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Comment by Brajeshwar

6 hours ago

Sometime back, someone described in a way that was interesting to read. So, I bookmarked it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44896367

Reproducing it verbatim;

“Palantir is a tech platform that consumes data from their clients in return for providing high level data-driven insights. They assign FDEs (or consultants) to really learn the details of a customers data. Foundry allows them to get single pane view of the data in an org and they actually have both the tech and engineering skills to do the dirty data cleaning jobs.

For an extravagant fee, you give them your data, they clean it for you, and then those same FDEs can tell you interesting things that you should have known, had you actually done proper data architecture in the first place.”

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Brajeshwar

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datsci_est_2015  5 hours ago

They’re also missing the tidbit that, like any other consultancy, they provide a means for laundering a conclusion that middle management has already come to, confirmation bias be damned. Unsurprising that they’re also useful for parallel construction for LEOs.

basket_horse  3 hours ago

This is a somewhat misleading description.

The first half is true. They bring in their FDEs to clean and organize your data.

But the difference in what they leave behind is what separates them from classic consultancies and pure tech companies.

They don't leave behind "insights." They leave behind a suite of operational (ie have write capabilities not just dashboards) applications that are "custom" built to actually solve those insights. I put custom in quotes because while the applications are usually bespoke to your company, they are built in Palantir's app-building product Workshop, which significantly lowers the cost of building these custom apps.

https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry/workshop/overview

So in the end, your company's processes are improved because your employees are using the apps that the FDE's built.

This is distinct from traditional consultancies because those will only leave behind the insights. Also distinct from most SaaS because those have a one-size-fits all approach, so you wind up having to change your company to fit the design of the application, where as Palantir builds its applications to fit your company.