Comment by SilverElfin
5 days ago
At first this shtick of being an offensive irreverent leader was different and new. But when you let that become your entire life and your company’s identity, you risk losing everyone else. Palantir still doesn’t make sense as a company. It’s just a low tier software consultancy that has ties to the current administration to get overpriced contracts. And they’re willing to do all the evil dirty work others will not. So analysts are right to doubt their story. And it’s the job of the CEO to convince them with real information not insults.
It's also ironic for a self described "classic liberal" building a company which grows the power of the government instead of limiting it. Alex Karp must have deep cognitive dissonance and likely suffers for it.
Palantir itself is trading at an unjustifiable premium given their fundamentals. They P/E is north of 200x. It's forward guidance also doesn't justify their price imo.
So their beef with analysts is obvious since they have a huge risk to the downside in price. The recent pullback of around 21% is not sufficient in my opinion. Note this is not financial advice.
> It's also ironic for a self described "classic liberal" building a company which grows the power of the government instead of limiting it.
I think that he really does see himself as classic liberal in that he really does see government as "limiting" to people like him with things like regulation. Say what you will about the current administration, they're absolutely not going to regulate people who create wealth.
There's a divine right of kings element mixed in here. Thiel, Karp, Trump and the rest really do think that the order of the universe, or the will of a higher power, is putting them in a place to operate without limits. They see any sort of regulation of their behavior as an affront to the order of nature. That's why they consider themselves classically liberal. Ultimately, the little people - that's us - are being illiberal by electing governments that can do things like say "hey, maybe we don't put everyone under constant surveillance" that would both challenge their power and their profitability.
> Alex Karp must have deep cognitive dissonance and likely suffers for it.
Or, he has no qualms about lying.
A huge portion of the "I'm a classical liberal" was always just a smokescreen. It was never an ideology for many of these folks. It was just a "more serious" mechanism of complaining about woke college students.
But they have mid-tier AI and are willing to let it kill.
Karp in particular is just a physical avatar for Thiel (literally, imagine Thiel playing a WoW character called Alex Karp, probably a DH main). You see in the Epstein emails just who owns things, and people like Karp are just truly a virtual representation of an oligarch.
Almost like the thing they say is true, the devil is disguised, but quite apparent … almost brazen. Devil in disguise would be too simple of an explanation, but that is what it truly is.
Trippy times.
Edit:
But to echo the general sentiment, the “cool” super smart ceo shtick who says edgy capitalistic things was always a particularly obnoxious phenomena.
> Palantir still doesn’t make sense as a company.
It makes perfect sense as a company. Low-tier software consultancy that has ties to the most powerful government in the world and can acquire lucrative contracts is an absolutely valid business model.
> And it’s the job of the CEO to convince them with real information not insults.
Why? What happens if the CEO doesn't take the high road? Is Trump going to say "your lack of decorum and decency has lost you the US government as a customer"? Hell no. He's the guy who kicked this sort of schtick off.
The job of the CEO is to create value for shareholders in any way possible. That's where it starts and stops. Right now there's a lot of money in creating a panopticon to be exploited by various governments and well-heeled elites. Karp does this. Therefore he is doing his job.
Is this the logical conclusion of everything people have been saying about reducing government regulation of business since the 1970s? Yeah, but the money was right, so we ignored them.