8VC

Today we’re sharing an episode from American Optimist featuring Marc Andreessen in conversation with Joe Lonsdale, recorded live at the inaugural Ronald Reagan Economic Forum. They explore one of the most urgent and complex questions of our time: Can AI and robotics catalyze a new era of American industrial strength—and how do we ensure the entire country, including rural communities, shares in the upside? Marc walks through the history of U.S. industrialization, the lessons of tariffs and trade from leaders like McKinley, and how America’s shift to a services-based economy helped fuel our current urban-rural divide. The conversation spans immigration policy, housing, education, energy, and the path to a true AI-powered manufacturing revival—touching on what needs to change and how. This episode is a must-listen for anyone thinking about the future of American productivity, growth, and leadership in the age of AI.   Resources:   Find Marc on X: https://x.com/pmarca Follow Joe on X: https://x.com/jtlonsdale You can find his writings here: https://blog.joelonsdale.com/   Stay Updated:  Let us know what you think: https://ratethispodcast.com/a16z Find a16z on Twitter: https://twitter.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Subscribe on your favorite podcast app: https://a16z.simplecast.com/ Follow our host: https://twitter.com/stephsmithio Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Stay Updated: Find a16z on YouTube: YouTube Find a16z on X Find a16z on LinkedIn Listen to the a16z Show on Spotify Listen to the a16z Show on Apple Podcasts Follow our host: https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

Joe Lonsdale is an entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder of Palantir Technologies. What is Palantir really about? You’ve probably heard the name, but what do they actually do, and who’s the brains behind it? Today, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale joins to break down the company's origins, his story, and where the future of the world is headed. Expect to learn how Joe got Peter Thiel to mentor him, how Joe thinks about ambition and drive, how to avoid cynicism, the advice Joe has for people who want to become best at what they do, if Trump is a mastermind with these tariffs, the biggest problems Joe see’s with higher education at the moment, how to judge a good founder, what the future of warfare looks like, and much more… Timestamps: (00:00) How Joe Identifies Talent In Others (04:48) Lessons Joe Learned From His Mentor (09:39) Having The Skillset To Let Go (12:49) Avoiding Cynicism In A Modern World (16:38) Most Common Challenges Fellow Work Leaders Suffer From (19:10) What Motivated Joe To Co-Found University of Austin (26:42) Biggest Problems To Be Fixed In Higher Education (36:02) Should We Use AI In Education? (43:14) The US Tariff Breakdown (49:37) Concerns Over Global Stability (53:18) What Does The Future Of Warfare Look Like? (01:02:13) Will Human Personnel Remain Important? (01:14:30) Are The Great Men Of History Still Significant In The Modern World? (01:22:28) Research Into Astropolitics (01:27:09) Joe's Future Plans (01:35:04) Where To Find Joe Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a 20% discount on Nomatic’s amazing luggage at https://nomatic.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: This Is How To Master Your Life - David Goggins - #577: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠⁠ How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs - Dr Jordan Peterson - #712: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠⁠ The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain - Dr Andrew Huberman - #700: ⁠⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberma - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

(0:00) The Besties welcome Joe Lonsdale! (3:51) Jason recaps an eventful week in Washington (8:29) Trump's tariffs: endgame, impact, chaos, master plan (26:25) DOGE, IRA grifting, do campaign contributions need to be capped? (53:42) CoreWeave IPO (1:03:36) Trump 2.0 favoring Main Street over Wall Street, bond market breakdown, re-balancing the economy (1:14:19) State of Ukraine/Russia, the Western alliance, and how techno-optimism plays into the future of defense pacts (1:24:31) GPT-4.5, Grok 3 on X, and the Golden Age of language models (1:33:47) All-In for F1 Miami! (1:37:34) David Sacks joins Jason to break down the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile (1:48:30) Sacks addresses clearing all of his crypto-related positions prior to Inauguration Day (1:57:23) Importance of disclosures and updates on a market structure bill GET TICKETS for All-In Live: Miami https://allin.com/events Follow Joe: https://x.com/JTLonsdale Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114093526901586124 https://x.com/JTLonsdale/status/1896245689488920748 https://x.com/Jason/status/1896235076456739138 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114093946326587357 https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-ceo-meet-with-trump-tout-investment-plans-2025-03-03 https://x.com/AutismCapital/status/1896655215899893968 https://x.com/USATODAY/status/1897248477081460849 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-rejects-trump-administrations-bid-avoid-paying-usaid-con-rcna194230 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114116432894994278 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114112015891353323 https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/trump-auto-tariff-rate-will-be-around-25-2025-02-18 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/USGOVT https://x.com/DOGE/status/1897464303428755692 https://electrek.co/2025/02/07/renewables-90-percent-new-us-capacity-2024-ferc https://www.thefp.com/p/a-20-billion-slush-fund-nonprofits https://x.com/bariweiss/status/1896992192197013888 https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114117008305421663 https://x.com/chamath/status/1895948351516131515 https://x.com/chamath/status/1895948351516131515 https://x.com/unusual_whales/status/1897737394964906437 https://x.com/great_martis/status/1897194563800064153 https://x.com/great_martis/status/1897581115952804248 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1769628/000119312525044231/d899798ds1.htm https://x.com/chamath/status/1896052861500604884 https://www.newsweek.com/map-global-thorium-reserves-country-2039893 https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-stockpile-6f1314f5e99bbf47cc3ee6fc6178588d https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/strengthening-american-leadership-in-digital-financial-technology https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/establishment-of-the-strategic-bitcoin-reserveand-united-states-digital-asset-stockpile https://x.com/dmartkc/status/1896260059640025113 https://x.com/ryangrim/status/1896306748052623852 https://x.com/_Andre_Ellis/status/1896935969041104981 https://x.com/KyleSamani/status/1897130321021411750 https://x.com/pbartstephens/status/1897008176467468349 https://x.com/HHorsley/status/1897461451675328879

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

(0:00) Bestie announcement! (2:53) Gavin Baker and Joe Lonsdale join the show (4:14) State of the Trump Bump: Debt focus, Deregulation, America's lucky position (20:08) Trump nominates Paul Atkins as SEC Chair, replacing Gary Gensler: What this means for crypto and other markets (41:07) Thoughts on Michael Saylor's Bitcoin play, state of defense tech, and the US/China AI competition (49:25) xAI's massive GPU cluster, expanding to 1M GPUs, how Grok 3 will test AI scaling laws, and what's next (1:08:28) UnitedHealth CEO murdered, reactions Get virtual tickets for The All-In Holiday Spectacular!: https://allin.com/events Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow Gavin Baker: https://x.com/GavinSBaker Follow Joe Lonsdale: https://x.com/JTLonsdale Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://x.com/TheZachEffect Referenced in the show: https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/113603133222686186 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/04/business/trump-sec-paul-atkins.html https://x.com/davidmarcus/status/1862654506774810641 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-12-05/convertible-bond-arbs-are-making-microstrategy-wall-street-s-hottest-trade https://www.ft.com/content/9c0516cf-dd12-4665-aa22-712de854fe2f https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/12/04/nyregion/brian-thompson-uhc-ceo-shot https://abcnews.go.com/US/man-shot-chest-midtown-manhattan-masked-gunman-large/story?id=116446382&cid=social_twitter_abcn https://nypost.com/2024/12/06/media/taylor-lorenz-defends-unitedhealthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-jokes

Gavin Baker

Managing Partner & CIO, Atreides Management

Atreides Management

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

Episode 578: Shaan Puri ( https://twitter.com/ShaanVP ) sits down with Joe Lonsdale ( https://twitter.com/JTLonsdale ) to talk about how he leveraged one internship at PayPal into one billion dollar success after another. Today Joe is Managing Partner of 8VC and an early investor in Anduril. Want to see Sam and Shaan’s smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 — Show Notes: (0:00) The One Reason strategy (3:18) Learning Global Macro Finance from Peter Thiel (5:35) Taking multi-million dollar bets at 4:30am (8:43) Hire for raw IQ over expertise (10:33) Nurturing employees into unicorn founders (12:24) Solving hard problems with Addepar (13:53) Always “Being on” (15:32) How to spot opportunities for new businesses (21:10) How Epirus landed a military defense contract (27:09) Getting hits in hard domains (28:24) Business Idea: AI-powered Estate Planning (29:19) Business Idea: Business Process Outsourcing for local government (30:58) Big swings vs. base hits (31:49) Idea vs. execution (32:38) Focus vs. diversity of thought/attention (33:33) Insights from Elon’s inner circle (35:36) Joe Lonsdale’s unfair advantages (38:48) How to invest your time to make your first $1M (40:40) Working on an A+ problem as an intern at PayPal (43:15) Be within 2 standard deviations of top talent (44:14) Early days at Palantir (46:56) Building a top engineering culture (48:31) Borrowing trust as 21-year old defense contractor (52:22) Peter Thiel’s biggest contrarian bet — Links: • Joe's Twitter - https://twitter.com/JTLonsdale • Joe's blog - https://blog.joelonsdale.com/ • Joe's podcast - https://www.americanoptimist.com/ • 8VC - https://www.8vc.com/ • Addepar - https://addepar.com/  • Palantir - https://www.palantir.com/ • Epirus- https://www.epirusinc.com/ • OpenGov - https://opengov.com/ • Prologis - https://www.prologis.com/ • Lessons from Peter Thiel - https://joelonsdale.com/lessons-peter-thiel/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

Joe Lonsdale is the Founder and Managing Partner at 8VC, an early-stage venture capital firm managing over $6 billion in capital. In 2003, he founded Palantir Technologies. Since then, he has founded over a dozen companies, including Addepar, a wealth management platform helping investors manage over $5 trillion, and OpenGov, recently sold for $1.8BN. In Today's Episode with Joe Lonsdale We Discuss: The Making of a Multi-Unicorn Founder: What was Joe like as a child? How would his parents and teachers have described him? What does Joe know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career? How does Joe view the importance of luck and skill in success? America's New Dawn: Navigating Frontiers and Accountability What did Joe mean by describing America as a "frontier nation"? How does Joe contrast America's frontiers with Europe's social safety nets? How does Joe propose restoring America using the "scalpel over the sledgehammer" approach? How can America introduce accountability to non-profit institutions? What role do for-profit prisons play? Woke Mind Virus Why does Joe consider the Woke Mind Virus a "Bad Postmodern Religion"? Why does Joe see Elon Musk as a key figure in challenging "woke minds"? Why does Joe believe the education system is a core problem? What needs to change? Is it too late to reverse the current state of "woke mind virus"? TikTok, China, Israel: What does Joe believe is the right solution for TikTok's ownership? To what extent is TikTok a danger to American national security? What does Joe predict will happen to China from here? What needs to change? How does Joe predict the next 24 months for the conflict in Israel and Gaza? Investing Lessons: Wish, Palantir and more What are Joe's biggest takeaways from the failing of Wish? What did Joe learn from the failed project with Lady Gaga? How does Joe reflect on when is the right time to sell? How does Joe reflect on his own relationship to money?

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

This talk was recorded LIVE at the All-In Summit in Miami and included slides. To watch on YouTube, check out our All-In Summit playlist: https://bit.ly/aisytplaylist 0:00 Joe Lonsdale speaks about the problem with higher education and the importance of debate/truth-seeking 10:13 Bestie Q&A with Joe: Why Americans feel victimized, what happened in 1971, getting off the gold standard, school choice, starting UATX Follow Joe: https://twitter.com/JTLonsdale Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

First Jason covers the $19M Bored Ape Yacht Club bid on Sotheby's & the Loot NFT collection launched by a Vine co-founder (1:42), and briefly covers Tether being banned from Canadian exchanges (11:07). Then serial founder and investor Joe Lonsdale joins (19:53) to discuss his companies (Palantir, Addepar, OpenGov), his new podcast "American Optimist," what regulations need to be fixed in the US, China's bold moves & more.

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

Joe Lonsdale is a General Partner @ 8VC and in the past has invested in many notable companies including Wish, Oculus, Oscar and Guardant Health. As a result, in both 2016 and 2017, Joe was the youngest member of the Forbes 100 Midas List. Prior to 8VC, Joe co-founded Palantir, one of the world's most impactful multi-billion dollar software companies. Joe also co-founded and serves as Chairman @ Addepar, which has over $1.8 trillion managed on its wealth management technology platform. If that was not enough, Joe is also a founder of Affinity, Anduin and Esper. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Joe made his way into the world of tech and startups, came to co-found Palantir and Addepar and how that led to his founding 8VC? How does Joe believe the study of history makes one a better investor? 2.) Why does Joe believe that the best VCs are company builders? How does Joe think about, evaluate and put into action the incubator model? How does Joe respond to LPs that suggest it is a distraction? How does voting for incubations differ for investment voting? 3.) What does contrarian thinking really mean to Joe? What does Joe do to specifically engender contrarian thinking in the 8VC partnership? What is the relationship between contrarianism and political correctness? How does Joe think about the dangers of woke culture today? 4.) How does Joe advise founders to think through cash burn and runway today? What is going to happen to companies that sacrified growth for gross margin in 1 year? How does Joe advise founders on the balance of sticking to your vision and mission vs knowing when to give up? 5.) Why does Joe think it is important to not just start new companies but new cities also? Despite the insane cost of living, why does Joe believe the Valley has given rise to the insane levels of innovation it has done? Will the dominance of the valley remain over the next decade? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Joe's Fave Book: How Innovation Works, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus Joe's Most Recent Investment: Beacon As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Joe Lonsdale

Co-founder

Palantir8VCPalantir Technologies

Drew Oetting is a Founding Partner @ 8VC, one of Silicon Valley's youngest and most exciting new entrants to the VC market with $425m for their debut fund. In just a few years they have built a portfolio including the likes of Oculus, RelateIQ, previous guest Elad Gil & Color, recent guest Mario @ Oscar and many more incredible companies. As for Drew, previously he served as Chief of Staff to fellow 8VC Founding Partner, Joe Lonsdale and was a two-time Bill Gates Investment Asset Management Fellow. Drew is also an advisor to Living On One, Rubicon Global and is a Founding Board Director @ Affinity Technologies. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Drew made his way from Joe Lonsdale's Chief of Staff to Founding Partner @ 8VC? 2.) Why does Drew believe the way we think of VC today will change? How does the extended period of privatization affect the role of the VC and their relationship to the founder vs the company? 3.) Why does Drew believe that funds make big mistakes in the internal setup of their operation? Why do funds not do a good job of developing talent? What are the problems of funds being internally competitive with deal by deal carry etc? 4.) As a Founding Partner of a $425m fund at 26, what were the challenges of having such a position, earlier than usual? How did Drew overcome them? What advice would Drew give to young people who want an accelerated career path? 5.) Why does Drew believe that "VCs have forgotten their job is to invest in entrepreneurs NOT technologists"? How does Drew determine whether someone has the ability to bridge both technologist and entrepreneur? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Drew's Fave Book: Barbarians At The Gate, Fooled By Randomness Drew's Fave Blog: Dan Primack: Axios As always you can follow Harry & The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. If you are an early stage startup, the right infrastructure and support systems are critical, that is where First Republic is so good. First Republic's resources network and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customise a solid foundation for their business. Why First Republic, well you get to leverage their incredible network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events, you get to count on a single point of contact that will be there for you and your employees, you get access to exclusive events and networking opportunities. Their clients include the likes of Instacart, eShares and Wish just to name a few. Check it out by heading over to innovation.firstrepublic.com Segment allows you to collect data from every platform (mobile, web, server, cloud apps) and load it into Segment. Segment then sends the customer data to your tools and destinations where it can be used most effectively, destinations include email, analytics, warehouses, helpdesks and more. With over 200 sources and destinations on the Segment platform that can empower your team, Segment really is the last integration you will ever do and that is why the world's best companies use segment to drive growth and revenue including Atlassian, New Relic and Crate & Barrel. Simply head over to segment.com to find out more.

Drew Oetting

Founding Partner

8VC