Alex Karp (Palantir)

Power Law with John Coogan

In this episode, I explore the life and career of Dr. Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir. Karp, born in Philadelphia in 1967, struggled with dyslexia but persevered and graduated from Haverford College before studying law at Stanford. This is where he met Peter Thiel, entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Despite their contrasting political views, they became close friends.

After Stanford, Thiel pursued a career in law, while Karp went to Frankfurt University to earn a Ph.D. in neoclassical social theory under the tutelage of the renowned philosopher, Habermas. However, Karp soon realized that academia was not his path. He turned to investing and started the Caedmon Group in London.

Meanwhile, Thiel had built and sold PayPal, becoming a multi-millionaire. Thiel's vision for Palantir was to use technology to balance civil liberties and proactive counterterrorism. This would need a unique team of Stanford and PayPal alumni. While the team had the technical skills to build a product, they needed a CEO with the right connections to work with big government, which is where Karp's network came in handy.

The challenge was creating a system that could identify threats while preserving civil liberties. This struggle was evident in the failed "Total Information Awareness" program, which Congress defunded due to concerns about government surveillance.

The Palantir team learned from this, building a software that could link and search through disparate databases while maintaining access logs for audit. While the initial prototype was promising, selling to the government was a challenge, due to layers of decision-makers and red tape.

While Thiel had initially funded Palantir, attracting additional venture capital proved difficult due to Silicon Valley's reluctance to deal with the government. However, the podcast concludes by highlighting the irony of this situation, as early Silicon Valley successes were built on partnerships with the American military.

The podcast also features an interview with Stanford Professor Steve Blank, who discusses the difficulties tech companies face when working with the American government