Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

220.74944

Word count

1,893

Sentence count

190

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

9

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Alex Blumberg talks about how Palantir went from $200M to $200B in a short period of time, why AI is more important than ever, and how to hire the best programmers in the world.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 What was your strength in the partnership as a founder?
00:00:03.380 What was his?
00:00:05.840 I was really good at recruiting the first few hundred people,
00:00:08.900 kind of pushing forward on the kind of like the product strategy and whatnot.
00:00:14.740 Alex was really intuitive about institutions, about how the world works,
00:00:19.920 about how we come across, about how to get into certain places,
00:00:22.020 about how to make deals happen, about how to communicate in the right way
00:00:25.980 that you're coming across to create value for the other person
00:00:28.320 in a way they understand, the way you can get it done.
00:00:30.440 Alex, he's a philosopher, and he understands how people and organizations work
00:00:33.980 and how to navigate the world.
00:00:35.240 Got it. Got it.
00:00:36.100 So was he more the one selling the vision?
00:00:39.640 You were more recruiting the people?
00:00:41.440 Well, I think recruiting is a lot about selling vision as well.
00:00:44.860 When we gave people their offers initially, this is really early on at the beginning,
00:00:49.000 and we give them three options of like higher salary, middle or lower salary,
00:00:52.580 and higher upside, middle or lower upside.
00:00:54.460 And I'd put on the sheet of paper, the lawyers hated this,
00:00:56.640 but I put an asterisk that it might not be exactly right.
00:00:58.400 I'd say, okay, if the company's worth $5 billion and there's so much solution,
00:01:01.940 here's what your shares might be worth.
00:01:03.520 And it'd be like, you know, if the company's worth a billion dollars,
00:01:06.040 here's what it might be worth.
00:01:06.760 And people would say, Joe, you can't show people if it's worth $5 billion.
00:01:09.960 That's totally unrealistic.
00:01:11.740 But you had to say, no, here's why it could be worth $5 billion.
00:01:13.540 And now it's worth what, $335?
00:01:15.340 Yeah, now it's worth $200 billion.
00:01:16.680 Yeah, it was a lot bigger than I thought.
00:01:17.660 So you couldn't say it's worth $5 billion? 0.95
00:01:19.780 People thought I was ridiculous.
00:01:20.880 So let me get this straight. 0.89
00:01:22.160 So you're sitting in front of me and you're telling me,
00:01:25.320 Pat, you can take $200K salary, $350K salary.
00:01:28.620 I'm just making up numbers.
00:01:29.760 $500K salary.
00:01:31.500 Okay, $500K salary.
00:01:32.860 If it's $5 billion, you're going to get $10 million.
00:01:35.700 Yeah, but up here, you're going to get $50 million.
00:01:36.920 If it's $20 million, it's going to be $50 million.
00:01:38.300 That's literally what you guys are going to do.
00:01:39.240 Something like that.
00:01:39.780 Lower salaries, of course.
00:01:40.700 But yeah, yeah, exactly.
00:01:41.880 Wow.
00:01:42.580 And so based on what I would choose,
00:01:45.680 would you judge me and put me in the difference?
00:01:47.200 Oh, totally.
00:01:47.420 If you choose the high salary and low upside,
00:01:50.220 then I have to go.
00:01:51.020 I'd be very skeptical of you.
00:01:52.400 Would you still hire me or no?
00:01:54.160 Sometimes.
00:01:54.840 But usually, you know what?
00:01:55.840 It works out because we measure everything.
00:01:58.060 Sure.
00:01:58.540 After the fact, all the very best guys chose a low salary.
00:02:01.140 All the very best guys choose a low salary.
00:02:03.300 High upside because they want to get in the game.
00:02:05.660 They want to be part of the mission.
00:02:06.840 Yeah.
00:02:07.220 And by the way, how much,
00:02:09.240 especially since you said you recruit
00:02:10.900 the first few hundred people at Palantir,
00:02:12.860 and you were at PayPal and you watched how they recruited you,
00:02:15.720 how much have you noticed recruiting change
00:02:18.600 from then till today due to AI?
00:02:21.560 So, oh, no, it's not just AI.
00:02:24.880 It's that people recognize talent so much better.
00:02:26.800 So Palantir was getting the best of the best.
00:02:28.540 We get the top people out of the top schools.
00:02:30.420 Facebook and Google kind of caught on to some of this.
00:02:33.780 They started giving big signing bonuses.
00:02:35.680 And so in like 2009 or 2008, 2009,
00:02:38.220 they started giving 100, 150K signing bonuses,
00:02:40.120 which at the time, that sounded like a lot of money
00:02:41.520 for a 20-year-old. 0.99
00:02:42.280 It's ridiculous. 0.70
00:02:42.720 Now, the top AI companies, 0.57
00:02:44.940 it's like multi-million dollar signing bonuses.
00:02:46.580 I saw this one guy got a billion-dollar offer.
00:02:48.700 He turned it down.
00:02:49.280 This was like nine months ago, 10 months ago.
00:02:51.000 Yeah, that's like the very best guy.
00:02:52.540 He's probably taking some knowledge
00:02:53.760 from one place to another.
00:02:54.740 So it's a little sketchy kind of what they're paying for there.
00:02:56.860 But for just the raw talent,
00:02:58.620 you're still getting millions of dollars
00:03:00.020 for coming into companies,
00:03:01.280 just being the most talented kind of math Olympiad.
00:03:03.860 As a young guy coming in.
00:03:05.360 Yeah, but it's like, think about it.
00:03:06.420 It's like, you know,
00:03:07.900 you hire a young guy for a basketball team
00:03:09.620 who's the best basketball player.
00:03:10.720 Similarly, the gold medal programmer in the world
00:03:13.140 who's going to add this unique ability,
00:03:14.820 what's that worth?
00:03:15.620 So it's worth a lot.
00:03:16.440 Wow.
00:03:17.040 So today, it's not uncommon for a young guy
00:03:20.940 to get a $5 million signing bonus.
00:03:22.600 For the very, it's like being a top athlete.
00:03:24.400 How do you protect yourself
00:03:25.340 if the guy walks in six months?
00:03:26.940 Is there a clawback?
00:03:28.000 Yeah, you structure it in some way.
00:03:30.260 It's built in.
00:03:31.100 I mean, if he walks in a year,
00:03:32.060 he might be able to keep it,
00:03:32.920 but hopefully he'd contribute a lot in a year.
00:03:34.720 But he's getting equity,
00:03:36.060 and he's vesting into his upside.
00:03:37.740 So you don't want to leave too soon.
00:03:38.980 If the company's doing well, he's going to stay
00:03:40.260 because he's going to earn that upside.
00:03:41.160 He's got the equity in it as well.
00:03:41.820 He's going to get the equity
00:03:42.520 for the next four years.
00:03:43.340 He's going to want to stay and earn that.
00:03:44.360 So you've got the signing bonus,
00:03:45.640 you've got the salary,
00:03:46.400 and you've got the equity.
00:03:47.300 And sometimes the signing bonus,
00:03:48.400 he might ask to take his equity
00:03:49.460 if he's bullish,
00:03:50.220 which, by the way, the best people often do.
00:03:51.680 They want a bigger piece of the game.
00:03:53.480 So I either give you $5 million,
00:03:55.080 or I give you $5 million worth of share today
00:03:56.740 that could be worth $100 million.
00:03:57.840 Maybe he takes a million of it in cash,
00:03:59.300 and he gets things comfortable,
00:04:00.260 and he has $4 million of it in shares
00:04:01.440 because he's smart,
00:04:02.040 and he wants to make the big money.
00:04:04.180 Yeah, so that's one thing that's changed
00:04:05.940 with recruiting, the cost,
00:04:07.240 how much it costs to get people.
00:04:08.180 It's the cost.
00:04:08.860 What else has changed?
00:04:10.240 I mean, so at Adapar,
00:04:11.260 my second company after Palantir,
00:04:12.620 it's very successful.
00:04:13.520 It's like $10 trillion
00:04:14.080 in this platform for wealth managers.
00:04:16.400 And a guy who used to work for me, Scott Wu,
00:04:18.900 he had won the gold medal in programming
00:04:20.700 three years in a row.
00:04:21.740 So it's like king of the nerds, basically.
00:04:23.240 Everyone knew who he was in these competitions.
00:04:25.260 And he worked for me,
00:04:25.980 and then he went on.
00:04:26.540 Now he's running one of the top AI companies.
00:04:28.780 But the fact that I was able to hire him
00:04:30.480 and people like him
00:04:31.320 just by showing up at these contests
00:04:33.600 and hanging out,
00:04:34.860 now there's hundreds of other firms
00:04:37.680 going after these contests,
00:04:38.860 sponsoring these contests.
00:04:39.880 They all know who these kids are.
00:04:41.480 The game's gotten harder.
00:04:42.500 You have to look harder
00:04:43.500 for these top people now.
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00:04:50.720 Friday, March 6th
00:04:51.600 to Wednesday, March 11th.
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00:05:28.500 And it's harder to recruit them.
00:05:30.600 And you better,
00:05:31.920 I have an advantage
00:05:32.680 because of everything I've built,
00:05:33.720 but you better have a reason
00:05:34.820 why they should be coming to work with you
00:05:36.180 if you're just a random new person.
00:05:37.740 It's really tough.
00:05:38.440 What's a differentiator?
00:05:39.980 I mean, I've built multiple different,
00:05:41.860 multi-billion dollar companies
00:05:42.900 and the next,
00:05:43.500 and this is my main thing I'm doing,
00:05:44.620 come work with me on it.
00:05:45.340 That's a pretty good pitch
00:05:46.120 versus you never heard of me before, right?
00:05:48.380 So it's a lot harder.
00:05:51.080 Got it.
00:05:51.400 So the differentiator is
00:05:52.860 moral authority,
00:05:55.440 previous track record,
00:05:56.600 I've won before,
00:05:57.580 we're building something big again,
00:05:58.920 come join us.
00:05:59.800 I'll tell you,
00:06:00.120 the best thing is this other guy
00:06:02.180 you know is there
00:06:02.820 who's a genius
00:06:03.320 and you want to work with him
00:06:04.040 and learn from him.
00:06:04.620 So it's all about chicken and egg.
00:06:05.600 I got it.
00:06:06.100 You've got to start with the best people
00:06:07.000 and the other best people.
00:06:07.980 That's how Palantir really did it.
00:06:09.100 We started with a bunch of the best guys.
00:06:10.840 The other ones want to be with them
00:06:11.840 and want to learn from them.
00:06:12.640 So you've got to have a nucleus
00:06:13.940 you start with.
00:06:14.820 What else did you do at the beginning?
00:06:16.220 The first few hundred of Palantir,
00:06:17.600 you recruit.
00:06:18.060 I mean, that's a big thing to say.
00:06:19.120 That's the foundation.
00:06:20.680 What other methods?
00:06:22.060 Did you look at certain schools
00:06:24.340 to recruit from?
00:06:25.140 Yeah, so we had teams
00:06:26.200 at about 20 of the top universities.
00:06:27.800 We'd have playbooks for flying there.
00:06:30.040 We would raid other companies.
00:06:31.780 It sounds really bad
00:06:32.520 when you talk about it. 0.99
00:06:33.680 The most ridiculous version, 0.99
00:06:36.160 this guy Nathan 0.96
00:06:37.400 who was helping us build a company early on,
00:06:39.080 he had worked at eBay
00:06:39.680 because eBay bought PayPal.
00:06:40.820 They'd been in PayPal.
00:06:42.040 And we went and got a conference room at eBay.
00:06:44.320 And I was like 20, 21 at the time.
00:06:46.940 And we were interviewing people at eBay
00:06:49.500 to come join our company.
00:06:50.980 And I felt a little bit awkward about it.
00:06:52.240 But I'm like,
00:06:52.480 I guess this is what people do sometimes.
00:06:54.100 Turns out you weren't supposed to do that.
00:06:55.720 But anyway, it was...
00:06:57.200 Did it work?
00:06:57.720 Yeah, well, it was such a badly run company
00:07:00.120 that they didn't even have any idea
00:07:01.540 that it was going on.
00:07:02.740 Which is, you do that at my company,
00:07:03.920 I'll mess you up, man.
00:07:04.700 It's not cool. 0.91
00:07:05.360 I'll be like one of your mobster friends.
00:07:06.520 Yeah, well, listen.
00:07:07.720 You almost have to have that mindset
00:07:09.060 if you want to build something big.
00:07:09.840 You have to fight people.
00:07:11.100 But eBay was like a sclerotic group of MBAs 1.00
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00:08:05.900 We'll see you also talk to it now.
00:08:06.620 Thank you.
00:08:08.020 We'll be right back.
00:08:09.700 Bye.
00:08:10.200 Bye.
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