Stephen Cohen (Palantir) - The Path to Palantir

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Journey, Startups, Education, Stanford, Culture, Strategy, Stanford University, Entrepreneurship, Business, Life Lessons, Thought Leadership, Creativity, Etl, Challenges, Leadership, Innovation, Founders

4.4 • 739 Ratings

🗓️ 20 February 2013

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Stephen Cohen reflects on his journey from Stanford computer science student to co-founding and building Palantir Technologies. Cohen extolls the joys of hacking projects in school, shares thoughts on the future relationship between man and machine, and shares stories from the colorful early history of Palantir.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You are listening to the DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders series, brought you weekly by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.
0:10.0	You can find podcasts and videos of these lectures online at eChorner.standford.edu.
0:16.0	How many of you know about Palantir?
0:20.0	Raise your hand if you... below a lot. Okay, let's see if you know all of these facts. Palantir Technologies is an enterprise software company that tackles the world's most challenging problems. Founded in 2004, it now has approximately 1,000 employees, and it takes up a healthy chunk of downtown Palo Alto.
0:40.2	I'm wondering what you guys do for the local food economy. It's probably pretty good, right, Stefan?
0:45.2	Palantir creates a tremendous impact in the government health and non-profit worlds.
0:50.4	One, Palantir has rescued hundreds of women and children from sex trafficking and other exploitive networks.
0:57.5	Two, Palantir protects our military, both in daily combat operations and what is also known as special ops.
1:06.9	Three, Palantir helps contain E. coli outbreaks through its work with the Center for Disease
1:13.9	Control or CDC.
1:15.4	Four, immediately after disasters, Palantir sends in its engineers to direct real-time
1:22.5	relief efforts.
1:24.1	Most recently, Palantir organized the efforts of hundreds of volunteers responding to Hurricane Sandy victims.
1:30.4	Any of you have relatives who were hit by Hurricane Sandy? A few. Okay. Stefan Cohen co-founded Palantir in 2004. He currently serves as an executive vice president, and he's one of the four people on the board of directors. In the early days, he developed and sold Palantir's government software product,
1:50.9	but these days he focuses on Palantir's internal scaling, training Palantir's managers,
1:57.3	and interviewing about 50 people a week. He has conducted roughly 4,500 interviews since the founding of Palantir.
2:05.6	Stefan, we're so glad.
2:07.6	Before, I just add one small thing.
2:10.6	Before founding Palantir, we also are very grateful to know that you are a graduate of Stanford Computer Science Program,
2:19.9	and we're really happy to have you back.
2:21.3	Let's welcome Stefan Cohen.
2:26.3	Thank you.
	...

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