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The phenomenon of former Palantir employees founding successful startups has drawn parallels to the famed "PayPal Mafia," earning them the title "Palantir Mafia." The 1000’s of hours employees spend building and solving complex data and organisational solutions frequently led to founding companies in domains such as Defence, Healthcare, Fintech, AI and markets with large supply chains. Collectively, founders spinning out have established over 100 companies, amassing significant VC funding and contributing to some of the largest outcomes we’ve seen in recent years.
At Concept, we’re backers of 5+ ex-Palantir teams (ElevenLabs, JoyoLabs, Arondite + a few in stealth), and we’re deeply excited by the talent spinning out of the company.
What makes Palantir great:
Palantir, the company focused on building software that powers real-time decisions in critical government and commercial enterprises, has risen rapidly to its powerful position as one of the largest companies in the world, evidenced by its ranking in the top 100 of companies globally by market cap.
As a VC fund specialising in investing in talent at the earliest phase, unearthing anecdotal and data-driven insights on where the best talent will spin out from next is top of mind. It is obvious to us at Concept (and most of the VC world at this point) that Palantir is a hotbed for great founders to spin out of. Having spent time working closely with our ex-palantir portfolio companies as well as analysing the types of companies founded, it's clear the firm has created a formula to hire for and teach founder DNA. I was keen to dive deeper into some of the commonalities that founders spinning out of Palantir exhibit, especially after hosting such a great crowd of alumni and current employees at our recent event!
Diving Deeper
Diving deeper into the people behind the roles and companies, it’s clear there are various common traits and backgrounds that Palantir optimised for within their hiring process, which subsequently translate exceptionally well to founding successful companies later on.
To take a step back, the early days of Palantir took the bet that hiring young and smart individuals with tier 1 educational backgrounds from the likes of Stanford and MIT would pay off. They weren’t afraid of hiring straight out of university at either the undergrad level or with post-grad researchers. This was evident in the data of founders that subsequently spun out of Palantir, where 80%+ had a CS background, highly represented by top university institutions.
A significant number of these founders held engineering positions at Palantir, with over 50% having an engineering background. This technical foundation has been instrumental in their ability to identify market needs and develop innovative solutions, hands-on with customers. Forward Deployed Engineer being the most common background that founders had.
Below is a view of all the founders analysed. Do reach out if we’ve missed your details below - and a call to any potential founders thinking about starting something or if you are already on that journey, do get in touch!
Since its inception in 2004/05, Ex-Palantir founders have consistently produced companies that have gone on to be valued at a $bn+. Whilst VC pattern matching has led to a frothing over this talent pool in the last two years, it's clear that the attributes Palantir looks for and the culture instilled in the talent has remained and evolved to consistently lead to founders starting great companies. From the early spin-out successes such as Affirm, Addepar and RelateIQ to more recent notable successes below spearing this next AI wave, the firm has consistently seen founders spin out. Whether or not this remains as the company aggressively hires over the next few years is yet to be seen. We’ve seen companies such as Google and Meta lose their startup culture and “founder” esq employees as their firms aggressively grow.
Notable Start-ups in Recent Years:
Roles and Backgrounds at Palantir:
A significant number of these founders held engineering positions at Palantir, with over 50% having an engineering background. This technical foundation has been instrumental in their ability to identify market needs and develop innovative solutions, hands-on with customers. Forward Deployed Engineer being the most common background that founders had.
Impact and Industry Influence:
The startups emerging from the Palantir alumni network have collectively raised billions in funding, with some achieving unicorn ($bn+) outcomes and even IPOs.
At Concept, our experience in backing ex-Palantir teams is supported by much of the data and insights unearthed in this article. Having seen how some of our teams operate, it's clear that, culturally, Palantir has fostered a strong culture for high agency individuals to go and build new companies. This talent pool exhibits the right traits for company founding in the early days.
(thank you to getPIN for the data collection they’ve done which made this analysis a whole lot easier)
Below, I looked at the founders that have since spun out of Palantir (of the data collected), analysing their roles, prior experiences and educational background. DeepResearch was used to help analyse the consistencies and discrepancies in the data, which I found to be really useful to leverage. The world is definitely changing. This task would’ve taken me a couple weeks to compile and analyse but only took me roughly 8 hours.
The founders held a wide range of roles at Palantir, reflecting the company's diverse operations in data analytics, defense, and commercial applications. Key roles included:
This diversity highlights Palantir's engineering-heavy culture, with roles spanning technical, commercial, and strategic functions.
If you’re up for reading a more in depth analysis on the patterns and trends, please read and dive in below!
Educational Background: The Palantir alumni founders tend to have strong educational credentials, often in technical fields. A large number hold degrees in Computer Science or related engineering fields from top universities such as Stanford, MIT, Cornell, and other elite institutions. For example, Joe Lonsdale, Nima Ghamsari, Quinn Slack, and Garry Tan all earned Computer Science degrees from Stanford
This common foundation in STEM education provided the technical expertise to build data-intensive startups. Even founders on the business side often have strong academic pedigrees (e.g. Steve Loughlin with Princeton and Stanford MBA, Arun Gupta with an M.D. from Cambridge). The rigorous problem-solving skills honed through their education are a clear asset in founding tech companies.
Career Path Before Palantir: Many of these individuals started their careers in environments that emphasize innovation or analytical skills, which set the stage for joining Palantir. A number of founders began at influential tech companies or labs (PayPal, Google, Microsoft, Facebook) or in quantitative finance roles. For instance, Nathan Gettings and Joe Lonsdale were involved with PayPal and Clarium Capital early on before Palantir. Another significant subset comes from government, military, or intelligence backgrounds. Palantir’s early mission attracted individuals with national security experience – e.g. Trae Stephens worked in the U.S. Intelligence Community and James Boyd and Gene Yu served as U.S. Special Forces officers prior to joining Palantir
These experiences gave them domain expertise in defense and security that they later applied to startups like Anduril (defense) and Blackpanda (cybersecurity). In short, many Palantir Mafia members either came from big-tech or finance (bringing engineering or business acumen) or from military/intel roles (bringing mission-focused perspective). This diversity in prior careers created a unique blend of skills at Palantir and subsequently in their entrepreneurial ventures.
Role at Palantir: At Palantir, these future founders typically took on significant responsibilities that straddle technology and client-facing problem solving. A very common role was Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) – essentially engineers who embedded with clients to implement Palantir’s solutions in the field. A large number of founders held FDE or deployment strategist titles (e.g. Trae Stephens, Matt Grimm, Lisa Wallace, Harsh Pandey, etc.), which suggests Palantir deliberately put top talent in roles requiring technical skill, adaptability, and leadership. This experience of solving real-world problems on-site (whether at a bank, a factory, or on the battlefield) gave them a strong understanding of industry pain points and a bias toward execution. It’s no surprise that many FDEs went on to found companies addressing similar problems they saw firsthand (for example, Coby Blumenfeld worked on healthcare deployments at Palantir and later founded Chapter, a Medicare advisor platform). Other founders were core Palantir software engineers or product leads, often building Palantir’s internal platforms (e.g. Beyang Liu and Quinn Slack were software engineers on Palantir’s codebase, later founding developer tool Sourcegraph). A few were on the business side at Palantir (sales or operations leads) and leveraged that network – for instance, Tyler Scriven was Chief of Staff to Palantir’s president, giving him broad exposure to operations before founding Saltbox. In general, Palantir alumni had multi-faceted roles that combined engineering, product management, and client interaction, which proved to be excellent training for launching startups.
Transition to Entrepreneurship: A striking pattern is how quickly and successfully these alumni transitioned from Palantir into entrepreneurship. Many left Palantir specifically to start their own ventures, often within a few years of joining. The Palantir environment seems to have fostered an entrepreneurial mindset – alumni refer to a “startup within a startup” culture at Palantir. Indeed, Palantir’s alumni have collectively founded over 111 companies, which by 2024 had raised $11.6 billion in capital
Several Palantir founders teamed up with each other after leaving (leveraging the Palantir alumni network often dubbed the “Palantir Mafia”). For example, Blend’s founding team included multiple Palantir colleagues (Nima Ghamsari, Eugene Marinelli, Erik Collard, etc.), and Anduril’s co-founders Brian Schimpf, Trae Stephens, and Matt Grimm all worked together at Palantir. This highlights a tight-knit alumni network that carries forward – they often invest in each other’s companies (Founders Fund, 8VC, and others led by Palantir veterans frequently fund Palantir Mafia startups). It’s analogous to the PayPal Mafia dynamic, where a cohort of ex-employees went on to repeatedly collaborate and fund ventures.
Domain Expertise and Market Selection: Another trend is that founders often build companies in domains closely related to their Palantir projects or expertise. Defense and cybersecurity startups feature prominently – likely influenced by Palantir’s work with government and military. Anduril (defense tech) and Adyton (military software) were founded by ex-Palantir people from defense projects; Blackpanda (cyber incident response) and Bastion (cybersecurity platform) similarly were founded by Palantir alumni from Palantir’s security business. Fintech and enterprise data is the other big theme – Palantir’s commercial work in finance yielded founders for Addepar (wealth management software), Affirm (consumer lending), Blend (digital mortgage platform), Archblock (blockchain asset management) and many B2B SaaS tools (Explo, Mosaic, Sourcegraph, etc.). In healthcare, Palantir’s healthcare team spawned startups like Quartet Health (mental health coordination) and Candid Health (revenue cycle automation).
This pattern shows founders leveraging the domain knowledge and contacts they developed at Palantir – essentially continuing to solve the problems they encountered, but now via their own startup. Their unique insight into these complex sectors (government, finance, health) gave them an edge in crafting successful solutions.
Unique Skills and Cultural Traits: Palantir alumni founders share some notable skills and traits that contribute to their success. First, technical excellence is a given – many were top coders or engineers (Palantir’s hiring bar is very high), enabling them to prototype products quickly. Second, problem-solving under pressure: as FDEs or deployers, they often had to deliver results in high-stakes environments (e.g. solving an intelligence analysis problem on-site at an agency, or fixing a critical data integration at a bank). This bred a scrappy, solutions-oriented mindset and comfort with ambiguity, very useful in early-stage startups. Third, they carry forward Palantir’s values of mission focus and big-picture thinking. Palantir’s culture emphasized working on important societal problems (security, fraud, health, etc.), and we see alumni tackling similarly ambitious challenges (e.g. Zenysis addresses global health analytics for governments, Peregrine builds real-time mission software for public safety). Many founders explicitly cite wanting to “scale the impact” of what they did at Palantir by creating more focused products for a broader market.
Additionally, the Palantir network (“Palumni”) provides mentorship and funding – e.g. alumni-founded VC firms like 8VC (Joe Lonsdale) and Founders Fund (Trae Stephens is partner) invest in their peers. This safety net and network undoubtedly encourage risk-taking and knowledge sharing.
Post-Palantir Career Trajectory: It’s also notable that a number of alumni have become serial entrepreneurs or prominent investors after their startup success, creating a virtuous cycle. For instance, Garry Tan, after selling Posterous to Twitter, became a founder of Initialized Capital and now President of Y Combinator – mentoring the next generation of founders (including Palantir alums). Steve Loughlin sold RelateIQ to Salesforce and later joined Accel as a VC, where he has backed new Palantir alumni startups. Joe Lonsdale co-founded multiple companies (Addepar, OpenGov) and then started the 8VC fund that has backed many Palantir mafia companies. This trend underscores a “pay-it-forward” culture among Palantir Mafia – successful alumni often reinvest in or advise newer alumni ventures. For a venture investor evaluating these founders, this means tapping into an ecosystem with strong peer support, experience, and capital. The Palantir alumni cohort has effectively become its own seedbed for startups (sometimes jokingly called “Palumni Ventures”), similar to how the PayPal Mafia operated.
In summary, the founders emerging from Palantir share robust technical and educational backgrounds, a track record of solving real-world problems at Palantir, and deep networks in tech and government. They commonly transition from Palantir roles into startups in related domains, leveraging the unique intersection of skills they developed (software engineering, data analytics, and industry domain expertise). These commonalities have resulted in a wave of well-funded, mission-driven startups. For a venture capital investor, former Palantir employees represent a talent pool with proven ability to build enterprise-grade solutions, navigate complex industries, and attract investment, as evidenced by their collective success.
