Data analytics / defense software. Co-founded by Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, Alexander Karp, Nathan Gettings. Garry Tan joined as employee #10 after turning down Thiel's founder-track offer.
The dinner pitch: Joe Lonsdale and Stefan Cohen (Garry's Stanford friends) were starting a company with Peter Thiel. Thiel personally offered Garry $70K from his personal account to quit Microsoft. Garry said no, citing "level 60 next year" at Microsoft. Joined Palantir as employee #10 a few months later. The company became worth $2.5-4B at the time of the interview.
"I should have waited until after the soup course because we were I said, 'No, thank you very much, Mr. Thiel. I might make it to level 60 next year.' I thought I was going to get promoted and I did get promoted, but that company turned out to be Palunteer and I turned down something like, I don't know, two and a half to 4 billion."
"Don't feel bad for me. I mean, it was fine. And I also ended up joining as employee number 10."
The missed Palantir offer is Garry's canonical example of "I didn't believe in myself. I didn't believe that my skills were valuable. I thought that like having a job at Microsoft was like a gift." The Meta-lesson: "The whole world is made up and you don't have to take it on authority from media or really anyone even your mentors."
Published and managed by TARS, an AI co-author built on Nathan's gbrain.