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Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

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Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#91
post #27

Copy paste of Joe_Doe's comment. Which seems dead but sais "[noobtor]" instead of [dead]. Never seen that before?! However should he have registered via tor to leak a bit of insider info I don't want to let this die because of tor flagging. ---------- Palantir is trying to raise another ~400mm to finance their operations. And I honestly think this just another PR stunt to attract investors. The 'secretive' attitude i…

"Every new contract requires dozen extra people." I've heard this as well. They essentially hire customer-facing engineers to go out and scope specific contracts and literally implement custom solutions with small generic software frameworks they developed in house.

Hm, I don't see nothing deceptive about this. It goes without saying that some software must be custom given the (rather obscure) market Palantir is in.

EDIT: n/m @dang answered this indirectly a couple of comments below.

Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, it is true they deploy people to implement the software. On the other hand, the customer has results after 6-8 weeks. How much software can really be built in that sort of time frame? Not much... In my opinion Palantir is a product company, but the product is deeply integrated in to an enterprise. And doing that takes time and people.

I would debate that...if your 'product' takes a team of stanford engineers to actually deploy at an enterprise, then it's probably closer to a dev framework.

> if your 'product' takes a team of stanford engineers to actually deploy at an enterprise, then it's probably closer to a dev framework

Fair enough. But you may be underestimating the value of production-quality fast-development dev frameworks in enterprise.

Remember, these are guys who are used to seeing 5-year project timelines for anything that touches more than one system. (And every business case touches more than one system...)

Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#94
post #85
post #27

Copy paste of Joe_Doe's comment. Which seems dead but sais "[noobtor]" instead of [dead]. Never seen that before?! However should he have registered via tor to leak a bit of insider info I don't want to let this die because of tor flagging. ---------- Palantir is trying to raise another ~400mm to finance their operations. And I honestly think this just another PR stunt to attract investors. The 'secretive' attitude i…

So that's what....$1.3b in funding over a lot of rounds? I'm not sure I can think of many software companies with that kind of startup investment. WP says they have about 1,200 employees, or a burn rate of about $300m/yr. Those figures are old, so this new round must be for another year of operations. I believe I had heard in a previous discussion that they were planning on going public in 2015, so this is a bit of a…

It's interesting to see that the HTML5 client never went anywhere evidently -- I interviewed there for an internship in 2013 and remember that they were showing it off a lot.

Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, it is true they deploy people to implement the software. On the other hand, the customer has results after 6-8 weeks. How much software can really be built in that sort of time frame? Not much... In my opinion Palantir is a product company, but the product is deeply integrated in to an enterprise. And doing that takes time and people.

I would debate that...if your 'product' takes a team of stanford engineers to actually deploy at an enterprise, then it's probably closer to a dev framework.

No, it's a bog-standard on-premise "Enterprise" product, like Oracle, SAP, etc. This is how that business model works. The customer pays _both_ for the software _and_ for the on-site engineers, usually through the nose.

Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#96
All of these comments couldn't be more correct.

The only question I have is how could investors be this dumb?

I have heard that some investors in the prior round (all of what, 12-18 months ago?) are trying to get some/all their money out after seeing the curtain pulled back. It has to be somewhat of a stampede for the door gaining momentum.

Still, while it is a cushy place to work (smart people, nice perks, okay money and stock that is supposedly valuable on paper until everyone rushes for the door), I also don't understand why smart people work there - unless they don't.

Maybe the smart employees are the ones who left 2-3 years ago.

Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#97
post #27

Copy paste of Joe_Doe's comment. Which seems dead but sais "[noobtor]" instead of [dead]. Never seen that before?! However should he have registered via tor to leak a bit of insider info I don't want to let this die because of tor flagging. ---------- Palantir is trying to raise another ~400mm to finance their operations. And I honestly think this just another PR stunt to attract investors. The 'secretive' attitude i…

Ever worked with ERP or other enterprise data products? Nothing is plug and play. These guys have to analyze data sets to first understand how to connect the dots, and then they have to integrate with whatever front-end their "product" is.

Well said.

I work with Palantir guys and helping them with data sources at a large banking firm.

Everything is custom, needs to be customized and then it needs to be changed every month.

The magic bullet here is hard work and smart people.

Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#98

Ah, the Paypal mafia at it again. Well atleast they're bringing the money to the valley. Funny how a lot of Libertarian Thiel's companies are funded by govt. contracts. Same goes for Elon.

Musk at least is transparent about it. He readily gives credit to NASA for instigated and funding much of Space X.

Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#99
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

https://www.iqt.org/iqt_portfolio/palantir-technologies/ NSA as a customer has been widely reported in popular press [1]. [1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/agent-o...

In-Q-Tel as an investor doesn't mean much, IMO. It does mean the product is of interest / value to the government, but that doesn't imply any sinister motive (or a ton of control). I work for a company that was invested in by In-Q-Tel, and the only influence I've seen from that was really to benefit the users in the community and develop a project for RBAC in Big Data - which is something I really hope the NSA has in place internally.

edit: and I'm a Libertarian, so I'm biased against reaching this conclusion based on my own observations.

Re: Leaked Palantir Doc Reveals Uses, Specific Functions and Key Clients

#100

Ah, the Paypal mafia at it again. Well atleast they're bringing the money to the valley. Funny how a lot of Libertarian Thiel's companies are funded by govt. contracts. Same goes for Elon.

But is Elon openly libertarian? Relatively speaking, he always seems to avoid political talk.
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