I want to start off with your background. Palantir, when you say Palantir to the average person, some is good, some is bad, some is neutral, some are scared. You know, it's good if they know who you are. But one of my favorite signs on the old defense secretary of Rumsfeld, he had a sign on his desk. And instead of nobody is angry at you, you might not be doing much. Do you subscribe to that? Oh, totally.

Totally.

At what age did you subscribe to that? Pretty young, actually. I was a pretty obnoxious kid. Were you? Oh, yeah, I had all sorts of opinions. I always have, yeah. Tell me about your parents. Who were your parents? My parents were awesome. My mom passed away a long time ago. my dad's not doing one, which is sad, but they're amazing people. My father was very competitive.

He was one of eight kids. But 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 a little for fun.

He was a chemical engineer.

And 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.

But a really optimistic, positive, competitive guy. Chess, so you guys play chess. How old were you when he won the championship? I was the K-to-6 champion twice in a row in fifth and sixth grade, and we won the nationals in junior high school. but it's like it's because we worked really hard at it because he was a good coach.

You got to spend, you got to spend 30, 40 hours a week to be the best.

And this is in fairmont 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 was a public high school i was a nerdy guy who's a valedictorian and i had a bunch of really smart friends who taught me a bunch of stuff about you know we went way ahead in math and science and stuff so at what point did you and peter thiel link up because I think when 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 kids in Stanford computer science were going to PayPal at the time.

It was something where I really admire the talent that was there. You have to realize that company, there was one company started by Peter Thiel and a bunch of his smartest friends. Max Levchen started and David Sachs, all these guys were there at Good Hoffman. And there's one company that Elon Musk started with Rolloff and a bunch of other really smart people. It was called X at the time. and X and Confinity merge to make PayPal.

They're fighting each other and they merge.

So it's all the smartest friends around Bill. with roll off and a bunch of other really smart people. It was called X at the time. And X and Confinity merged to make PayPal.

They were 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 in my freshman year, but they let me in my sophomore year to go help them. Was that like deep place everybody wanted to work out? Everyone, but I think it was for me, it was where I noticed a lot of the smartest, most interesting people going in there.

So it was when I was trying to find out.

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