In this interview segment, Joe Lonsdale discusses his philosophy on startup failure and the importance of full commitment. He argues that treating failure as an acceptable, low‑effort outcome often leads to actual failure, whereas giving a venture everything—working obsessively, surrounding oneself with top talent, and iterating relentlessly—makes a failure noble and a learning opportunity. Lonsdale critiques the modern trend of celebrating half‑hearted failures, emphasizing that true entrepreneurial success requires assuming the venture will work and doing whatever it takes to make it happen. He reflects on his own experience before Palantir, noting that while he helped friends during the dot‑com bubble, Palantir was his first full‑time, all‑in effort. He attributes Palantir’s eventual success to hiring smart people and learning from many mistakes, but maintains that the mindset of total commitment is essential and a key factor in his investment decisions.
Chapters
Were there failures right before Palantir of trying to start other things? I see that a little bit differently. I think you want to try a lot of things, and when things aren't working, you want to iterate towards working. But I guess, I think it's this weird thing where it's like you don't want to be afraid of things not working out. You're not going to get eaten by sharks or monsters if your startup fails, but at the same time, I've always really liked the idea that this is something that— working on something that I really, really strongly believe should exist in the world, and I feel is right, and then I'm not gonna let it fail. I don't know, it's like if you go into something thinking that failure is acceptable, there's a good chance you're gonna fail, is my view. Got it. So it's just success is what you want. There's nothing wrong with it if you don't succeed, and it's noble for trying, but I think it depends on how you tried. If you tried in kind of a half-hearted way, and you were out at the bar on the weekends, and you were kind of like also doing something else at the same time, That's just a failure because you failed and you didn't try hard enough. If you fail because you gave it everything you have, and you were obsessed, and you skipped weekends, and you brought in your smartest friends, and you tried everything you absolutely could, and then it still failed, I think that's a noble effort, and you can learn from that, and you go on. But so many people nowadays celebrate failure, and it's like, oh, well, I did this and I failed, and I'm like, well, you gave it a C-minus effort, so I'm not gonna congratulate you for that. So was Palantir the first startup Was it, I guess, the first idea that you gave it your all, or were there other things before that that you— When I was in high school, my friends were building companies during the bubble, and I helped with them, but I never was full-time on anything like that until Palantir, I guess I'd say. So I got lucky that— I mean, there's a lot of mistakes we made, and we're still able to make it work because we had the right people supporting us, because we had so many smart people we hired, I think. So I think you always are going to make lots of mistakes and do lots of dumb things. And we were lucky that it ended up working out. I don't think there's anything wrong with giving it your all and it didn't work out. But I think I don't love quite how much we're celebrating failure these days. Got it. I think you have to assume, like, this is going to work no matter what, and I'm going to do whatever I can to make it work. And that's the kind of person I want to invest in.
