Lessons from Joe Lonsdale

The World According to Joe Lonsdale: 50 Premier Quotes and Learnings

Joe Lonsdale, a co-founder of Palantir Technologies and Addepar, and the founder of venture capital firm 8VC, is a prominent figure in Silicon Valley known for his contrarian thinking, focus on building mission-driven companies, and advocacy for American optimism. His career, from his early days in the "PayPal Mafia" to becoming a prolific entrepreneur and investor, offers a wealth of insights on creating transformative technology, fixing broken industries, and engaging with critical societal issues.

On Entrepreneurship and Building Companies

Start with the Problem, Not the Product: "What's the need you're solving that's going to like make them happy?"[1]
Entrepreneurship as Cause-Creation: "Entrepreneurship is, in large part, about building something from nothing, which means creating a cause."[2][3]
The Dialectic of a Great Founder: "Being a great founder or early team member is a difficult dialectic - you have to be a bit overconfident, and a big ego isn't always a bad thing. To change the world requires pushing really, really hard and believing you and your team know something others don't."[2]
Find a Unique Way the World is Broken: "Your goal as an entrepreneur is to figure out a way the world is broken and a unique way that you can fix it."[4]
Share Your Idea Early: "Inexperienced entrepreneurs often want to keep their plans secret, but this is never how I've seen any of the great companies get built... Imagine if five people have the same general idea...and one goes and chats with lots of smart people and iterates. Who do you think wins?"[4]
Mission-Driven Companies Attract Top Talent: "When you are attracting the very top technologists to any company these days, it needs to be a mission-driven company that those technologists believe in."[5]
Focus on One Thing: Citing a lesson from Peter Thiel, Lonsdale emphasizes that focus has a convex output curve. "If you think you have 2-5 reasons for doing something, what that means is you actually haven't figured it out. You want to find one really strong reason."[6]
Look for Broken Industries: Instead of competing against the best in crowded markets, Lonsdale advises looking for stagnant, broken industries where innovation can have an outsized impact.[1] "If you're stubborn enough and persistent enough to break in it's actually in some ways easier because you're just going to be so much better than what's already there."[1]
Leadership is Charging to the Front: "I think what a leader does, like what a good king does, is you pick up the sword, you charge the front."[7]
The Importance of Intermediate Milestones: Reflecting on Palantir's early struggles, he advises newer companies to create useful products along the way rather than only aiming for a massive, long-term goal. "Sometimes it's too hard to do all at once."[8]
Crisis as an Opportunity: "It's true that if you step forward as a leader and inspire talent to build alongside you with a solution during tough times, you can achieve things that might otherwise be impossible."[9]
Create Success for Those Around You: "One of the best pieces of advice I got...was that it isn't important to make money myself in the near-term, rather, it is important that I create success for people around me — friends, colleagues, and investors."[4][10]
Don't Compete Against the Best (Directly): Avoid hyper-competitive spaces dominated by the world's smartest people, like foundational AI models, unless you are "Elon." Instead, find a niche where you can excel.[1]
Hire for Talent and Ambition Over Expertise: For building something new, Lonsdale prefers "raw IQ and hard work" over hiring someone who just knows how to run an existing machine.[1]

On Venture Capital and Investing

The Best VCs are Company Builders: Lonsdale believes that investors with operational experience have deeper insights into how companies function and industries evolve.[11][12]
Accessing Private Markets is Crucial: "Today, if you're not accessing private markets, you're gonna get left way behind your returns."[13]
Contrarian Thinking is Key: He emphasizes the importance of disagreeing with the consensus to find unique investment opportunities and has always relished "standing up and disagreeing with everyone."[12][14]
Solve Big, Hard Problems and Financial Returns Will Follow: "When you solve big, hard problems, problems that fundamentally improve how an industry works, financial returns follow, giving you resources to do more of the same."[2]
The Power Law Applies Inside Companies Too: "It's extraordinarily unusual for there to be two equally promising opportunities… Eight revenue streams probably means you don't have one awesome revenue stream."[6]
History Helps Build Frameworks: He finds studying history essential for investing, as it "helps you build frameworks about how the world works."[9]

On Government and Technology

Government is Operationally Outdated: "While the private sector rapidly adopts automation platforms... much of government remains risk-averse and operationally outdated. Things are broken unless you fight for the right answer."[15]
The Proper Role of Government: Lonsdale advocates for limited government intervention, suggesting it should "only intervene where absolutely necessary, allowing innovation to flourish elsewhere."[15]
Fixing Government is a Two-Part Mission: He believes in both building new institutions outside of government and actively working to pass legislation and fix broken systems from within.[16]
Palantir's Origin: "We founded Palantir...because we perceived a giant gap between how the defense and intelligence community was harnessing technology...and what we had seen was possible in Silicon Valley."[17]
Technology to Protect Civil Liberties: The original idea for Palantir included building systems to "watch the watchers," using data effectively while creating safeguards for civil liberties.[8]
Concern Over Cronyism: He has expressed concern over government actions like taking equity stakes in private companies outside of a crisis, warning that it "smacks of 'cronyism.'"[18]
Building a Better Society and Government: Lonsdale is actively involved in organizations like OpenGov and the Cicero Institute to improve government efficiency and transparency.[19][20][21]

On Philosophy, Society, and Optimism

Be an American Optimist: Lonsdale hosts the "American Optimist" podcast to provide an alternative to "fear, cynicism, and zero-sum thinking," believing hope should dominate public discourse.[5][22]
Wealth is Created from the Bottom-Up: "Wealth is only ever actually created from the bottom-up, with free people employing their distinctly human creativity and finding ways to serve and employ others."[2][17]
Productivity Creates Prosperity, Not Jobs: "Jobs do not make society wealthier - productivity does. The only way to create prosperity is to do more with less."[2]
Labor as Service to Others: He views fears of technological unemployment as overblown because "there are really an infinite number of ways to serve and help others." As technology makes some jobs obsolete, it creates new ways to add value.[23]
The Importance of Courage: "I think courage is really important. I think you have to be courageous to go after things that are broken... most people are cowards."[7]
Embrace the Dialectic: "In my experience, it's common that deep truths exist at both extremes of a dialectic, and the wisest stance on an issue will incorporate 'both of the opposites within itself.'"[2]
Stewards of Society: "Our best and brightest must conceive of themselves as stewards of our society and confront the critical challenges of our time."[2]
The Value of Competition: Growing up in a "very, very competitive" family taught him to work hard and take pride in his work.[2][14]
Philosophy Matters in Business: Lonsdale frequently draws on his study of history and philosophy, from Enlightenment thinkers to Stoicism, to inform his approach to building and investing.[15][24][25]
Building New Institutions: He believes many old institutions are broken and that it's necessary to "rebuild a lot of new institutions in our society," such as the University of Austin, which he helped found.[16][20]

On Career and Learning

Get Real Experience at a Great Startup: "Don't go to a big company to learn about how to be a great entrepreneur — go to see an example of what you want to do in action."[4]
Build Strong Skills in Product or Sales: "A great entrepreneur needs to build strong skills around product (+engineering) or marketing (+sales) or both."[4][10]
Silicon Valley as a Learning Hub: "It's not a coincidence that top technology companies are often built in the same area — you learn a huge amount from being part of a top team and seeing a great technology company function firsthand."[4][10]
Self-Actualization Through Work: Referencing thinkers like Maslow and Aristotle, he believes people are happiest when "using your capabilities to the full."[7]
The Accountability of Chess: He likens the clear accountability in chess—"it's all on you if you mess up or not"—to the experience of building a startup.[9]
It's a Good Excuse to Build a Business: "When you have... an area that you realize is broken for you and for people, you know, rather than just build it for yourself, I think it's... a good excuse to build a business around it."[13]
Hard Work Improves the World: "Hard work enables us to improve ourselves and the world around us, to combat injustice, reduce suffering, and increase human freedom."[17]
Every Success is a Bigger Platform: "Every success I have is a bigger platform from which to fight and fix things and so I think we're just getting started."[7]
Why He Left California: Lonsdale moved his firm and family to Austin, Texas, citing California's "bad policies [that] discourage business and innovation" and an "intolerant far left" culture.[14]
Finance as a Social Good: While he finds building companies more satisfying, he sees value in financial markets: "It is good for the world to like price global markets like more accurately... finance is a good thing for the economy."[7]
Understanding Institutional Nature: He credits Palantir co-founder Alex Karp, who studied philosophy, with understanding how to navigate the human and institutional dynamics of selling to large organizations.[1]
AI's Potential in Traditional Industries: Lonsdale is actively investing in companies using AI to transform sectors like construction, believing that "building has become too expensive and too slow."[26]
The Enduring Value of SMBs: He emphasizes that even startups that don't become unicorns provide significant value and are "vital to the fabric of the U.S. economy."[27]

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