Businessweek Extra-Joe Lonsdale

They've been working on this for seventeen years. The stock which went public via a direct listing on the New York Stock Exchange. It was up about thirty one percent, Jason in its first day of trading. Joe Man, We have gone to him several times. This is a company co founded with tech billionaire Peter Teal, but it's interesting. We love to talk to him about what they're doing in terms of data mining, but also where tech is

going in the future. Want companies that you know, it's it's it's had a really strong last few years that it probably wasn't ready to be a public company. You know, ten years ago, maybe you could have got out in fourteene or fifteen. But I'm you know, I'm kind of glad a weighted because it's been such a strong last few years. It's really come into its own and it's a great time for its bout you're thirty eight. I

just Adducent a message. I'm like, he's thirty eight. He started this when he was twenty one, and this isn't your first time at the rodeo. I mean, like this, it's pretty amazing. Um data and the use of data. We have more than we've ever thought, and there's more coming and it can just be a data dump or

it can be data put to use. And I do think about specially Joe in light of the pandemic, like how do you guys at Palentin or think about it and how data can help us with some of these really big problems facing us, whether it's the pandemic, whether

it's climate change, whether it's inequalities. No, you know, there's this man stiges concept from computer science from the nineteen sixties called man machine symbiosis, and the idea is there's things that people are better at, and there's things the computers are better app and the question is how you augment people, how you how you let people still do what they're the best at, well, the computers augmenting them.

And in order to do that, when you have data from everywhere, you have to bring that data together and you have to put it into an environment where where it's it's been a form that's how the person is thinking about the data, and then less people delve into it intuitively and then collaborate around the data intuitaly. But you're really creating these information environments and in your right for all these hard problems, you need these information environments.

You need to access I guess all that data was in your brain, so it can't possibly be you gotta do the next best thing and expose it the right way altogether, which is a very hard technology problems. Yeah, so we'll have you solved it. We've done well well. You know here palace here is used by by a lot of governments and a lot of the biggest corporations around the world to solve their hardest problems. It's pounds here.

You know. When the when the pandemic struck, you know, over thirty five countries turned to pounds here to immediately create for them a common operating picture that brought data together from hundreds of sources and did securely in a way to protected civil liberties protected you know, privacy. You only do what you're allowed to see, but then expose that data so leaders could make decisions. And you know, I don't think all of us agree with every decision

every leaders made, but it was striking in country. It was talent here that they turned to to give that information so they could make decisions. So Joe, you went exactly where I wanted to go next, which was, you know, work with governments and work with the private sector. Um, there has been and you know this better than I do, controversy around um this notion of data and its use in surveillance quote unquote, at least that's how it's been positioned.

Help us understand sort of strip out all the you know, rhetoric and everything around that, and help us understand are their misconceptions out there around what Palatier does and how it's used by governments. Of course, you know, they're One of the things I like is that if you're not doing anything important, is probably not gonna be anybody angry

with you. And you know, and in this case, what you have before we started Palnce here We watched to the government and they had spent tens of billions of dollars year gathering data, and they had all sources of these giant I T services projects that were failed, and we said, can we build a single project of single platform that rather than have to build all these actually services went off and take years and take hundreds of millions of billions of dollars, can we do something that

would work out of box to do this well during the data while enforcing the policy. And we actually, you know, build Palance here in a way to go above and beyond. Not only is it the greatest privacy engine in the world, but it has full auditorial automatically watches watchers, anyone involved

can see how people are using the data. That's that The fair we had is that if you didn't have something like palentce here ben responding, you know, the terrors and it's the seventeen years ago, So that was what was on our minds and responding to that, you could actually become more like your enemy. That's what happens in warfare, is you become more like your enemy. In this case, it would have meant transforming our society unacceptably in giving

out liberties. So we didn't want to have to give up. And so the the idea is that you had have a system in place to make sure it's enforcing the rules, to make sure whatever the policy is that steps up what's going to be allowed. And you know, I don't always agree with what the policy is in the US or allied countries, but but I but I do agree that it's a good thing to help America use the data it's allowed to use and to enforce the policy

as we have. So when it comes to something like TikTok, then it sounds like you're pretty clear that maybe the U S is right in terms of having concerns about that type of a company. You know, it's been told me very clearly more than a decade ago and from my other spork and technology that I was not welcomed in China. It's the Chinese government was not going to allow big data platforms of any sort that are not owned by Chinese to operate and dominate there. They're definitely

not gonna allow media platforms. They're definitely senor that. So if if they're censoring up like giving them giving a CCP access to tend a million of Americans uncensored display them. However, the CCP wants I can see why geopolitically that would

be a bad situation to be in. I want to talk more about Silicon Valley and maybe as a way to get there, what does this listing and this sort of catalytic moment or this latest moment of the journey of Palenteer, what does that tell us about Silicon Valley today, the role of technology today here in because I gotta tell you, man, it's a funky time right now. It is that it is. It is a strange time we're living in. And you know, if you think, what does

it tell us about what's going on? Well, technology, it's a part of the world. It's working, and it's a part of the world. There is a lot of confidence, a lot more than when we saw on TV last night. It's it's a fist. It's a part of the world where where you actually see growth, you actually see optimistic version, vision in the future of what's possible and and and you know that's why things value is highly it is

in a lot of areas right now. Well, when you look at some of the big macro trends that are going on, in technology. Obviously, big data, as evidence by Palenteer, is something you're obviously really into. But what else do you find kind of interesting, whether it is, you know, autonomous vehicles, whether it's space exploration, or whether it's green technology that's going to figure out a way to you know,

protect our environment. What else is it that you find it's really kind of interesting on our on your radar, and that you think Joe is going to be a bigger part of our world as well as our economy going forward and our technical potentially. Yeah, you know, there's there's there, there's a lot of these turns. The trend that really Palace here etenomizes is the fact that we have a lot more information than we ever had before.

But the only way we're going to use that information well is to make it accessible and understandable to people. So what what what the trend Palunce here is about, and a lot of other companies were involved in as well, is these is these industries and these parts of the world only work right when we make sure that people are only through the day they're allowed to see, but they see it and understanding they can bring it together to lots of sources and they can act on it

to making the industries work better. And that's that's true. We're talking about health care and making healthcare more efficient, and you know, there's so much stuff we could do, I think, to make healthcare costs half as much well delivering better results. And you know, some of those things are things we have to do policy wise, of course, and and and get rid of coronism and get rid of special interests. But a lot of those things are our technology problems. We need to get in there and

we need to solve. And this is you know that there's a lot of things in that area. I mean, I'm personally thinking about a lot of other areas who actually want to be a name one more. It might sound crazy, but I think Elon's a right about the tunnels. I think tunnels can save us trillions of dollars for our economy in terms of being making all the cities accessible and you can live really cheaply near by them. I think there's all sorts of cool things like that.

So there's there's a lot stuff we could do. But the data seam is what Pounder was about today. Well, let me ask you something coming on the heels of the debate, and we know, um, your other co founder, Peter Teal has been a backer President Trump and Donald

Trump specifically. When you think about politics, when you think about the parties, doesn't matter to you who's in office, whether it's on a regulatory front or whether it's on someone who has the vision to think about kind of where we need to go as a nation, because if you look around the world, I mean, I know what you said about China, you know, not necessarily wanting you guys in there. Are you when you were starting out? You know, whether it's a data company or so on.

But I mean they definitely have a long term mission when it comes to high tech at this time. And I just do wonder how you think about politics with all of yeah, I mean, I really, I really wish there were a lot more computer scientists in Congress. I think we have way too many lawyers relatives to the proportion or population, and not nearly enough engineers. And I think one one advantage China has over US is there's a lot more engineers, uh, you know, running that country.

I wouldn't want a country to be run by China. I'd prefer to live in a republic and a democracy but but yeah, I think we need to elect people who understand information, understand how to build the future, unders who are part of building the future. And you definitely don't see that from either party very much right now. And so, Joe, as you go out and look at investing in new companies, obviously, you know you sort of

carry the lessons of Palenteer. You know, over this long period of time that that you've been involved and and you know your adult life has been spent associated with this company. What's the big lesson that you impart whether you're talking to a founder, whether you're talking to a team of engineers from this specific company which has by all means been successful and then gained another mark of success today. But what's what's the lesson you impart from it?

You know, I think there's there's there's there's two really important lessons you have to say from this. One is, you know, I was at PayPal, and when I was at PayPal before Pounds, here we saw a lot of our pier starting companies right U Piers started linked In and Yelp in YouTube and Elon died based X and Test. All these people came from PayPal. There's fifteen of them. And and the lesson we learned that we really apply to Pounds here is the ones that work really have

very tough engineering cultures. It's not just like you want good engineers. You actually want the best engineers in the world, and you want them to feel like it's their company and they're running it with you. So so one is all about focusing on being very top engineering culture and with engineers helping run the business too, I would say

is you have to have a mission driven culture. You have to have a company where people are really proud of what they're doing when they wake up thinking about it, to go to sleep thinking about it. Because this is an important company and they've helped shape its values, they've helped shape its principles and and and it means a lot to them. And I think if you have built of those, you have a really good head start as a technologist. Such cool stuff. What do you do to

like inspire your younger generation? Just got about forty seconds here, because you've got to think about that, right our future workforce. And I'm a daughter of an engineer. Jason is a son of an engineer. You know, we kind of grew up with there are lots of engineers everywhere, but it doesn't feel always that way. Today. We have to you know,

we just had our third daughters. We have a newborn here at home, so I have three little girls and I would love it if, say, if they get excited about math and science and engineering, or obviously you're gonna support them whatever they do. But it's you know, it's it's one of those things where I think people have to understand there's an optimistic version of the future and just a vision of the future. There's so much synicism

right now. There's so many people who who love to be, you know, just to take a dystopian view of the world. And I think we did teach people here's the amazing way the world can look, and here's the world is going to look if we embrace optimism, embrace technology and innovation and what's possible. And that was Joe Lunsdale, Palanteer co founder. I think one of the things we loved about him is he said world needs more engineers. If you're a lawyer, more engineers, and as children of engineers,

I think we can go along with that. You were definitely in agreement with that. You've been listening to Bloomberg Business Week Extra. Be sure to tune into Bloomberg Business Week Radio that airs Monday through Friday, starting at two pm Wall Street time of Round Blotberg Radio. I'm Jason Kelly and I'm Carol Masser. This is Bloomberg