Joe Lonsdale

“There's no substitute for experiencing ups and downs - seeing how it's okay that things are overwhelming or broken sometimes and how companies recover from mistakes.”

“The degree to which society creates wealth, I think, is largely determined by government and financial systems.”

“Engineering talent is the most precious resource for any technology company - Palantir and Addepar are successful first and foremost because of their top tech cultures, and the same is true for our best portfolio companies at 8VC.”

“I think I was really lucky to work as a little kid at PayPal, grew up in the Valley as a coder.”

“What would I advise an aspiring young entrepreneur? Certainly I'd say read the works of great entrepreneurs and investors like Ben Horowitz, Peter Thiel, and many others. But what's more important is to get real experience at a great startup.”

“Innovative cultures transparently document spending, admit mistakes, and ask how they can do better.”

“One of my biggest intellectual influences in my life was Alex Karp of Palantir.”

“The inability of middle-class people to receive loans in developing countries has had a stifling effect on economic growth and prosperity around the globe.”

“Creating a billion-dollar company is hard, but being a truly great leader is even harder.”

“Basically, I think society functions thanks to how certain key industries work - government, finance, healthcare, education, energy. Pretty much all of these have a huge impact on everything else.”

“Private equity investors are an integral part of the economy and should be celebrated for making our country wealthier.”

“Palantir owes much of its success to the amazing talent of the first 30-40 technologists who joined the company, as well as to the internal leadership that helped motivate this core group to achieve its ambitious goals and to continue to attract extraordinary people.”

“I am not by any means a philosopher, although I have worked with some talented people in the discipline. But certain philosophical concepts deeply inform the way I think about the world. The idea of 'opposing truths at extremes' is a powerful concept that I came to appreciate in my twenties.”

“In a well-run tech company, small, elite groups who have ownership in the company are given the freedom to define and achieve their tasks in line with a broader mission that they have internalized as their own.”

“We created Addepar because we saw a place where a multi-billion dollar global platform clearly should exist - but did not yet - to fix many of the challenges that exist in the finance industry.”

“The convertible note is a useful and common financing structure in Silicon Valley. It's a form of debt that is really more a type of equity - one where the valuation hasn't been determined yet.”

“America has the greatest military in the world, and it's up to our leaders to set the bar for what a 21st century military culture of innovation with transparent, collaborative leadership looks like.”

“In their infancy, startups need geniuses who fit their current tight-knit culture and will iterate quickly as they push towards an ambitious vision - and they need a scaffolding of advisors, strategists, early users, and product-thinkers around these savants to guide them.”

“One of the most important jobs of a great leader is to attract great talent.”

“My experiences building Palantir and running Addepar made me aware of serious problems with government and inspired me to build a non-profit to look into state spending.”