Comment by kes | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kes | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to disagree with the people on this thread and vote for Plantir.

It is cool to say that Facebook is doing 'world-changing' and 'revolutionary' things -- while I believe such is true on some levels and that we can't ignore what it is -- but a company like Plantir has a much better opportunity to do things that are simply mind-boggling.

Finance and the Government are not popular things, especially amongst the hacker crowds, but the US Government is capable of doing incredible things. The power wielded by the State is huge, and directly affects hundreds of millions of people a day. Facebook may have become a staple in some peoples lives but they [as a company] are not responsible for keeping citizens safe, regulating commerce, building infrastructure, waging war or brokering peace.

Facebook is a company that finds better ways to serve up advertising. That's not all they do, but that's how they make money.

Plantir is in a unique position to change an increasingly inefficient/ineffective system. US politics suck right now. We can all agree on that. But a company like Plantir operates on a different level than the fork-tongued politicians.

You say: network with people in the startup industry and create my own startup which tells me (and I might be wrong, please correct if so) that you enjoy the idea of disrupting the status quo. What better place to do this than Big Government and Big Business/Finance? This might seem backwards but as these institutions crumble at their seams there is no better place to be.

I'm going to have to disagree with your disagreement.

If you want to get into startups with enterprise customers, then maybe palantir is the right choice, but otherwise you'd learn a lot more about customer acquisition at facebook since there are probably a few hundred startups that all use facebook for customer acquisition.

I also don't see how palantir makes the US government more efficient -- they're mostly a big data mining company. They make fancy predictions which help locate terrorists, allocate finances, and other cool things, but the only thing that will make politics efficient are effective politicians. Data mining won't mash out all the filibusters that happen at the house.

I would say if you want to learn about data mining and machine learning techniques, palantir is the right choice.

If you want to do a startup later, facebook is the right choice. Facebook tends to buy out many small startups, so there will be many at that company who have the same mindset as you do. This is important should you decide to look for cofounders who have the same startup passions. I can't really think of any startups acquired by palantir.

I'll also mention that it's easier to placate investors if you tell them your startup team consists of ex-facebook or ex-google employees. A startup with ex-palantir employees just doesn't have the same homerun ring to it, and when investors are making that gut judgement call after looking at 2 slides from your 5 minute pitch, they're going to go with the team with ex-facebook employees.

To clarify, Palantir isn't a data-mining company. Palantir makes tools that streamline the process of analyzing large datasets for professional, often non-technical analysts in government and finance institutions.

Working with founders from acquired companies is not a great way to meet co-founders. First, many will have already "made it" and won't have the same drive that they once had. Second, if they do, they'll prefer to work (and socialize with) with other people who are like them -- other successful founders. Maybe they'll let you be an employee at their new startup.

Palantir is full of people who are itching to start a company, and we'll see dozens of startups by Palantir alums after Palantir exits (it's already happening; see posterous.com). The founders of these companies will have unique experience and connections in government and finance, giving them the option to target enterprise problems instead of entering the over-crowded consumer startup scene.

As far as reputation among Silicon Valley investors, having worked at Palantir will look at least as good as having worked at Facebook or Google over the next few years, especially now that Facebook and Google are already big and successful. Joining Facebook or Google today is relatively lazy; it's not as impressive to join a company that's already hugely successful as it is to join a company and contribute to making it successful. Assuming a choice between Palantir and Facebook, an entrepreneurial person with confidence in his/her ability to make a company successful will join Palantir.

Palantir is a data-mining company. They make tools to analyze datasets, but in reality, you need to understand data in order to present it well. The skills involved here are all specialized to data-mining. Since you work there, I'm sure there's obviously going to be some bias in your arguments :-). At least I'm seeing both companies from an objective viewpoint here.

Working with founders from acquired companies is actually a great way to meet co-founders. Most founders post-acquisition usually start new companies after their vest-in-rest.

Doing an enterprise startup relies heavily on sales. Having worked at an enterprise startup does not necessarily give you the skills needed for your next enterprise startup unless you're the guy doing sales.

As far as reputation goes, the reason facebook & google are stronger with investors have little to do with the mindset of employees at google, and more to do with the types of people google/facebook might hire.

You might be the smartest guy at USC, but investors would still choose the harvard grad over you. We all wish that logic & intelligence would triumph over the good ol' boys network from ivy league schools, but investors rarely go with logic. The only way you would seem more favorable than a team with all ivy league alums is if your project has good traction, or if you have a past track record. Palantir may have smarter people than Facebook, but investors don't care.

Typically employees from large companies like Google/Facebook typically know enough alumni there to help their next company be re-acquired by the company they left.

The original question was which company is better to work for if you want to work for a startup later and I believe some of your arguments are more general reasons why you'd want to work for company X over company Y.

What are you talking about? Palantir isn't reinventing government or finance, they are making extremely niche data analysis tools for the intelligence services and trading tools for wall street. If those institutions crumble, Palantir has no customers.

So you're saying that working at Palantir is a bet on either world governments or the finance industry not collapsing. Given the bailouts and the fact that Palantir is targeting governments all over the world, I'd say that's a pretty good bet.

Exactly right, working at Palantir is betting on the status quo.

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