Billionaire Palantir Co-Founder On Iran Threats, AI PSYOPs & CIA Funding | PBD 751

When you say palunteer to the average person, some is good, some is bad, some is neutral, some are scared. >> Nobody is angry you, you might not be doing much. >> Why do so many people not trust you? Why do so many people not trust Palanteer? >> We have to eliminate probably about to 10 up to 10,000 terrorists. >> The fear becomes, what if somebody evil runs it after Alex? Then what? What if somebody evil gets a hold of what you guys are building? Then what? >> What's scary to me is if Safari Republic elects a really, really bad person. who today is your biggest enemy >> are like the extreme populists on both political sides. >> So in a situation with a Maduro or Elmano, is there a possibility that Palanteer was involved? >> If these guys were trying to kill Trump, it means that if they're still around after Trump's president, they'll probably try to get him and his and his kids again. >> Why was Palanteer started? >> Protect the West against Islamist terrorists. >> That's truly the mission. >> That was truly the mission. But is Iran really Iraq? >> But a lot of people think it could turn into something like that. And I don't know, maybe this is not appropriate, but I'd be very Roman. So you the Romans would do, you'd go and you wipe out the leadership class. You're all dead. And you say, "Okay, you guys are now in charge. We're going to make a deal or we're going to kill all of you, too. You know, this whole thing with value and PBD podcast started with a phone, me and Mario. That's it. And it grew today to, you know, 15 million subscribers almost and 164 full-time employees. And that relationship, or you watching us and supporting us, wouldn't happen without you. But did you know 51% of you that watch the content are not subscribe to the channel? And it would mean the world to us if you could press that subscribe button and notification. Why? It allows us to grow, hire more, do bigger interviews, have a bigger team, and deliver a better product to you. So, if you haven't yet, if you don't mind, press that subscribe button. It would mean the world to us. Thank you so much. >> Know this life for me. >> Adam, what's your point? >> The future looks bright. >> My handshake is better than anything I ever sign. It's right here. My son's right about this. Great to have you on the podcast. >> Thanks for having me, Patrick. >> Yes. And I know you'll like these mics. Credit go. These >> are awesome. Nice. >> Yes. Jake and the crew. Jake, who picked these blue mics, by the way? You did. Okay. So, credit goes to him. But, uh, co-founder Palanteer, >> we started that 23 years ago. >> Yes. The story you have from co-founding Palunteer to then I think you were an investor in Free Press with Barry Weiss if I'm not mistaken. You were somewhat involved. >> Companies. I gave Barry some money when she started cuz you know we need to rebuild our institutions in this country and make it better. >> And you moved to Austin, you're building a university, University Austin. You're doing >> another thing with Cicero which we'll talk about. I want to get your opinion on Cicero and KO because those are two different mindset. And then yes, two different statesmen. One had a temper his way or the highway. The other one was compromise open to which is kind of the route you guys went. And then recently you put uh I think some 11.8 8 million into a drone company in Nigeria. >> Well, that's random. I run a big venture capital. We're doing a lot in AIC. >> Yeah, HVC. It's called HVC. And listen, most of the best defense stuff we focus on America. Of course, I do think in Africa working with the very, very best group that we could find there. It's important because there's a lot of bad guys there, too. >> Yeah, I agree. So, that's interest. So, we'll get into that because I'm curious. The drone business is very important. Uh, we're seeing with these wars with Ukraine and Russia. If you would asked the average person 5 years ago, >> if Ukraine and Russia go to war, what would be the most important tool to use, nobody would have guessed drones and millions, millions, millions of drones and blowing up all these other things. But >> okay, got a lot of questions in the timing of this interview is >> phenomenal because we got Iran stuff going on. We got Elmentoo that was just killed and you know with what's going on with Mexico, we have >> Yes. I wouldn't want to be in Port of iota right now. >> No. Oh, and we we you know, it's a place where we used to go to a lot because for vacation spot, Americans go to Cancun, they go to Port. >> They hit the Costco, man. >> They hit the out of all the places. >> I know. The airport, too. It's scary. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. But uh I want to start off with uh uh your background. Palunteer. When you say Palunteer to the average person, some is good, some is bad, some is neutral, some are scared. >> You know, it's it's good if they know who you are. One of my favorite uh signs on the the old defense secretary of Romansville. He had a sign on his desk and it said if nobody is angry you, you might not be doing much. >> You know, you do you subscribe to that? >> Oh, totally. Okay. Totally. >> At what age did you subscribe to that? >> Pretty young actually. I was a pretty obnoxious kid. So, >> were you? >> Oh, yeah. I had all sorts of opinions. I always have. Yeah. >> Tell me about your parents. Who were your parents? >> I My parents My parents were awesome. My uh my mom passed away a long time ago. My dad's not doing well, which is sad. But they were they were amazing people. My father was very competitive. He was one of eight kids. He brought them all out to California. He was our chess coach when we were little for fun. He is a chemical engineer, but and uh we won the state championship when I was a kid. My brothers did, too. And we thought we must be really smart. And then he kept winning 20 years in a row. So, he's just a very competitive guy. Everything, every game, every sport. And but a really optimistic, positive, competitive guy. >> Chess. So, you guys play chess. How old were you when you won the championship? >> Uh I was the K to6 champion twice in a row in fifth and sixth grade and we won the nationals in junior high school. So, but it's like it's because we worked really hard at it because he was a good coach. You had to spend you had to spend, you know, 30, 40 hours a week to be the best. >> And this is in Fairmont, >> but we grew up in Fremont, California, and Silicon Valley. And these were tournaments in California and around the country. >> Who were you in high school? >> Uh, I was a public high school. I was a nerdy guy who was a validictorian, and I had a bunch of really smart friends who taught me a bunch of stuff about, you know, we went went way ahead in math and science and stuff. >> So, at what point uh uh did you and Peter Theo link up? cuz I think when I I heard a story about you were still in college and you were doing something with them. How did that relationship start? >> You know, a lot of the smartest uh kids in Stanford computer science were going to PayPal at the time. It was something where I really admired the talent that was there. You have to realize that company, there was one company started by Peter Teal and a bunch of his smartest friends. Max Lechin started it and David Saxs, all these guys were there, Hoffman. And there's one company that Elon Musk started with Roloff and a bunch of other really smart people. It was called X at the time. And X and Infinity merged to make PayPal. They were there fighting each other and they merged. So, it was all the smartest friends around, both Elon and Peter. No surprise. It was a place you wanted to be. They actually rejected me my freshman year, but they let me in my sophomore year to go go help them. >> Was that like the place everybody wanted to work at? >> Not everyone, but I I think it was for for me it was I noticed a lot of the smartest, most interesting people go in there. So, it was it was when I was trying to find >> How was the story coming to you guys? Because, you know, it's kind of like well, you know, at that time when you look at the numbers, it's not like Elon is today's Elon. >> No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't. They weren't. How did you know that these was there would would they talk about it in the small circles like >> well but I mean I was a computer scientist I was already ahead I'd already done most of the undergrad work before I got there which is normal nowadays >> and so a lot and met a lot of the smartest other computer scientists and they were all trying to go work there and and so and their smartest friends were working there and then I was the editor of the uh Stanford review which Peter had started so I met people that way too through it. >> Got it. So Peter's way, how proactive was Peter of trying to get it in front of all the smartest kids coming out? >> Oh, this is this is like this is the most critical thing to do for these businesses. So Peter was very good at that. It's what we spend a lot of our time on now. I'm flying up to see all the kids at Harvard MIT this week. It's we spent a lot of time on this. >> So So walk me through it. So what does that look like? Is it, you know, do you do you go straight to the top? Do you establish relationships? Are there programs to go meet the kids? How does that how does >> Actually, it's a good question. People don't ask. So Palencer, we had a whole playbook when we started that, you know, Paler hired a lot of the top talent. And so you'd have you'd have your your fellows, you'd have your spies, you have your adviserss, you have all these like spies, these young men and women on your team and they're like talented computer scientists and they help you map out who the other best people are and they help you throw parties and they help you get to know them. You know, professors there as well. And you just you just have people who are young, smart, technical people who are social and they're there and they're mapping it out. They're helping you meet the right people. So when I come in, there's different groups. We've met people who want to work with us. We want to learn from them. So it's mutually beneficial thing where you're getting to know all the top talent and you're and you're helping connect them to your top companies and it just becomes a a way to work with them all. >> But how do you filter them out? Like how do you know, you know, >> it's like a chicken and egg. You start with like you So I I'll have a superstar from my portfolio who's like one of our best engineers who just came from MIT and they had like five or six of their smartest friends in a younger year. You'll go meet those kids who are the smartest guys, you know. So it's a network. >> Got purely word of mouth. So you're recruiting smart guys, hanging out with smart guys, and they would say you have to meet John. He's the smartest guy I know. So you're asking them. >> Yeah. Well, then then you might talk to him and you might work on projects with him. So you get to know a little bit, but but yeah, you're just purely through the network. And I mean, it's it's it's a lot of things. The same way if you're a football coach or you're a baseball coach, you got to do this for talent and tech. >> But what do you look for? So So in football, you may look for speed, you know, like right now I met with one of the uh uh law firms that represents a lot of young talent. Nowadays, they're recruiting kids at 10, 11, 12 years old. I said, "So, what do you look for?" They said, "Coachability and personality." I said, "Why personality? Personality equals sponsorship. You got personality. I can get some sponsorship money. You're coachable. We can put you. Of course, you got to have the physical abilities." What did you guys look for? >> You know, it depends if you're hiring an entrepreneur or hiring an engineer, an engineering leader says because they're different. Give me both. >> An entrepreneur needs to have opinions. And my am entrepreneur needs to needs to be able to say, "Here's my hypothesis about the world. Here's why I'm right." Usually they want to have some chip on their shoulder, some something they're trying to prove. They they have to be someone you can tell they're ambitious. They believe in things. You don't necessar you need smart, interesting, curious people to build things, but you need to have like a certain level of leadership and opinions about the world. I think to build things I is the mindset of recourse. That's 04, right? You were at Palanteer 04 to09. We were also at PayPal and they they categorized you as being part of the PayPal mafia. Second, you know, >> I I'm 15 years younger than Peter. around 12 years younger than Elon. I was a junior kid there. I don't get any credit for PayPal. Yeah. >> But you were still there. You were still >> I started learning. I was learning from these guys. >> And were you in meetings? Were you watching them? Were you there? And what was that like? What was Elon like in meetings? What was Peter like in meetings? What was that like? Give us some of the >> insight. I I mean I usually wasn't in meetings with Elon, be honest. But I mean these these guys were were just very opinionated, very interested, very ambitious, very fast. No tolerance for things that are broken. You fix it right away. Uh you know, you work through the problems. You get you get everything done today. Hey, you don't talk about what you're going to do next week. You just you just move. You know, people would be there late at night fixing problems, you know, passionate about their work. >> What what was the demo of the age? What what would you say the average is? Would you say 25 guys in their 20s? Mostly >> in their 20s where you can as you can be demanding of getting them to now at the same time was Elon and Peter also there driving working with them? >> Yeah. In different context, right? Peter's more of the strategist, the philosopher, the the thinker. He's not the one he's not the technical guy himself. Um, I think I think Elon is more of the operator. He's more there in the room. I mean, I was I was in Palo Alto a couple weeks ago, right? And I was meeting a friend and Elon was in the back doing engineering reviews at at XAI. This just he's just he just there working working. He he's kind of the more the workhorse just pushed through solve the details of the technical problems. >> Was the level of intent like who was the most intense guy at Apple? The most intense? I mean, I think Elon's always been one of the very most intense people I' I've ever seen in terms of working, but there's other engineers who are just there all the time pushing hard, right? I think I think when when you're in operation mode, guys like Max Le and others were just, as far as I could tell, just always working. >> Who were some of the guys that you you worked with that were maybe junior guys like you that came out and became big stars as well? >> Yeah. So, so I mean, a lot of the guys who were there, there were 16 different companies that were started after PayPal that quickly became billiond dollarar companies, right? So, and a lot of these guys were older than me, but it was the guys that, you know, Chad and Steve who built YouTube. It was Reed Hoffman who built LinkedIn. It was obviously Elon did Tesla and SpaceX. I mean, you know, there's guys who built Iron Port. There's just there's just so many things that came out of there. >> Got it. And so, from there, how did the opportunity to be a co-founder of Palunteer come up? >> Well, I was working with Peter at his hedge fund and uh I was, you know, I the hedge fund was a little bit disorganized and I I started bringing in my smartest friends to help and there weren't really other managers there. So, I'd helped start start building things. And a bunch of my smartest friends I brought in one summer to help us. They uh they weren't interested in finance. They thought it was boring. And so, and Peter and I had been talking a lot about, you know, at PayPal, we had to stop the Chinese and Russian mafia from stealing all of our money. And uh so, we got to know the guys who were helping us arrest the bad guys. There was Secret Service and the FBI. And right after this happened, it was 9/11. And so, these guys were spending billions of dollars on stuff that we thought didn't make any sense. And they were really, they kept asking us for advice. They were confused about how to do things. who who it's it was it was I mean President Bush created what was called the Department of Homeland Security at the time. I shouldn't be too mean about it, but you know how it works in government is that when you create a new department um people can't really fire people in government easily. So sometimes they'll have a lot of people they wanted to fire and then instead they just push them into the new department. So it was a bit of a mess. >> Push them into new department and you're fired. So there's but so therefore the whole department didn't really know very well what it was doing at first was my impression and they were spending money on just nonsense stuff and it became really obvious to us that Silicon Valley, Google, PayPal, all these things that were going on out there were just way ahead technically of where the government was at that point. And this was a problem because because the government was using all the government was spending $38 billion a year gathering data, looking at the data, failing to stop the terrorists but also abusing our civil liberties. So it was a mess. So we said, you know what, there's actually a really important problem here to solve. A, I'd like to stop the bad guys from attacking us again and go get them instead. B, I don't want everyone in the government seeing all of my data without any controls. That's crazy. And >> so that's when you said, "Why don't we go do it?" You guys said, "Let's go do it ourselves." >> And I started having my friends I brought that summer to help build the prototype. And which it which it sounds even crazier than finance, but at least it was interesting. They enjoyed help helping me build it. And and my roommate, who I'm actually seeing later, he moved down here to Miami. He and I controlled the team and uh Stephan Cullen, my co-founder. And we started building it up >> and and CIA was apparently one of the first investors in in the company. >> They eventually gave us money. I think it was the second second or third round, but it was it was only $2 million and we actually bought him back. The reason we needed them is that Peter basically no one would give us money. First of all, Alex Carpenter went all over Sanchell Road like you guys have all this talent because they can measure talent even back then. Like why aren't you doing social media? Why aren't you doing something new and exciting? Working with the government's crazy. What's wrong with you guys? It's not possible. So he didn't think it was a good idea to >> No, this is Alex and I talking to the investors. So all the investors were making they're telling us you guys are crazy. No one does this. Why are you doing this? It's not possible. It it doesn't make any sense. >> These are some big names. Credible. >> These are these are the big names. These are we got turned down by everyone. Turned down by Excel, by Seoia. The guy at Kleiner Perkins at the time and they're a great firm. I admire them very much. But the guy at the time who's no longer there, he started laughing at us on the phone cuz Alex didn't have a technical degree. He's like, "You guys don't even know what you're doing. He's a it's a doctorate, but it's not even a relevant doctorate." like like they're laughing us out of the room basically. >> And what what is Alex's mindset like when he's walking out of the room? What's he telling you? >> Oh, we really >> cuz Alex is a he's a very unique type of guy himself. >> We were we were not happy with these people. Peter Peter Teal told me it was probably really good for me because it gave me like an even bigger chip on my shoulder to make sure we succeeded after being like mocked and turned down by like 30 of these guys. And and Peter couldn't just only fund it himself. You need other people to fund these things. So when we got Inqel which is CIA's venture capital arm at the time to give us a little bit of money and Peter gave us even more that was really critical. >> And then how long later did you guys pay the 2 million back? >> I think we bought it for a much higher amount. We had some option. I forget. It must have been five or six years later. >> Okay. So they still made some money on it. >> Oh they made plenty of money on it. They and you know and and and more importantly we saved the government billions of dollars versus what they were doing. I mean you literally had things going on the DHS guys. cuz I remember there was some Unicist thing where it was like $3 billion to integrate all the data and we came and we showed them we could have done the same thing for them out of the box in a month like don't waste billions of dollars. So it's it turns out competence saves the government lots of money and protects civil liberties. People don't realize it's both of those things. >> What what is the the the desire to constantly use names that are from I believe Lord of the Rings, right? What where does that come from? >> Peter gets credit for naming >> Peter gets credit, >> you know, but I'm a fan of it. I think listen and and we wrote about this at the time. So, at the time when we're creating this, we said this is a dangerous thing to create, you know, and but we believe it's a it's we believe it's a worthy thing to create and it took it took a lot of courage. Like, you know, there's a lot of different things we could have worked on. It could have made a lot of money doing a lot of other things, but it was really important to both help. You know, we helped eliminate probably about to 10 up to 10,000 terrorists that might not got eliminated. We worked with the we work with all sorts of amazing groups in the government alongside them with the technology and with the ability and we help protect civil liberties and make sure the government watchers are being watched. Now of you know of course you create this technology it's it's if it gets into the wrong hands and they turn off the audit trails who knows what what bad could be done with it. So there's there's good and bad here. >> Yeah. So and and we'll get in I want to get into that as well but going back to the meetings of going meeting with investors and them saying you know what you know you guys don't know what you're doing. You don't even have the real degree. Alex said in one of the interviews, I think he may have said it to you. >> He said, "I wish we would have told him to f off and just left." We were so polite, they would have probably respected us more if we if we had just like >> Were you naturally polite or were you intentionally becoming polite because you needed the money? >> That's what we were supposed to do. We needed the money, man. I didn't know what you're supposed to do. >> Got it. So, but but it's it wasn't naturally because you're a disagreeable personality. >> Well, yeah. At the same time, I think both of us are not the kind of people. We're probably a little more arrogant now that now we've done >> more. We didn't, you know, we didn't know that. We We didn't know for sure we knew what we were doing. We felt we were doing something smart, but it was our first time. >> He said he said, uh, I think it was, I wish we were more arrogant in certain areas and less arrogant in certain areas. >> That's that that that that's well said. You know, it was interesting when you're creating our company, we kind of reinvented a lot of things from scratch. And in some cases, it was probably frankly genius. In other cases, we could have just hired someone who knew what they were doing. And and it's like when you're building a company, I talk about having adults in the room. There's certain types of adults you don't want to bring into a startup because you don't want people running a machine in a standard way. You want to be creative, but there's certain parts that once you get there, you probably do want the adults to show you how it's done. So, there's there's some things we maybe could have learned from others. >> What What was your uh uh strength in the partnership as a founder, what was his? >> I was really good at recruiting the first few hundred people and kind of pushing forward on the kind of like the product strategy um and whatnot. Alex was really intuitive about institutions, about how the world works, about how we come across, about how to get into certain places, about how to make deals happen, about how to communicate with the in the right way that you're that you're coming across to create value for the other person in a way they understand the way they can get it done. Like Alex is a he's a philosopher and he understands how people and organizations work and how to navigate the world. >> Got it. Got it. So his was he more the one selling the vision? You were more recruiting the people both? I think I think recruiting is a lot about selling vision as well. I when we when we gave people their offers initially we this is really early on at the beginning and we give them three options of like higher salary, middle or lower salary and higher upside middle or lower upside and I'd put on the sheet sheet of paper. The lawyers hated this but I put an asterisk that it might not be exactly right. I'd say okay if the company's worth $5 billion and this much solution here's what your shares might be worth. And it'd be like five or you know here the company's worth a billion dollars here's what it might be worth. And people would say Joe you can't show people if it's worth $5 billion. That's totally unrealistic. But you had to say, "No, here's why it could be worth five." And now it's worth what? 335. Now it's worth $400 billion. >> Yeah, it was a lot bigger than I thought. >> So you couldn't say it was worth5 billion. >> People thought I was ridiculous. >> So let me get this straight. So So you're sitting in front of me and you're telling me, Pat, you can take 200k salary, 350. I'm just making up numbers. 500k salary. Okay. 500k salary. If it's 5 billion, you're going to get $10 million. >> Yeah. But up here, >> $20 million, it's going to be 50 million. That's literally what you guys >> No something like that. Lower salaries of course but Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >> Wow. And so based on what I would choose, would you judge me and put me in the >> totally I to if you choose the high salary and low upside then then I have to go be very skeptical of you. >> Would you still hire me or no? >> Sometimes but usually you know it works out we cuz we we measure everything. >> Sure. >> After the fact all the very best guys chose a low salary. >> All the very best guys choose a low salary >> because they want to they want they want to get in the game. They want to be part of the mission. Yeah. And and by the way, how much especially since you're you said you recruit the first few hundred people at Palunteer so and you were at PayPal and you watch how they recruited you. How much have you noticed recruiting change from then till today due to AI? So Oh no, it's it's a it's a it's a it's not just AI, it's that people recognize talent so much better. So Palanteer was getting the best of the best. We get the top people out the top schools. Facebook and uh Google kind of caught on to some of this. They started giving big signing bonuses. And so what I in like 2009 or 2008 2009 they started giving 150k signing bonuses which at the time that sound like a lot of money for a 20-year-old. It's ridiculous. Now the top AI companies it's like multi-million dollar signing bonuses for >> I saw this one guy got a billion dollar offer. He turned it down. This was like nine months ago, 10 months ago. >> Yeah. That's like the very best guy. He's probably taking some knowledge from one place to another. So it's a little sketchy kind of what they're paying for there. But for just the raw talent, you're still getting millions of dollars for for coming into companies, just being the most talented kind of math Olympia >> as a young guy coming in. >> Yeah. But it's like, think about it. It's like it's like it's like, you know, you hire a young guy for a basketball team who's the best basketball player. Similarly, the gold medal programmer in the world who's going to add this unique ability. What's that worth? So, so it's worth a lot. >> Wow. So, so today, it's not uncommon for a young guy to get a $5 million signing bonus >> for the very It's going to be a top athlete. How do you protect yourself if the guy walks in six months? Well, is there a clawback? >> Yeah, you start you structure it in some way that like that it's built in. I mean, if he walks in a year, he might be able to keep it, but hopefully he contribute a lot in a year, but he's getting he's getting equity and he's vesting into his upside. So, you don't want to leave too soon. If the company's doing well, he's going to stay because he's going to earn that. Got the equity in the >> He's going to get the equity for the next four years. He's going to want stay and earn that. >> So, you got the signing bonus, you got the salary, and you got the equity. >> And sometimes the signing bonus, he might ask to take his equity if he's bullish, which which, by the way, the best people often do. They want to own a bigger piece of the game. So I give you $5 million. I give you $5 million worth of share today that could be worth $100 million. >> Maybe he takes a million of it in cash and he gets he's comfortable and he has four million of it in shares because he's smart and he wants to make the big money, you know. >> Yeah. So that's one thing that's changed with recruiting the cost. How much it cost to get >> the cost and and >> what else what else has changed? >> I mean so at Adapar, my second company after Palanteer it's a very successful has like $10 trillion in this platform for wealth managers and you know a guy used to work for me Scott Woo he had won the gold medal in programming three years in a row. So like like king of the nerds basically, right? Everyone knew who he was in these competitions and he worked for me and then he went on now he's running one of the top AI companies. Um but the fact that I was able to hire him and people like him just by like showing up at these contests and hanging out. Now there's like hundreds of other firms going after these contests, sponsoring these contests. They all know who these kids are. The game's gotten harder. You have to look look harder for these top people now. >> And it's harder to recruit them. And you and you better you better I have an advantage because of everything I've built. But you better have a reason why they should be coming to work with you. If you're just a random new person, it's really tough. >> What's a differentiator? >> I mean, I've built multiple different multi-billion dollar companies and the next this is my main thing I'm doing. Come work with me on it. That's a pretty good pitch versus you never heard of me before, right? So, it's just it's just it's a lot harder. >> Got it. So, the differentiator is moral authority, previous track record, I've won before, we're building something big again. Come join us. tell you the the best thing is this is this other guy you know is there who's a genius and you want to work with him and learn from him so it's all about chicken and egg you got to start with the best people then the other best people that's how palenteer really did it we started with a bunch of the best guys the other ones want to be with them want to learn from them so it's it's you got to have a nucleus you start with >> what else did you do at the beginning the first few hundred of palunteer you recruit I mean that's a big thing to say that's the foundation what other methods did you look at certain schools to recruit from that >> we had teams at about 20 of the top universities we have playbooks for flying ly hanging there. We would raid we would raid other companies. It sounds really bad when you talk about it. Uh the most ridiculous version, one of uh this guy Nathan who was helping us build a company early on, he had worked at eBay because eBay bought PayPal, needed in PayPal and we went and got a conference room at eBay and I I was like n 2021 at the time and we were interviewing people at eBay to come join our company and I felt a little bit awkward about it but I'm like I guess this is what people do. Turns out you weren't supposed to do that. But anyway, it it was did it work? Oh, they it was such a badly run company that they didn't even have any idea that that it was going on, which is you do that in my company, I'll mess you up, man. That's that's not cool. I'll be like one of your mobster friends. >> Yeah. Yeah. Well, listen, you almost have to have that mindset if you want to build something. >> You have to like fight people, but it's like But eBay was like a sclerotic group of like MBAs who didn't really have strong opinions about the >> At what point did you know Palanteer was special? Like it really had legs, >> you know? It was for me it was like when I had some of these people joining Bob Mcgru when he came in from from you know he had been Stanford PhD and had been at PayPal and was a superstar. That's part of the reason Peter gave us money for one round is when he joined and he ended up writing a bunch of stuff at open AI after being at talent for 10 years. But when he came these other guys came when we started to get into the FBI and and and uh you know it's just like three or four years in it was it started to really work and all this top talent started coming. It was very special. >> And and what happened so when you're saying FBI what what does that mean? like they're approaching you guys, you're solving their problems, they're seeing, >> you know, you know, it's it's so hard to sell the government. And I used to so the CIA, I used to think it was like the CIA, it's actually like 200 competing orgs that don't like each other. And the FBI is like that a little bit, too. There's lots of parts of it. And so we were working and doing pilots with both sides, but we couldn't get a breakthrough. And at one point, we finally, it's kind of funny. They were jealous of each other. They wanted to be first, but they didn't want to be first. >> Behind CIA. >> Government's very funny. I've done other things. We saw the government. They both want to be able to tell everyone how innovative they are, but they don't want to take any risk in being the first one to do something because they can get fired and they're very riskaverse people who tend to be bureaucrats. And so we were doing all these things they needed, but they were afraid to do the big contract. And I think both of them thought the other contract was going ahead and then they both signed at once. And then we got in and we started to add real value. And listen, this this company took a long time to iterate and figure out how to how to how to help. But but it was once you started breaking in and iterating with them, it was clear we we're going to get there. >> And and what role was Teal playing? Tail was like the chairman of the board, co-founder, strategist. He stopped us from making some really key mistakes in years 2, three, four. There would have been some bad partnerships we were going to sign. He he made sure it was funded. He made sure the vision was the right direction. >> Are you comfortable sharing one of them? >> Yeah, sure. I mean, there was a company that was going to get us our first few million dollars of revenue if we partnered with them in DC. But they would have kind of locked us into something where they owned a big piece of the whole thing long term, the way they structured it, and that would have capped the value. we might probably would have been a better chance of being worth 100 million and no chance of being worth sill that big of a difference. >> I mean because because they would have owned a piece of the market the way they wanted to structure it and had some rights and and for me I'm just trying to make this thing work. So you're like oh this is going to give us millions of revenue we'll be able to get over here but it would have really like taken away a lot of the upside and he he's and he's very smart about how to structure these things, how to protect yourself and and you know he's he's always been the the thinker behind the scenes who you check everything with and who you make sure you're going the right direction. >> Why was Palanteer started? It was started to protect the West against Islamist terrorists and to make sure we save the government money and protect the civil liberties. That that was >> that's the mission. >> That was the mission. >> That's truly the mission. >> That was truly the mission. >> And you're saying that to me in the interview when you're recruiting me, >> you know, I don't know if we used Yeah. Yeah. We we used a lot of words like that when we when we were first starting out. We were helping the interview. >> Are you literally telling me we're going to save the free world? Yeah, we say listen the technology cultures that exist in the West Coast, which if I'm interviewing you, you know, you're one of the great technologists and you know, your friends are amongst the very top. The things we know how to do here, they do not know how to do that in this part of the world in DC. They just don't. They're way behind and they're broken and they're wasting tens of billions of dollars and we're getting attacked and and and we're they're abusing our data and and they're incompetent and we're going to have to do this for them to come in and it's important that at least some of the best people in the world go and help the government be less stupid. I mean that that is that is that is my view on the matter you know. >> Got it. But that mission was fullon bought and you Alex Peter you guys are on the same page with the mission. >> Yeah. Save the shire we used to put it because this comes from the the lord of the rings but your save the shire is this western civilization is protecting the innocent. It's going off and doing the mission for them. >> Let me ask you the process it is it okay pre the idea of palunteer you're sitting guys this is a problem. We have to save you know the free world. we have to say save the you know western ideology here's the enemy you know what they're trying to do how can we solve that problem and then do you think about what company can we develop that can solve this problem is does it go mission first solution second what is the process >> well the the the tools that were built at PayPal to to stop the fraud >> this is the Russia one you were talking about >> the Russian Chinese mafia you had to be able to stop those guys so we built those tools >> how nasty was it that it made all of our competitors go bankrupty Everyone else was going bankrupt basically that this was this was this was existential for PayPal to solve. >> What kind of money did they get? I mean, it was like seven or eight million a month, but that was back when that was a lot of money though. You have to remember Bill >> early stages of PayPal. >> This is like I mean it's like seven or eight million a month at a time when it was scaling. It was enough to make it unprofitable. >> Got it. >> I don't know the exact numbers, but it was enough to make it unprofitable versus profitable. It was really key and and and it was annoying because you could because you had to not accept certain things if you couldn't stop these guys, right? So it it' break a lot of stuff. They'd run money through a system, they take it out. You might go to 7-Eleven, buy something, they're gonna get your credit card, sell it to a group of Russians. The Russians are going to open accounts, transfer a bunch of money. You're going to then get PayPal $300. You say, "No, you'll charge it back." And then and then and then we have to pay the other companies to pay it. >> And so there's all this fraud you had to deal with. >> And then it turned out that like the types of problems we realized we were doing for investigating that, you could extend those to a lot more types of problems and build investigative software that didn't exist and be able to like look into all the data, bring the data together. basically how the human mind extended into the 38 billion dollars of data and make sure you only access what you're allowed to access and and and how make sure you have audit trails to to do it right in order to get the bad guys. And so that created so much pain and annoyance that led to the mission and it inspired from there to start a company called Palunteer that prevents what Russia and China did to you guys. >> Well, 911 happened after that and we saw and we got to know these guys and we saw them reacting to it badly. We said, "Wait a second, we got to help things at the same time." >> Yeah. Those two things. >> Got it. Why do so many people not trust you? Why do so many people not trust Palanteer? Every everybody like you know how when you think about every decade there's a company that people look at as evil. You got Monsanto, you got Enron, you got all these guys, you know, 20 years ago they hated these companies. They hated AIG. But man, when you think about Palunteer, a lot of people say, "What is your motive? What is the vision? What are you guys trying to do?" >> Well, I'm not running it anymore, first of all. So, I was I I was there the first decade. But I I'll tell you, you know, first of all, when you're really successful, people attack you. That's always going to happen. And second of all, this is a this is unusual area. You have a company that is that is helping helping the government, you know, eliminate bad guys. It's helping the government do things it wants to do more effectively, more efficiently. And some of the things government's doing right now, people are not happy with. And so I think it's an interesting question like should a tech company stop helping the government when it disagrees with it. >> And I think Alex Karp spoken really well on this. And and I know listen Alex Karp comes from you know he had a African-American mother who's he had a kind of Jewish professorial father he comes from the left obviously Peter Till obviously is more on the right and you know so we come from different political sides here but they both agree that it's better for the world to make American government and America more efficient and work better and and and not throw sand in the gears not break things and so the question is like should Silicon Valley get to decide policy or should the government get to decide policy and our view is we want to watch the watchers but the government should get to decide policy. Our republic has a mechanism for deciding and we should follow that mechanism versus being in charge ourselves. >> The fear becomes what if somebody evil runs it after Alex? Then what? What if somebody evil gets a hold of the way you guys are building? Then what? >> Well, it's see that that that's not what's scary. What's scary to me is if a Safari Republic elects a really really bad person and they try to get around things and use technology and power in ways they shouldn't. Uh >> Pal very possible that >> which is very possible. That's that is scary to me. That's why we all have to fight to be part of the political process for our views there. um and and to make sure we have checks on power, which is core of the US Constitution. What Alex is doing, he he doesn't get the data himself. Al Alex is running a company that builds technology for our clients, right? I should say our clients. I'm an adviser still. I'm proud founder. I'm not running Palanteer these days. But but but Palanteer is helping them use their data. We're not we're not data ourselves. You see what I'm saying? Like you're helping them see things and do things they couldn't do otherwise with their information. It's not like Paler itself has all the information. How many of the how many of the events that happens in the world where we're watching like you know is Palanteer involved in for instance and I know you're not involved today like Maduro was Palanteer involved in capturing him Elmentoo the Mexico you know the the cartel guy we just killed in Mexico were you involved in gathering that intel because if you're thinking all these intel and and by the way a lot of agencies use you right it's not just CIA that uses you so you know what everybody is who win? >> No, no, but we don't actually cuz cuz the people who know are the people who have the clearance to see what's going on there. So there may be things that happen that Alex, even if he's running the company, may not have the top secret clearance for that particular operation to be involved in that thing. >> But is there anybody in the company that has the clearance to know what everything's going on? >> I actually don't know the answer to that question. That's an interesting question. I doubt very powerful. I I doubt I I doubt they do because a lot of palleters work is is with allies all over the world and different allies have different clearances and different things they do. So it'd be very unlikely for someone to see everything. Now the real question though is do you want this operation to be done efficiently and effectively as possible or do you want to be done slightly stupider? I mean that that's really the question we're asking here. Should this be done in a slightly stupider way or a slightly better way? Because that that's all Palunteer is doing is it's on site with them helping them do it in a better way given the information they're allowed to use. So in a situation with a Maduro or Elmentoo, is there a possibility that Palanteer was involved in? >> It's very it's very likely to me that that that the technology and was involved and it capabilities were involved and that that helped him do it in a better way than they would have done it before, especially with the US operation. I don't know about the Mexican operation or not. I'm not I'm not up to speed on on what they're doing there. >> Meaning the Venezuela operation, the Venezuela one, I'd be surprised if it wasn't involved in some way. But again, Palanteer is a tool being used by others in our government who are in charge who are making the STR. >> Maybe you explain that. So how is that tool used? What does that tool help you do? If I explain different technology, I can say here's what HubSpot helps you. Here's what Salesforce helps you. Here's what this technology helps you. How does Palunteer help in that process? So what Palanteer I mean it's a lot of things at this point, but Palanteer is bringing together data from a lot of different sources in the government. Like I said, when I started Palunteer, government spent 30 something billion a year gathering data. I bet you it's a lot more than that now. So there's there's literally hundreds of thousands of databases. is there's literally signal intelligence, human intelligence, and there's all sorts of rules about who could see what what they could do. So they're they're not, for example, people are not allowed to spy on US citizens and use that data. That'd be illegal. Pounder would flag that and say this is against the rules. You can't be doing this, right? So the whole thing is a rules engine that has very strict rules. And then so there's someone who's using it. They're getting all the stuff they're legally allowed to be doing based on the policy of our republic and they're and they're bringing it all together and they're and they're putting it together because it's very complicated. If you have lots of bases, is this the same person over here? Is this person over here? Is this Muhammad the same? Is this Muhammad? You know, is this is this guy, you know, is this guy is this last common Hispanic last name? Is there Sarah this name? Is this Bera? And and and they're mapping it all out and they're taking and they're taking all the information they can and they're using that with AI along with along with their judgment to ask questions, iterate and make plans and and figure things out and connect the dots and and then get things done better. >> At the beginning stages, who didn't want to see Palunteer uh succeed? >> The primes. All the primes. The So, so in America, the primes are the big defense companies. In America, we had for a long time the most competitive, best defense companies. In the 20th century, there were maybe 80 or 90 of these. They just were dominant, best in the world. After the cold war ended, we had to lower the budget. Probably a good thing. I'd rather more money goes towards other things than war. Uh cold war the primes all emerged. They merged into these eight or nine six of them. >> Yeah, exactly. Maybe even eight or something. But they're much smaller, much much fewer number, much bigger companies. And they became so dominant, but they became more like the government themselves because they interacted with it so much. They became big bureaucracies. And these big bureaucracies, a lot of the best tech guys, they all fled. They all fled to the to the tech world, to the best places in Silicon Valley, to other places. And these places got really good at what we call innovation theater. They're good convincing Congress they're innovating, but they're not really innovating anymore. And they stopped innovating. And there's only two companies that broke through these primes. It was Palunteer and SpaceX. Both pounder space station. It was really hard. It was really unfair. They beat the crap out of us. We we do things that would save huge numbers of lives. I'll tell you there's there so we work with the special forces at first cuz special forces are like the most elite like soldiers doing really important missions and their lives are on the line a lot so they wanted the best tools cuz when palancer went somewhere at first it was very often special forces guys using it for key missions to save their lives now at the time they were we were in Iraq and there were army brigades in Iraq and they saw us saving lives in special forces they said can we use it too and the government wouldn't pay for it so we said of course you can use it for free because we're patriots that's the whole point so go use it for free just give us the data back legally who's reaching out to you. >> This is like all sorts of people in the military working with our guys in the military embedded working with these guys, >> not PMC's. These are actual guys >> like lieutenant colonels in the military. >> So lieutenant colonels are reaching out to the government doesn't want to fund it. Can you help us out? >> Getting a general's permission, pushing it in. Wow. >> These are guys on the ground cuz listen, their buddy's lives are on the line, right? Sure. This is these are we have a lot of great soldiers >> without the approval of the US government. >> No, no. They people that approve they use it for we don't we're not going to pay for pay for it. We're not going to cuz we don't want to get in trouble stopping you using something that's going to work better. Got it. >> And and so in this case, we stopped tons of deaths from IEDs because we're able to track where the IDs most likely were able to track all sorts of things going on. They reported back all these deaths that that we stopped. And then there was like a five whatever, three or five billion dollar bid for the defense ground control system again. And we'd already been used better than anything they were doing before, way ahead, everything they wanted. And they just like no bid, gave it to a prime. And we actually sued them at this point because it's not not allowed. You have to consider others. We actually won the lawsuit. the generals in charge of getting into the prime were ordering people behind the scenes to destroy the records of lives lost, but some guys had some guys had saved the lives that we'd saved. So, the general couldn't couldn't hide it. It's like it's like totally corrupt. It's totally corrupt. So, we had to break through and and then a lot of others saw this and this has really shifted the culture of the military now and SpaceX broke through and Palanteer broke through and now Yandere of course they're starting to say, "Wait a second, we got to be open to the outside stuff. We can't just only do the primes." But that was a big fight for us for years. >> Who's which of the primes are bigger than you guys right now? Everyone's still everyone's still bigger on revenue because Palanteer is still a smaller company. Palunteer is about half government a little bit less than half government revenue. So it's it's like you know it's in the single digit billions for for revenue and there's primes making tens of billions of revenue that are much bigger than us been around forever but we're we're growing much faster. That's why we're valued highly but market cap wise you were higher than the prime. >> Market wise we're higher but revenue wise we're still much >> do you do you I mean you're not a part of it since you're an adviser. Is there any situations where Palanteer has to deal with the prime? Oh yeah, all the time. No, primes still run a lot of stuff. And by the way, there are still parts of things the primes do. They're the best in the world and you have to work with them. The problem was is early on if Pounder tried to do anything, the prime they say like, "Oh, we'll take 99% of the value. We'll give you 1% of the value. We'll take credit for your work." It was like it's like they just beat you because they're in charge. >> When you say 99, it's 100 million auto project. >> They literally pay you million. They give you a million bucks for something and then we'd actually do most of the work and it would drive us crazy. >> So in in ' 09, which is 17 years ago, what's topline revenue that year? Oh, I don't remember. But it was >> is it in the millions or billions? >> Probably in the 10 10 millions. We didn't cross a billion for 15 years. Took a long time. >> So in ' 09 company's been around for 5 years and the revenue is in the millions. >> Tens of tens of millions probably. >> Tens of millions. Got it. >> It might have just been crossing 100. I I don't know the exact numbers, but probably tens of millions. >> So if that's who didn't want you to exist at that time, who today is your biggest enemy? >> You know, and I I really can't speak for the company. This is just me now, founder looking on from the side. Uh I I I would think the biggest threat to Palanteer are like the extreme populists on both uh political sides who don't want our country uh using better technology to to succeed basically. And you know there's a lot of there's 1,200 laws right now in 50 states trying to ban different types of AI for things that I think are just ridiculous. I think most by the way some of it's good. You got to protect children. You got to like protect content creators. There's like there's legitimate things to push back on but a lot of this stuff is nonsense. And if those nonsense passes, it's not just an enemy to Paler, it's an enemy to like thousands of our best innovative companies right now. So, so I think that's actually the biggest threat at this point because Paler is so dominant in adding value to so many thousands of companies. >> Can we like specify who would be far? Are you are you saying things like a non-interventionalist politician? Is that >> Oh, no. What are you saying? I'm talking about laws that are I'm talking about laws that are like like Bernie Sanders trying to stop all new data centers or something crazy like that or or people who are saying we want to throw developers in jail if things don't go right with AI or something which there's laws like that they're housing in Maryland Virginia or there's people saying you know it's a lot of people who are technically illiterate writing state law to block things to create new regulators to stop you from deploying like stuff like that would be a disaster >> and I see the president's working to deregulate and kind of still keep an open source and allow you to compete without making it too regulated. >> Yeah, David Sax is working hard on this for because he's a head of AI for the president and and you know my my view is that we should have certain regulatory frameworks to protect kids and protect content creators and have reasonable law. But we but we shouldn't be having each state have its own regulatory code. That'd be crazy. >> Did you see this recent movie that came out called Mercy? Have you seen Mercy? You haven't seen Mercy? Oh my god. You got to watch Mercy. So, it's a movie uh uh with Chris Pratt. I've been telling everybody to go watch this movie. uh specifically you like in every employee at Palunteer needs to go watch this. So Mercy is a story of this actor Chris Pratt who wakes up he's locked into this chair. Okay, handcuff shackles and the judge is that face on the top. If you see the face on the top that's the judge. It's an AI judge. You have 90 minutes to prove to her why you didn't kill your wife. In this case in a movie he killed his wife. He's like what are you talking about? and she has access to every video to pull up. Can you go to this state? What happened that morning when I walked into that house? >> Scary stuff, man. >> Well, do you see a day in the next 20 years where we could be living in a world where judges could be AI, politicians could be AI, it could be based on models. >> That's not the world I want to live in. I'll >> How do we prevent that from happening? >> Well, you know, the Constitution is pretty clear about about the rules. So, I I think we should make sure we we we stick to the Constitution and we, you know, if we're going to if we're going to amend it, we should be really damn careful not to not to give AI random power like that. That'd be my view. The whole the whole point of how America was designed is checks on power. The reason America is a is a truly great country that's like lasted as long as it has. It's our 250th anniversary this year is because our founders were were philosophers from the Enlightenment and they thought a lot about this and they realized you have to check government power. You have to set it up with lots of different checks on itself. And the whole point is for the government itself not to be allowed to ever be evil. And by the way, that was that was how we built Palunteer is to have audit trails and to watch the watchers and to and to have checks. You have to have checks on power otherwise government is dangerous. >> Yeah. But if we're going into the robot era of developing robots and if all of a sudden you have 400,000 robots that you program from your headquarters and your competitors got 200,000 robots and third place has got 17,000 robots and all of a sudden somebody becomes evil. Then what happens? >> Well, this is why this is why it's important for the military to have the most powerful robots and not not some kind of corporation. That obviously is very important. And by the way, China is trying to build those faster than us. And that's why right now we're trying to make sure we stay ahead of China. And and it's listen, our military, how it's controlled by our government. That's a very important thing our public has to get right. But but obviously our military has to stay ahead of our of our of anyone else. That's that'd be that'd be very bad not to have a monopoly on power. >> You you said it eloquently of who you think Palanteer's enemy is. Who do you think is the enemy of the state? Top three enemies. >> I think our top three enemies are probably our are probably our adversaries, right? I think I think I think our country right now is very polarized. It's very polarized and I think social media unfortunately does that but our adversaries take advantage of that. I think China using Tik Tok finds ways to polarize us more. I think Iran very clearly the guys running Iran. I'm a very big fan of the Persian people but the guys running Iran are are bad guy theocracy. And you saw when we hit uh Iran with Israel last time and the internet went down. You saw 15% of global Bitcoin hash rate went away. You saw a bunch of bots that are guys who pretend to be Christians who hate Jews in Alabama also got turned off for a while, right? So there's they're trying to find ways to divide us, man. They're trying to find ways to pull us apart. >> What a powerful thing right there. The 15% of Christians who ate Jones in Alabama. >> Well, 15% of global Bitcoin hash rate went away. Sorry, that was another point. So I man was mining 15% of all Bitcoin in the world. We found that out because it went away as soon as we hit him. But then a then there's literally hundreds of thousands of bots that were like just angry Americans bots. >> They're angry Americans. They're pretending to be Christian guys who hate Jews. They're pretending to be like, you know, crazy people in America who had different on different extremes who are arguing. So there's a lot of stuff that's planted that's planted to make us fight. You know, let me ask you if Elon was able to who actually knows this is this is an interesting thought. I'm curious what your answer will be. When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast. We had the choice to make it cheap. We chose neither. Instead, we chose Tuscan Italo. We chose true Italian craftsmanship. Each pair touched by 50 skilled hands. We chose patience, spending two years perfecting every detail. And we chose the finest quality at every step. Introducing the future looks bright collection. Not rushed, not disposable, not ordinary, rather intentional, luxurious, timeless. Does does an Elon if he wanted to really run a report with the data that he has, is he able to see who is behind the fake bots that are causing retweets to happen for a certain message that's going to undermine a certain way of thinking and pin people against each other? Somebody should know. Yeah, Elon did something very courageous with his team a couple months ago and I don't know where it is now, but they put all the country of origin up on all these things and you saw all these like >> very divisive stuff like you had this you had this like Apac is evil report Apac thing and it was like a European account tied to Iranian account tied to a Pakistan account like wait a second you guys have been saying you're from the south like what you're obviously you're obviously a foreign lobby who's who's doing this now right and you had a lot of versions of this where all of a sudden all these accounts that were that were stirring up trouble on both sides were actually foreigners. >> Yeah, >> I think it'd be interesting to see to see numbers. I haven't I haven't looked at that much. >> Well, I mean I if if if it if you're a data company, Palanteer or X also data company, any of these guys, I would assume they know exactly who's behind it. >> You know, the problem is it's very easy to create accounts and be a real person or not be a real person. So, I don't know if they know everything. I think there's a lot of bot farms. you can't see the AP the where it's coming from where >> but if you're really good at this and you're a state actor you can use different IP addresses you can use different spoofs you could do things to make it a little bit harder for them to tell and so you might be able to create a lot of fake accounts >> who who is using bot farms who are >> Chinese top customers of bot farms >> Chinese are using probably the most farms >> to create so division and to and to and to push things and to make the crazy politicians more popular Chinese love making socialists more popular in the US they know it weakens us they have a word for like crazy white person which is like this kind of woke white crazy person on the left and they love to they know it's a problem there they want to ban it there but they want to push it in America and they think it weakens us culturally that's one of their models they have you know Chinese do cognitive warfare you know this right so there's like land sea air cyber and cognitive and they have a whole branch of their military that's just doing cognitive warfare using all this stuff whether it's especially Tik Tok but all these other ones as well and they're very good at it >> what other tools outside of Tik Tok >> I mean all the social media stuff all the protests like they are big funders of they'll figure out something like a black lives matter thing or they'll figure out something going on with some environmental thing and both the chi Russia has done this too historically they funded a lot of the green movements in Europe because they knew it was good for them to to do that and and and they'll figure out and you know China nowadays they take all the data they can so there's companies like uh you know I'm told airwalls does this I don't know myself I'm told airlocks has all the data that goes through China and the Chinese government has access to any data in China at all and then will use it to model they have models of you they have models of me they have models of everyone and they try to figure out how to use those models to influence us and influence people about us for their ends and for our divisiveness. I mean, they're very good at it. >> I mean, we saw they did that with Tik Tok, right? And to the point where uh we saw what happened with Gen Z and LGBTQ and the tie between it, the percentage going they got to a point that Bill More had to talk about. >> They they Chinese very clearly saw a few issues were very helpful to attack us with. One of those issues is Jewish people. Chinese have decided that it's very helpful to create divisiveness around Jews in America and because they see attacking Jews as something as very very useful to do to rip us apart and and it is it is it's actually caused a lot of problems. >> Unpack that. Go a little bit deeper. >> So, uh I think the Asian people maybe are a little more racist in some ways than we are. They think of things more of those terms. They just are. That's my experience. And so if you stop and think about this, there's a lot of Jews that are very successful and there's successful Jews in America. They see as an edge for America and they see that it's but they also see there's a lot of resentment. So that's a really easy way to create divisiveness against something that's helping us. And so that's like they go right at it and they're very smart about how to do it. You go all over Tik Tok, you go all over everything they do and it's like boom, let's let's just stir that up. Let's stir up the Black Lives Matter stuff. Let's stir up this other thing over here. They're very good at it. >> But have you ever seen How old are the way? I think you're 42. >> 43 now. >> 43. Yeah. I'm 47. I just turned 47 a few months ago. Have you ever seen the the Jewish story and the division being this high temperature- wise in your lifetime? >> In our lifetimes, this is the highest it's been. And and and and it's not just China. Partly what's happening here is this is the first war that Israel's been involved in in our lifetime with social media. And if you go on social media, just the ratio of people who are passionate against Israel versus for Israel, it's 100 to1 probably just based on the number of Muslims in the world. There's a lot of good Muslims in the world. There's going to be a lot of extreme ones who are really passionate about this issue. Doesn't mean they're not good people. They just can disagree with me. And so that itself is going to create a lot of passion against Israel and Jews, right? We should. And so this there's already that already exists and then you can exploit that to to push it. >> How do you address that? >> How do you address it? I mean, man, this is this is a it's a very very tough issue. >> I mean, you got you're you're the brains. How do you address that? How do you fix something like that? Because it doesn't seem like it it's the temperature is getting any lower. >> Well, you know, I I would like there to be peace in the Middle East. And I think for me the only way to have peace of the Middle East is to is to is to free the Iranian people and no longer have sponsors of terror around the Middle East. And I think that leads to a very positive outcome and hopefully Israel and Saudi and UAE can all sponsor and and create peace in in the you know in Gaza together with once the theocrats are gone. And hopefully that's a much more positive outcome as long as the Iranian theocrats are there which is going to be a recurrent recurrent issue for us. So I really hope I really hope we take them out. That's I'll be honest about that. >> You really hope we take them out? Then I think they're evil evil people who spread murder and terror and more terror to their own people than anyone else. But also >> live it's it's a horrible place. >> Yeah. But it's one of the most beautiful places in the world and one of the most wonderful places in the world if we could get rid of the bad guys. >> Oh, if you do. I mean there's a song by a singer named Moen and he says Evahan my heart wants me to return to Esvahan. Esvahan is one of the richest cities in Iran with history. when my mom and dad were still married to each other for those 10 or 11 years. The only vacation we ever went on was Esvan and I have pictures still today as a kid going there with my sister and my mom and my dad. Great memories. But uh yeah, that's right there. And Moen says, "I'd like to one day return. My heart wants me to one day return to this city as >> one of my favorite uh books is Cyropedia, which was written about Cyrus, the great the great the great leader. And this was used actually to train uh European aristocracy princes for like 2,000 years. And and there's all the wisdom of of Cyrus. And you just you kind of get this like really sense of like the greatness of the Persian people from that. It's it's a very optimistic. It's about virtue. It's about it's you know Maki ended up becoming like the thing people used after him which is the opposite. March is like this very cynical take which is it's a dialectic. It's also true, but I really like the the Persian idea and and you you grow up, my mom's side's Jewish and the just like the what the Persians did for the Jews and and the natural alliance has been there for thousands of years. We that's that's we're still that's what we still feel. So, I really hope this is something that can become a positive. Why >> Why do you think no matter what happens, it's always the Jews fault. No matter what happens, it's always the >> I think you I think you're going to blame the people who are outsiders, who are different, who are successful there. I mean, I could say it kind of Jewish. thing is slightly annoying sometimes when you're like it's like this little neurotic like smart person who like makes more money than you. You kind of want to punch him in the face, you know? I don't I don't know. You tell me. I can see that. Like did you hear what Thomas Soul said? Thomas Soul said. >> Yeah. He said something so funny one time. He says, "You know what my advice to Jews are? For the world to start liking you a little bit? Start losing. >> Start losing. His mentor was Milton Freeman, who was a little old Jewish guy. >> Yeah, Milton Friedman. I have a painting in my house with Milton Friedman in it. >> I love him. I used, you know, I got to spend lunch I got lunch with him like like 20 times cuz I was the editor of a paper when he was there at Stanford. He was amazing. He always had he was always interested in new ideas and just he really shaped a lot of my thinking on economics. Amazing man. >> Milton Freriedman. You spent 20 times with Milton. >> Yeah, his wife was often there too. They were in their early 90s when I was at Stanford and uh he was at Hoover. Yeah. >> You know how hard I've tried to do an interview with Thomas Solder. Family won't let him. No, he's not. It's too It's too hard. He's He's such a great man. >> He I mean, listen, him, the two of them, the debates, when you would watch them do the debates. What's the one book he wrote? Is it called Reader? I think it's called Reader. I don't know what the Can you type in Thomas Soul? Reader. I just had my son finished this book two years ago. 12 years old. >> He had a conflict of visions that I love. >> Click on that one. >> Which one you >> Yeah. Reader. Oh my god. It It is like a must readad. My son read this at 11 12 years old. Uh, and he breaks down ideas in the simplest way. >> You know, this guy would be so much more famous if he wasn't black because because he's black, the left doesn't want anyone to know that he's conservative. >> Well, here's what's funny though. Conservatives today are not talking about him enough. I think >> conservatives need to remind what Thomas Sol But go back to go back to that with Iran. So, Iran uh uh right now at any point, you and I are talking right now. At any point, anything could happen. >> It was supposed to be this weekend. >> I think there's a negotiation on Thursday is my understanding. I don't know. I shouldn't I shouldn't be saying it. Well, I thought they said they're not going to do anything. I thought Witkoff and Kushner Wakad said, "No, we're not renegot." Rob, do you have that one clip I sent you from the foreign minister where he's being Did you see this one a few hours ago? >> Oh, no. I >> The foreign minister is being interviewed and he's asked about uh uh hey, I noticed you said that there are 40,000 Americans that are in or in surrounding areas of Iran and if US attacks, that's open game for you. I send it in the PBD podcast uh uh group. If you don't have it, Rob, I'll just send it to you. Do you see it? Uh it's right there. Bottom clip right there. Yeah. And uh he she says, "Are you are you saying you would do something to Americans?" And you should see his answer. Go ahead, Rob. >> American personnel in the Middle East right now. Um in Iran's letter to the UN Security Council, you seem to threaten them because you said America will bear full responsibility. You said you don't want war, but if that's what happens, all bases, facilities, and assets of the hostile force in the region will be legitimate targets. Are you saying Iran will hit US bases in the Gulf, or will you also bomb the Gulf countries that are your neighbors? >> Well, I'm not going to say what we are going to to do exactly. Obviously, we defend ourselves. If the US attacks us, then we have every right to to defend ourselves. If the US attacks us, that is the act of aggression. What we do in response is the act of self-defense. So, and it is justifiable and and legitimate. So, our missiles cannot hit the American soil. So, obviously, we have to do something else. We have to hit uh you know the Americans base >> in the region. That that is that is a fact. I I'm not >> What do you think is going to happen? >> Listen, I think these guys sent someone to assassinate Donald Trump. We know this with the FBI regime caught him. They were told if they missed that he'd probably lose the election. So wait and try to get him again after he lost the election. This was the official instructions we found. So these were these guys were trying to kill Trump. It means if they're still around after Trump's president, they'll probably try to get him and his and his kids again. So if I was the president, there's no chance they'd be around after I was president. That's all I'm telling you. I mean, and by the way, I think it's very good for the world to eliminate this evil for for your people and for all of our peoples. >> Yeah. A lot of people are worried it could turn into another Iraq and we spend a few trillion dollars. >> But but is Iran really Iraq? >> I don't think so. But a lot of people think it could turn into something like that. You know, you hear the two arguments. I think they're going to do a surgical mission the way they did Venezuela and it's going to be clean and here's what's going to happen. And then the other side is like, how do we know that for a fact? >> So if I if I was in charge, I'd be very Roman about it. So I don't know, maybe this is not appropriate, but I'd be very Roman. So you the Romans would do you'd go and you wipe out the leadership class. You're all dead. And you say, "Okay, you guys are now in charge. We're going to make a deal or we're going to kill all of you too. It's up to you cuz it's going to be IRGC who's in charge again probably, right? Cuz they're the guys with the guns." And say, "Okay, now here's what we're going to do. We're going to make a deal. Here's what's going to happen. Here's how your public's going to work to be free people. And if you don't do that, then we'll kill you all in six months, too. And we'll give you another chance." But I don't think we should be occupying it ourselves. That's I think Iraq was terribly run. I think trying to trying to go and have people over there is ridiculous. But should these guys who have acted like they've had, who spread terrorism around the region, who have tried to kill Trump, who have who have killed so many people, should they be allowed to get away with that? No way. I wouldn't let them be get away with it. I'll tell you that. >> How how much you think the attack's going to be a collaboration with Israel or you think it's going to be >> Well, Israel has really good intelligence there in the region. And so, obviously, if you're doing something, you need to work with your allies to do as good as possible. It's the same thing as like, you know, we were talking earlier about are you going to use Palance to do an operation? You're going to use whatever you can to do it as best as possible. And I think in this case that involves our Israeli probably involves other allies too. Hopefully. >> Is Israel a customer palunteer? >> Yes, actually we we started working with Israel. It was one of my most proud moments because they're kind of like the NSA where where they don't really want to work with outsiders and they don't really buy from anyone else and it took us several years to break in but we did break in to work with >> while you were there or it was something that happened. >> It was it was something that I was working on even as an adviser like shortly after I I got is it recent like 5 10 years or? >> No no it's been a while. >> It's been a while. So okay. So they've been a customer for a while. There's over 40 countries as far as I know who are allies who work with Palanter. Israel is not one of the first several but it is is where the key the key countries originally were the five eyes right which are the core five allies which is Canada, UK, New Zealand, Australia. >> Yeah, I I saw somewhere where you is there a structure where if there is a who can't you work with is it basically sanction well I mean first of all the company was a mission driven is a mission driven company would never have wanted to work with with our enemies. We're not going to work with them. You're not going to work with Russia. not work with North Korea, not work with China, >> but not because of regulation. It's a choice. >> I mean, at this point, it's definitely regulation against it, too. I think early on, if we had tried to go work with those guys, maybe we somehow could have because the government wouldn't have noticed, but that would not have been ever something we wanted to do because we had a mission driven company to fight for the good guys in the West. >> But meaning even if you try to go >> these days, if you try to because of what it does in in the Department of War, of course, it wouldn't be allowed to. And by the way, I'm not even allowed to go to China anymore right now. >> You're not allowed to go to China. No, I mean I mean ch and I've had friends who are running other defense companies to their planes going for one case to Taiwan and they made the force the planes did an emergency landing in China and searched all his stuff and they let him go because he's American citiz but they actually did emergency landing searched all his stuff because he was a key defense executive and then let him go on Taiwan. So I'm not supposed to go there at all nor are a lot of other people who who've worked in these areas. I've started a few big defense companies now. You're I'm not supposed to do it. >> Yeah, that mean that makes sense for somebody like you to go there. They would it would be >> I wouldn't want to go there. It's I mean by the way I used to love to go to Shanghai. secret facing a fascinating part of the world but not not right now. >> Not right now. Uh 09 you left. Why did you leave? >> Well well uh I was still stayed as an adviser but I finished vesting and I was starting Adapar and Adapar is a is a very large company in the wealth management area. So I so I I was actually going to start a third division. I'd started the government side. I helped them get going on the early commercial side and that that's you know the company is now about I think 60% commercial basically working with Fortune 500 and other companies around the world. I was thinking of starting a third division decide to build it separately as as out of par. >> Adapar. >> Yeah. >> And so adapar it takes the portfolio it gives you a score it assesses >> well adapar is a software that you kind of work and live in if you're a wealth adviser. If you're running a big >> advisor so advisers are using it. >> Yeah. So there's there's hundreds of thousands of advisors on it serving huge number of clients. There's 10 trillion dollars on So if you're like a running a big bank with a top wealth management arm or if you're like a big area like Iconic on the west coast would be would they who who else would be a customer >> uh like Corant or Omnia or all the big RAS there's all these big family offices out here the biggest family >> office as well or raas >> mostly RAS there's but there's but there's tens of thousands of RAS in our country it's a big there's a it's a it's a very big industry >> got it and so as the adviser I'm seeing this as a database tracking my clients is it also looking at their portfolio is it giving any advice helping. Yeah. No, it's helping you run your whole business. Everything. It's doing everything. It's all your reporting, all your tax stuff, all your everyone logs into it to do anything. It's like it's like the place you live when you're doing your job. >> I had Anthony Pampliano on the other day. I don't know if you know who he is. He's Pompiano. Great with his show. Big Bitcoin guy. Yeah. >> Uh very smart. Him and his brother, the whole family, all the boys. >> And you know, he's saying advisers will be replaced very soon. Do you agree with that? >> I think at the very high end, actually, the relationship really matters to people. So, I think there's ways you can do things without people in some of these areas for some people, but I think like the contours of the industry and of our humanity is that we want to talk to people. We want to work through things. You want someone you trust. >> Yeah, I do. Like I like talking to my Goldman guy. I like talking to the Morgan guy. I like talking to the uh Chase guys and JP Morgan guys. >> Yeah, we can help those guys serve you cheaper than they do now. We can help them serve more people more easily. But I think the relationship's going to be there. This is this is where everyone gets things wrong on AI, by the way, because AI does allow things to work in different ways. But it's like I saw a great essay online where it was talking about a a French garden is where you just like destroy everything and just build a new garden however you want it. Whereas an English garden takes the land as it already is, right? And molds to it. I think Willitis wrote about this and I think that's more what tends to happen in industry is you take the world as it already is and and you and you shift things and improve things and make things but but you work with it as it is. It's not just going to come in and blow everything up. That's not usually what happens. >> Yeah, it's a fear that that could take place. uh uh do you think there is a place for regulation to prevent from a bad player getting in? Do you think regulation is needed for for for AI? >> For what area? >> I'm just wondering if there's a place on what limits of a product I produce. Well, I think I think we want to have so we already do have a lot of regulation in our world right now, right? So for example in healthcare there's there's like hundreds of thousands of rules and if anything the hundreds of thousands of rules some of them make sense some of them are actually only there to protect the existing people to keep prices high so for so for example in healthcare I think there's we need new rules that let you try new things you have sandboxes because we could bring the cost of healthcare way down like like and this is this existential we have hundred trillion dollars of debt in this space and I'm really excited for example here in Florida and a couple other states right now we're doing studies with the legislature to try to prepare laws for next year that will allow us very safely to try some use cases that we think are safe that doctors want to try and and things like that. If anything, we need new policy to allow us to try it because that would be great to bring the cost down. >> Yeah. I think the the part with the one part that uh you could reduce a lot of cost is trademarks. How they're able to extend trademark. So I I'm able to protect myself with a patent. I get a patent for 20 years and then the patent is about to expire. the whatever I'm selling could be worth 20 cents, $2, $5, $10 to sell. I'm still selling it for $5,000. And then I go get a lobbyist. I extend the patent for another 18 years. Then it goes 38 years. I think especially with hospitals as well. The me I think Trump was trying to do something, you know, a few years ago with hospital, how much the cost was and >> bottom draws is doing a really good good job right now trying to bring down costs of healthcare, Medicaid. There's a lot of smart things we got to do. >> It'll be interesting what happens. So 09 when you leave Palunteer and you're an adviser. Uh are you at this Are you married at that time or you're single? >> No. No. I got I got married in uh I got married in 2016. >> 2016. Okay. So you're a rich young bachelor at this time. Is that fair to say? >> That's fair to say. >> Okay. So how did you protect yourself? Because >> Well, actually I made a pretty dumb mistake if you read about it. I had a girlfriend who ended up suing suing me after I broke up with her and didn't marry her in 2012 2013. So you're right. You got you got to protect yourself. >> How do you do it though? because you know >> well I think I think looking back on it I was working really really hard and I had you know a very nice relationship that didn't work out and then I had a kind of a rebound relationship with with I don't I don't want I don't want to talk too much about this this person in particular but it was something where it's probably not someone I should have been dating and you know I'd met in New York and she was at she was at Stanford she was 21 I was 28 and and it turns out you just got to be really careful like who you let into your life and how seriously you take relationships because if you're not careful then it can cause a lot of trouble and that sucks. That's a good lesson for >> How do you protect yourself? >> I mean, I think how you protect yourself is you should listen more to your family. I think it's not my family. I didn't think didn't thought there was some issues with them and I I like, oh no, she's really pretty and I'm busy and who cares and it's like actually it really matters to protect yourself. And it's common sense who led into your life. I was very lucky that by the time actually I'd broken up, it had been a couple years of my time they tried to sue. I'd already had a new amazing girlfriend who was really wonderful who ended up becoming my wife and is someone that my family really admired her and her family and respected her a And that's I think it's just really important to have to focus on getting a partner you really really respect who's the right match for you. You know, >> he's got now six kids. >> We have six We have six beautiful young children. I'm a very lucky guy. Five little girls, which is which is all here. >> Well, you got the money for it. It's going to be expensive. >> They're they're they're amazing. >> Well, you know why I asked that question? Because Trevor Bower, I don't know if you follow baseball, uh uh he's a good friend and he was uh playing baseball and he was doing great things. Sai Young, all this stuff. And then a girl accuses him >> just for the accusation in your life. >> He lost a few hundred million dollars over it. >> Probably cost me a little bit too for about a year. A lot of people didn't when they I became controversial. It became even harder for about a year. Obvious I'm lucky I was successful enough I could bounce back and get through it. But it's it's totally unfair to a guy like that to have to deal with that. And this is Yeah. I think there was a period where you were basically guilty as soon as you were accused. I think a lot of people now have seen enough people where that's been happened unfairly that hopefully our our culture is changing a little bit, but it's it's still very unfair how it handles these things. >> How how do you when you're rich and single identify if a girl is with you for you or for you because of money? How do you do that? >> I want to and I want to push back, by the way, on one thing. I think it's unfair how things work now. I think it was probably even more unfair how things worked in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, 60s. And I think we have to acknowledge that because I obviously I'm not a woke guy, but I think the world was at a place where a lot of men, it was a man's world and a lot of men were really nasty, abused women, horrible things and just got away with it. And and I think that is wrong, right? So I think so I think we have to realize the pendulum was here and now it's like swung too far the other way. But you know what? I'd rather I'd rather face a little bit of a tough time as a as a rich guy than have all these women being abused. This is still wrong. It should be in the middle. But but I think it's actually like it's good that we're actually protecting these people. This >> weekend my wife and I were celebrating her birthday. So we go to Ball Harbor and you know Ball Harbor I couldn't walk anywhere without somebody saying hello to me who's Jewish. It's like filled with Jews everywhere in that area. And so uh uh we decide one night we're on Game of Thrones just to kind of tell you where we're at. at two episodes after the Red Wedding or whatever they call. >> Yeah, that's kind of where we are, right? We haven't seen anything else. >> And then my wife, she says, "Babe, thank God I'm a woman born today because how different it was back in the days." So, it was difficult. It was vicious. It was a whole different >> It was a crazy world. Can I tell you a funny story about that? So, I mentioned Milan Freeman I used to hang out with. His colleague who was older than him was Dr. Bikman. He was 96 when I was at Stanford and he had been a reporter in the White House in the late 1930s. So, so he was like a window for me into like this like completely different time, right? Because that's like because he was 606 20 years ago. >> 65 years ago from when I from when I met him in the White House and I thought the funniest he stories. So he would FDR White House, it'd be spring break and they'd all go on the train and it'd be journalists, it'd be senators from both parties, and it'd be the guys in the White House. And the first two stops of the train, all the girlfriends and escorts would get on and they'd all go together and and these people would be attacking each other like crazy with the journalists for the for the business of government, but they'd both be with their girlfriends or everywhere else getting in trouble and never would say anything about that. Isn't that Isn't that crazy? Which is a totally different world. It was a it was a man's world. It was just a different world. And but I'm not saying that's good. It's just fascinating how much the world has shifted. You know that you never imagine that. >> Yeah. >> Do you believe it? I believe it. I believe that ex I mean >> Oh, definitely. Definitely. Definitely. >> You read about it, you see about it. You know, it's a it's a very different world. But going back to it advice, think about it. Guys ask, you know, I read Steven Schwarzman's book and he's talking about how uh uh what it takes. He says he was going through a divorce. He was worried about what to do. He had been married for 25 years. Yeah. He says, "I get recommended to go see this one guy who's a very successful therapist, a marriage counselor, and I said, I have four concerns. Uh, how do I at my age get back into the dating world? Number two, what happens with my kids? Number three, what happens with my money? Number four, what happens with my friends? Do they choose her or me?" And the guy gave him very good advice. >> That's tough. >> He said, "Your kids are going to be okay. You're going to be fine. There's plenty of girls that going to want to be with you. Number three, do you have a prenup with your wife?" He says, "No." He says, "You're going to lose some money." And then number four, he says about friends, he says, "You're going to lose half your friends cuz they're going to side with her." But I'm talking like for a guy like you who made money, is wealthy, is single, looking for a wife. How do you tell them apart? You know, you you meet people through friends, you meet people through people you admire. And I think there's a lot of wonderful families and a lot of, you know, wonderful young women out there. And I think it's the most important to be with someone who you really respect and where you have a shared strong base of values. And my my wife my wife converted to to Judaism and we have just a really strong base of tradition in our family that we're building together and a and we talked a lot about values and what we care about and she's someone who you know I think I think if you have a really great wife she makes you want to be a better person to to live up to to her to her vision of things. >> Good for you guys. Good for you. Respect. So going through somebody you know and trust that again going back to the same way you recruited people. >> I mean I got I got really lucky. I'm not sure I could find my someone like my wife can. Yeah. Sometimes you just got to get lucky. >> Are you going to hit double digits? That's the question. Are you guys going to reach double digits or you six is it? >> I think six kids might be it, but we'll see. We'll see what we can do. >> I was telling you about a guy I met yesterday who has 11 kids with his wife. He's 46. No twins, no adopting, all theirs. And they had 11 kids. I think his name was Moshe, if I'm not mistaken. >> Orthodox thing to do. >> So, uh, you left09 and you went and did other things. The the company you started, we're talking about that. And then afterwards, >> you know, you guys, when did you start 8V? When did you start making Z? >> I started So, so, so, so because Palanteer had all this really top talent when people come out, similar to PayPal, they're starting great companies. I was mentoring and helping them. So, a lot of my mentors like Joe, you're basically already running a fund, but you need more money and more people helping you. So, I put that together. The first one was called Formation 8. We did two big funds and then we started APC with most of that team that spun out and we're on EPC fund six now. So, we've done eight really large funds, bunch of entities around it and it's, man, the last couple years, I mean, it's gone really, really well. obviously have raised a ton of funds, but the last couple years things have just accelerated faster than you've ever seen before because AI is just making productivity go up. It's making making a lot of businesses grow way faster than we've ever seen. I think it's four about four times faster on average for the median top 100 versus the median, you know, cloud companies that I was in before. So, it's just amazing what's going on. >> You think VC has been a net positive for capitalism or >> of course. >> Okay, tell me why. >> So, so, so, so what? So, here here's what VC is like the evolutionary engine of our economy, right? So whenever whenever whenever you have new technology come along whenever you have new possibilities come along the question is how are you going to take those new possibilities and do a better job in your business how are you going to do a better job in this area of logistics in this area of healthcare this area of finance media whatever it is and so what VC really is is taking a bunch of smart uh you know smart builders who have new ideas and it's figuring out how do you empower these smart people to run really hard at creating value in these areas from the new possibilities and so there's really there's really only two things of VC. One is the top talent and two is like what's newly possible that creates value. >> So how do you how do you do it? How do you find it? >> So so so first of all you have to be interested in industries. You have to be interested in how things work. How does logistics work? How are these carriers working with the warehouses working with other people? How are they getting booked? What does a brokerage work? Like what are all the pieces of the industry? How is this how is healthcare delivery working in America? What are all the pieces? And and you have to and as you start to work on companies helping them, you get to know the leaders. And so over the last 15 years like we we'll bring you know hundred of the top logistics leaders like you know to my to to our vineyard in a valley and we'll hang out with them and we'll see what's going on. We'll we'll hang out with the people who build all the run all the hospital systems who are using our things there while you know I'm in the Pentagon tomorrow morning. That's where I'm going up to DC to spend a lot of time with the guys building and running things in the fence. And so you have to be very interested and enjoy these industries. Get to know them. And every time you have a success, every time your company helps that industry work better. Now you've built a bunch of trust. Now you know who the good guys are. Now the next 1 2 3 4 5 are going to be easier. So you have these big VC firms that have had a bunch of these wins and the networks get stronger and stronger. You can learn how to take talent, learn how to build these things and it's a it's a huge engine of innovation. In fact, America is the best in the world at this and it's I think it's one of the coolest sectors that exists, you know, in the world. >> What what's the business model? The business model is teaming up with somebody else and raising a billion dollar fund and you go find the companies and then you take the 20% of the upside uh uh and then you split some of the money and put your own money in it. Give me the business model. So, so, so here here's the I think here's the right way to think about it, especially especially for our generation, people our age, is like you go off and you build a great company and you work really hard and I got palenteer to work out a part of work. So now I'm one of the maybe hundred guys in our in our country who's built a couple big successful companies and now I I know all these other builders and I'm and I know how to build things. I've learned. So now these young guys come to me and they want advice and so I start advising them and I realize, wait a second, I know all this talent. I have all these ideas and then then I raise the fund and then then I raise the fund because now I have the credibility because I've built things. I know how to mentor. I know how to coach these guys because I've done it myself and and I bring people around me who help build these companies as well. So I have 70 people on the team who are the top designers, top tech people, you know, ways to manage it. Then you raise the money. Yeah. And you charge you charge it's it's it's a it's an illquid vehicle which means people lock up their money for effectively 12 years usually is how it works. >> 12 years. >> Well, it's 10 it's it's 10 with like three extensions. And so these funds usually last 12 to 15 years just because they do because it takes a while for things to go public and so you people give you the money and you get some fee on the money to pay the team and then and you invest and you invest it and most of the money goes into the ground the first kind of like you you first first you write like you call it a series A or series B you lead rounds you take a big piece of the company and then you'll follow on with more money in the future rounds alongside other friends. So a big part of your job is to help them recruit talent. That's a big part of your job is help them have other people put money in after you, right? And so because I know all the other people, you know, when I'm down here in Miami, there's a bunch of big fund managers. We work together and and and you're you're helping them learn how to build the teams, helping them learn how to work with the industry, helping them learn how to raise the money >> and and and then and then when you have, you know, sometimes you sell the company to someone else, sometimes you take it public and so so it's a business model of kind of helping people create these things and helping them succeed. How >> how do you find winners? How do you find winners? How much of it is the founder, the entrepreneur? >> And you know what? There's no single right answer. Some people are like it's about the markets. Some people are like it's about the entrepreneur. Some some people is about the technology culture and tech talent. Um some people it's just like oh it's just art and I just know you know there's lots of ways of doing it. For for for me it's a it's a it's a combination like you have we spend a lot of time on technology culture. I want a company that's recruiting the very very best just like with a sports team, the very best athletes in the world, the best technologist in the world. I want a place where the best guys want to go there because they've heard someone else is there who's amazing. And then I want an area that we believe is a market that has new possibilities that that there is a gap that should be disrupted. And usually what I really care about is there's a mission. I really want there to be a mission that matters. Like I'm going to put most of my money into things where there's great team gap and I and I and it's because with the mission does the mission brings in the really best people. The mission makes the best people want to work harder on it and and it makes it something that can be a lot bigger. So Palanteer was a was a really big mission. Adapar is a big mission in finance. Uh a lot of my new defense companies. We're trying to help the US, you know, scale our ship building with ceronic. We're trying to to help fix areas of healthcare. We're trying to save kids with rare diseases. So this I think these missions really attract great talent. >> So mission the bigger the mission and what what process of filtering. I remember when I raised my first round, you know, when I sold my insurance company, they came in, they did an extensive background check, you know, they did all this stuff on. How do you how do you find out >> in Florida? We got to do longer background checks. >> You do, right? Yeah, you do. In Florida, that's right. That's a good point. And it looks like panel is moving to Florida anyway. They're not involved. >> Yeah, they're moving down here. But what what do you do? Are you doing background checks? Are you >> Yeah, it's one of the That's one of the steps in the process. It's not the most important one, but it's just good to >> What's the most important one? The most important one is to know who the founders are and to and to have them be people you can verify somehow in your network are just are >> from the network. Little bit of credibility, a little bit of background. >> I have to this is my my advantage is that I'm tied to hundreds of these like top tech networks now from things I've built, things I've invested in. We have we have to use and we have to use that network. So, it's not that it's not that there's not someone in the middle of nowhere who could be great, but if you're in the middle of nowhere and you are really great, your job is to is to find get to know other people, impress them. >> What red flags do you have? >> There's so many red flags for us. It's just because we have a very particular thing where we're we're not investing in small businesses. We're investing in things that can get to be really really big and change industries. And so, one red flag is being too obsessed with patents. Usually, people think patents matter a lot. For most of these things, it's more about the team and the execution. It's not I have 20 patent doesn't really matter. So, if you talk too much about that, it shows you're not thinking about the thing that's valuable, which is the execution. Um, it's a red flag if the person is not full-time. People are always trying to do things part-time. That's never ends up being the giant company. So, you need people who are 100% allin full-time. Uh, it's a it's it's a red it's a red flag if they don't plan on doing this for a long time. This needs to be their obsession in their life. Uh, you know, it's a red flag if they talk a lot about work life balance because work life balance is great for some things, but this is like winning a gold in the Olympics. You think the Olympic gold medalists had good balance? We're all in. We're all in. And so it's like those are types there think it's a big red flag is another one that's interesting if the if the top first five or 10 people don't own a good piece of the company. So if you're keeping it all for one founder and he's paying and giving very very very little bit of upside the first five or 10 people that's the wrong culture and it's probably not the very best people because the very best people in our industry they want to own a piece of something they're doing >> right. So give me the give me the opposite of red flags. >> You know it's uh it's like is there people we know who mission is one >> mission superstar talent is really key uh you know early pull from from the industry top guys from the industry who want to be advisers who who are eager to help. Uh you know it's it's but but it's usually all comes down to the people and what our network thinks of them. >> What's the biggest success story you've had? Best best story so far. >> Uh there's a lot of stuff. We backed Andrew early on. It's a top defense new defense company. Uh we backed a company called Quinc at the beginning and it's now you know 10 billion valuation it's probably going to double next year. Uh Cognition we backed early on it you know you know it's worth 15 billion. It's a bunch of these top guys. Um just you know Seronics like just raising a big round is building hundreds of ships for the US Navy. It's doing really well. We helped start that actually. >> That's your niche. Your niche is national defense security. That's >> a AI healthcare logistics too. We've done some big sales of things we sold in logistics that have worked out. I I love just fixing things that are broken, man, and making it work better. >> Do you do you uh feel the criticism o uh uh OpenAI is getting right now, Chad GBT is getting right now is fair. >> Which which part of it? >> You know, revenue, you know, the conversation about, you know, they may start adding ads in there even though you said that last resort. >> I thought that was a funny attack. Anthropic did on making fun of them for that. Listen, I saw that Anthropic is very creative on some of the stuff. >> Listen, I I so I'm old friends with Elon and I'm longest his company. So now after you merged it, I owned a bunch of SpaceX. I did before too. Um I'm also small investor in in Anthropic which is just an extraordinary technology and and there's people who are attacking them for for for various things but I just Anthropic has pulled way ahead in the coding area and I and I >> 25 now. I don't know what the >> there's 380 380 post but that's I think that's even cheap for where they're going cuz they're just growing so fast and like all of our companies are are are using this and it's it's it's really fun. Like a lot of my smartest friends who are already extremely wealthy and could do anything they want are staying up coding right now because it's so fun what you could do with these tools. It's this crazy time right now. >> Are you more long with anthropic than open AI? >> Uh yeah I I'm most long SpaceX next I'm second most long anthropic. Open AI, I do think it could possibly have some struggles here, but I don't know. There's obviously it was amazing what they accomplished and and they really kind of brought a lot of this to the world. So, they get they deserve a lot of credit for that. I think Elon along with Sam both deserve credit for building that team early on. Um, >> no question. It was a nonprofit and then >> it turned into profit and then that's where the feud took place between the two of them. >> It's it's unfortunate. I think these I think these like these feuds are not productive for our for our society. But I understand where Elon's coming from and and I hope I hope they make it, you know, I hope they make it work for everyone. I get his argument. I totally get Elon's argument. Who who else are you along with? Who what else is it that you know I had a call with uh uh my banker. I said, "Listen, send me the top 10 nuclear companies out there that are finding ways to tap into the nuclear energy." And then I said, "Okay." We looked at some of them, made a decision. We had a call with their look into these three companies, which we did, and it's done fairly well. But for you, you're in this world. What else are you seeing? >> Yeah. our friends our friends at founders fun to have a company with a really talented guy building nuclear fuel as well and making making sure we have that in America it's really important to do and we're looking into that space it's you know it's interesting because Elon says all you need is solar energy which is which is true at the extreme but I think in I think we did kind of screw up the regulation on the nuclear space and that to be I love the fact that department of war is trying to do more of that now too so I think it's a good thing to be doing you know that the areas that I'm most bullish on >> so in America right now we have $5 trillion of wages in our services economy that's like every type of service. And in about 40% of that, in an over $2 trillion area, we've already seen you could double or triple the productivity, at least double if not triple the productivity. So this is this is this is in companies that we're exposed to. And it's like the back end of a law firm helping it. It's like the back end of logistics payments. It's like health healthcare billing. Healthare billing sounds small and boring. It's 280 billion a year spent on healthare billing, right? >> Healthare billing. >> 280 billion. 120 of that's paid to companies. 160 that's internal health systems. It's a massive part of the economy. We we already are tripling the efficiency of that. So, so what that means is a lot of this stuff is very disinflationary. It's creating a ton of value and these things are just scaling. Like my best healthcare billing company with a bunch of ex palenteer guys, it's going to double from like, you know, probably double to over 100 million revenue this year, but that's still tiny compared to where it's going, right? And and and and as that grows, it's making the whole economy more efficient. So this this is why venture capital is this engine that's like taking these possibilities and fixing stuff to make it cheaper for all of us. So it's a really positive thing. >> Why 11.8 and 8 million in a Nigerian drone company. >> Okay. No, you know, there's Listen, this the guy running it, first of all, physics Olympia Olympian, his co-founder is building another business. These are super talented uh there super talented young men there. Uh >> as you probably saw, there's a lot of people being slaughtered in Africa, especially a lot of Christians in Nigeria being killed for the wrong reasons. A security all over Africa is a huge deal. One of the main reasons you can't build infrastructure and invest in Africa right now is there's is there's a problem with security everywhere there and you know I happen to know a lot about the defense space. I've started multiple companies here. We felt like these guys were really talented and they could they could scale a lot of production of doing remote control cars, sentry towers, drones and we thought that some of our US technology as well could partner with them and help them and help them secure Africa. And even if even if we got rid of the Iranian guys, even even if we like make the Middle East somehow of peace, which I hope we do, >> which and by the way, they're good at making drones. >> They sell Shahi drones are very good. We have to get really good. We're really good at shooting them down now. We're working on it. But but but >> but basically, even if that's all peaceful, Africa's probably going to be a mess for quite a while. I think helping the good guys there is a good thing to do. >> Why Why is it so difficult for drone companies to excel in America? The regulation here is just intense. Well, so to build the engines behind these things, you need certain rare earth elements and you need certain refining which is very messy and we just don't have the capacity in the US for that. So in in Ukraine, unfortunately right now a lot of the supply chains coming through China for both sides which is unfortunate. >> A lot of the supply chain is coming from both sides >> through China. So a lot of the rare earth refining and elements and engines and things they're building they're using. So even like you know Eric Schmidt famously is building I think hundreds of thousands of drones to help the Ukrainians. So I think it's a very cool thing he's doing there and he built it in Mexico but I think a lot of even that potentially would be coming some things are from China. So there's just there's just a lot and so we're trying to ramp up and it is the regula it's partially regulation. It's actually interesting if you ask like Peter T my friends there it's like the regulatory stuff kill these industries. If you talk to Elon who the other night was talking about this he's like no we just need more founders who are willing to build these things in America. And I think he's probably right that as we try to build these things here you could probably convince them to change regulations to make it possible because we do want it to be possible now. So, so I think we're trying to do it now. We're trying to fix it. >> Yeah. I And you you think Greenland is one of the reasons that it plays such a big role in this? >> You know, I think Greenland is a place where if there's ever going to be an attack on America from the other side of the planet, it has to Russia or China, whatever. A lot of things have to fly over Greenland. So, I think for the Golden Dome, it's important. I think there's also a lot of resources there. I think there's like a certain spirit of expansion that's very healthy. I think I think you want to be growing and not shrinking. I think you want to be I think I think I think I think human humanity is like in some ways is very simple. It's like very complex but it's very simple and the question is are you shrinking and getting weaker and on decline or are you growing and stronger and and America in its current state where it's expanding manufacturing it's like confident it's it's expanding the economy taking Greenland and and building things for Greenland like if Greenland was more part of us we could build infrastructure there we could have ports that would then enable investment that couldn't happen otherwise. It'd be really good for Greenland. So I think it actually would be really good for the world for us to do more agree that I know where it stands. >> Yeah. Where you at with tariffs with Supreme Court ruling against it 63. You know >> if you looked at the Kavanaaugh ruling he kind of goes into depth on how you could have done it legally. So it's kind of like a playbook for how you could still do it if you want which I >> he's given him a playbook on it very interesting reading. It was a very funny 63 uh ruling because and by the way I'm not a legal scholar but from best I could tell it was like three different rulings. It was like three here, three here, three here. And but the six agreed like the three left and the three moderate right or whatever you want to call them agreed that that it's not legal. But then I think at least the moderate right part of the rule like well here's how it could be legal. So there probably are ways you can still go back and do it is my impression. >> Yeah. But right now all the lawsuits, you know, I mean being in the rooms and EU's like look we don't have to pay the tariffs. We don't have to agree to do this. Look what your Supreme Court said to you. So it's almost like they're undermining Kim >> to say you don't have the kind of authority you thought you had. You can't do So how do how does that how do you think >> you know it's unfortunate but this is our system of government is we have three separate koal branches and it's really annoying when the branches sometimes check you but we I think it's a good that we have checks on power. It doesn't mean I agree with with that Trump shouldn't be able part of the Curtis Yarvin camp. We had him on and I don't know if you know Curtis Arvin >> I know who he is. >> He doesn't he doesn't like it when guys like me try to fix things. He's very cynical. So whenever we're like, "Yeah, my policy group are like fixing things or making things work better." He's like, "Oh, you guys are all naive. Everything's broken." That's, you know, he's too negative is my view. >> He is negative. But he the way he was arguing it on, you know, he's for he's for a uh monarchy rather than having a democracy and he thinks it's more effective. It could get things more done. You know, he >> just just just wait until the monarchs decide your wife's attractive, man. I don't know if I don't know if I want to live under that system. Like checks on power are very wise. We're going to go back to the the train days. He's he's going to say, "I want to train Anna on your wife. Give her to me." Right. For Listen, all this money you're making, you know, you're one of these guys that's made billions as well yourself. What is something you you buy? Like, are you a comic cards g? You know, do you collect cars? Comic books? Are you unique cars? What do you >> mention Game of Thrones? Early on in Game of Thrones, I I set up a thing in my yard in California back then, and we had the Game of Thrones thrown and and we and we like have the theater outside. It's fun. Um, you know, what do I collect? I mean, I have a couple planes, but they're for business really. Um, I have, you know, we have a ski house where I host people. We have a vineyard where we host people. Most of my money on the excess money actually goes to the university. It goes to my policy work. It costs about, it only costs about a quart million dollars to like get a missiondriven piece of legislation passed. It helps a lot of people. So, for example, vocational schools I care a lot about. And I think it's really sloppy right now because if you want to if you want to like spend more money on vocational schools, that's fine. But if the guy running the vocational school is not very good, it's not going to be good results. So what we like in Texas for example, there's 27 vocational schools and Texas has it so that you fund the schools in proportion to the success of the kids. So So the students coming out, you see their salaries and that determines the funding. >> And and what that did is it doubled the salaries coming out. You took hundreds of thousands of people who would have had tough lives and have much much better lives. And so getting that law passed in another state takes a few hundred,000 for me. That's like really that's like that's a really cool form of philanthropy where I could take something make our country more functional. So I so I have teams in 23 states. So I spend a lot of money trying to just like fix stuff that's broken cuz that's for me that's a really fun way to do it. >> So that's your game. That's your fun. >> I love I love I love I love thinking about like how do we go in and like make healthc care cheaper and better here? How do we make the prison system? Like right now like prison guards and prisoners it's a mess. The cultures are broken. How do you create accountability for the prison guards? How do you create better results for rehabilitation when they come out? How these things like this to me is interesting. I mean that thinking right of solving problems makes sense. So you probably have a lot of friends in New York and California. Okay, you saw the exodus. California lost a trillion during COVID when folks left. He got some people back and now he lost another trillion with the wealth tax. >> I moved in CO a bunch of other my friends moved to Austin right now. Yeah. >> Right. So how is this the worst of it or is California is going to it's just getting started? >> I'll tell you what. So, I've had a problem with how California has been run forever since I have opinions on these things and no one really wanted to listen for a long time. I'm actually pretty optimistic cuz right now I have like 70 or 80 acquaintances and friends in California who've made a lot of money and they're like, "Joe, you were right. This is broken. I want to fight for it." And they're doing all sorts of things to fight for it. They're they're they're looking at building endowments to oppose the far-left unions, to help the moderates, to help progrowth strategies. They're looking at things to bring in more talent. They're looking at things to expose more of the fraud. They're they're fighting for good candidates. You know, the mayor of San Jose, someone who's a very moderate, very very strong mayor. He's probably moderate left, which is good because it's California, but he's someone we respect from both sides. A lot of us are backing backing him. You know, there's a lot of good talent in California saying, "Wait a second. We got to actually fight fight fight for this place." So, I'm a Texan and I'm doing a lot more in Texas, but I'm proud to see my friends in California waking up and I I really hope they could fight back. It's it's there there's a few hundred million dollars a year, Patrick, that comes from the far-left unions just for people work for the state. automatically they force them to fund them. So it's like a $300 million a year of like corruption and that just like fights. But if you can get these other guys to step up, we can do more than a $200 million a year. So I hope we do. >> Yeah. This jerrymandering where which changed the representatives to now they're going to have control of what 48 out of 52. It's going to be on the left. So I don't know how they're going to be moving that. That's going to be a lot of work. Could take a couple decades. >> It's a lot it's a lot of work to fight back. But I think it's a it's I think it's a noble thing to do. If you're going to live in California, you should fight for the good guys. >> If you're going to do it, you have to get involved. >> I live in Texas and I fight for I fight for the good guys there, too. >> Yeah, it's very obvious. Last thing, Barry Weiss, uh, free press. Why that investment? >> You know, I got to know Barry and we both agreed there's a lot of American institutions that have been conquered by like crazy ideological people that are that are really decaying our civilization. So our our our media is broken, our universities are broken, there's parts of our government that are broken, but and the only way we really can fix this is we build a new and so she and I actually co-founded the new university together. Uh at the time when I met her, she was also co-ounding a new media or and I think I was one of the very first investors there. And I'm I'm really proud of what she's done. I think she's she has millions and millions of people listening to her now. She had a newsroom that was probably about a third left, a third independent, and a third right, which is like the most balanced news room in the country. day or that that was a free press. I don't know what she has now at CBS, but but that was I assume she's trying to build the same thing as CBS. And you know, I think that's really really impressive to have a newsroom this balanced because no one else is doing it. And it and it's I think it's worth trying. So >> why do you think she's getting so much push back? Why do you think she has hate left, right, center? >> Because she's the only one who has both sides in her newsroom. So people say, "Wait a second. I thought you were on my side, but you're saying this left thing." And then people left say, "I thought you were on my side on this, but you're saying this right thing." >> It's a tough place. >> You're attacking me on both sides. She's she's attacking both sides. But you know what? If she's getting talked by both sides, that's probably a pretty good sign that she's doing something better than most others. >> Yeah. No, no question. And by the way, you got a podcast now. You got a you got a >> The American Optimist. >> Yes. I love that. Tell me about it. >> You know, uh I I know a lot of interesting friends who are building the future and uh you know, and I know a lot of friends running the government. So, it's just fun. I'll sit down with them for a few hours a month and put it out and people people like it. >> And you're the best booker because you can get a hold of anybody. >> All my friends are willing to do it. >> So So who who have you had so far on the show? I know you're te. Who else have you have you had on? >> Oh gosh, it's all sorts of people. It goes from Ashton Kitcher to, you know, Senator Tom Khan, a bunch of senators, a bunch of governors, you know, a bunch of bunch of people who built the biggest companies in Silicon Valley during cancer running AI. Uh, you know, all sorts of Steve's running for governor now. I saw that. All sorts of characters there. You know, a lot of my friends >> Andre and Boris built, you have that on the screen. And now he's he's building a company. It's the first AI for excavation. We're doing autonomous excavators. He's raised tons of money there. People get people got angry at me for having a read on because he's on the left. And like meanwhile, Russ of course is running the OM for this administration. So I tried to have both sides. >> You had Alex Byron on yet or no? >> I haven't had haven't had him on yet. I had Alex Karp on. I had Maria on from Venezuela before we Venezuela which was kind of fun. >> Yeah, we we had her on as well on a Zoom and and now it'll be interesting to see what they do. But we're going to put the link below to the podcast. This was very interesting talking to you. Keep kicking ass. Great story. Appreciate you for making the time to come down. >> Doing great work, Patrick. Thanks for having me. >> Appreciate you, buddy. Take care. >> When we set out to create a shoe that blends comfort, function, and luxury, we had the choice to make it fast. 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