Why Palantir Cofounder Joe Lonsdale Left California for Texas

04/03/24 • 55 min

The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

Joe Lonsdale is a co-founder of the data analytics firm Palantir; OpenGov, which provides cloud software services for governments; and the University of Austin, which seeks to reform higher education. He's the managing partner of 8VC, a tech and life sciences venture capital fund, and is chairman of the board of the Cicero Institute, a nonprofit working to "restore liberty, accountability, and innovation in American governance."

Reason's Nick Gillespie asked Lonsdale why he relocated to Texas from California, how to curb government overreach while providing essential services, his goals for his podcast American Optimist, and his 2020 article, "Libertarianism is Dysfunctional, but Liberty is Great."

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This interview has been condensed edited for style and clarity.

Nick Gillespie: Your venture capital firm is called 8VC. What is that referring to?

Joe Lonsdale: Originally, we had a firm called Formation 8 with some Korean partners, and they took formation, I took eight. Eight's a lucky number in Asia. It's a lucky number actually in Judaism. It kind of represents beyond the seven days. So you can see infinity is tied to eight. It's a lucky number. You have to have lucky numbers.

Gillespie: And does it tie into the history of Silicon Valley at all?

Lonsdale: It does as well. We talk about waves of innovation in Silicon Valley. And the second big wave of innovation was the semiconductor wave. That's why it's called Silicon Valley, because of the silicon wafer. One of the three Nobel Prize winners who invented the transistor, [William] Shockley, he brought eight of the most impressive people he could find to Silicon Valley. And it turned out he was a great scientist but a terrible boss. And he kept giving them lie detector tests. And finally, they left and said enough of this, we're doing our own [thing]. And they got someone else to back them called [Sherman] Fairchild. So they built Fairchild Semiconductor. And those eight people at Fairchild Semiconductor, it was [Gordon] Moore of Moore's Law, it was Eugene Kleiner of Kleiner Perkins. It was the guys who built a lot of Silicon Valley. So it really pays homage to the history of the tech sector.

Gillespie: And then Shockley, just to cap that story, ended his career by promoting scientific racism.

Lonsdale: It's not ideal, I suppose. So yeah, at least fortunately, we're on the side of the eight people who didn't work for him anyway.

Gillespie: When did you move to Texas?

Lonsdale: 2020.

Gillespie: Good time to move. Good time to buy, I suppose. But you left California. You were raised in California. You went to school in California. You've thrived in California. You co-founded Palantir in California. Why did you move to Texas? And what does that say about governance strategies?

Lonsdale: There are a lot of things California has ...

Today's sponsors:

CSN Mint has been providing certified U.S. Mint collectible coins and precious metals for over 20 years, and it is one of the most trusted names in numismatics. Explore CSN Mint's extensive catalog of bullion bars, coins, and numismatic collectibles. At CSN Mint, every product you purchase includes the original certificate of authenticity or is certified and graded by a third-party grader to ensure origin and purity. And you'll get world-class customer service and support with CSN Mint. Go to CSNMint.com/interview and use the promo code INTERVIEW at checkout to get a free Silver American Eagle—over $30 in value—with your purchase of $75 or more.
"3 Takeaways" It's a top 2% global podcast, and for good reason. 3 Takeaways bring you conversations with people who are changing the world. In each episode, a newsmaker talks about lessons they've learned—whether in the halls of power, the corner office, or the research lab. Plus they share three key insights to help you understand the world in new ways. You'll hear revealing talks with people such as former Secretaries of the Treasury and Homeland Security, Nobel prize winners, former Prime Ministers, past CEOs of Google and American Express, and a former Chief of MI6 and many others. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

This interview has been condensed edited for style and clarity.

Nick Gillespie: Your venture capital firm is called 8VC. What is that referring to?

Gillespie: And does it tie into the history of Silicon Valley at all?

Gillespie: And then Shockley, just to cap that story, ended his career by promoting scientific racism.

Lonsdale: It's not ideal, I suppose. So yeah, at least fortunately, we're on the side of the eight people who didn't work for him anyway.

Gillespie: When did you move to Texas?

Lonsdale: 2020.

Lonsdale: There are a lot of things California has ...

Previous Episode

Steven Pinker: What Went Wrong at Harvard

Psychologist and bestselling author Steven Pinker is one of the leading defenders of academic freedom and liberal values of limited government, secularism, tolerance, and free enterprise.

A year ago, he helped found the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, "a faculty organization to advocate for the free and civil exchange of ideas inside and outside the classroom." In the wake of the reaction by the campus left to the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, he published "A Five-Point Plan To Save Harvard from Itself" in The Boston Globe. His ultra-influential home institution, he wrote, "is now the place where using the wrong pronoun is a hanging offense but calling for another Holocaust depends on context." Reason's Nick Gillespie and Pinker discuss if higher education is doomed, why so many people on the right and left are skeptical about moral and material progress, and how his "stereoscopic" photography fits into his larger worldview.

Previous appearances:

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Nick Gillespie: Last December, you published an op-ed titled "A Five-Point Plan to Save Harvard from Itself" in The Boston Globe . You wrote that Harvard is now the place where using the wrong pronoun is a hanging offense, but calling for another Holocaust depends on context, and that deplorable speech should be refuted, not criminalized. But you also note that outlawing hate speech would only result in students calling anything they didn't want to hear hate speech. Can you bring us up to date on the climate at Harvard?

Steven Pinker: Harvard is a big place. There is a diversity of opinion in co-founding the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard. There was a rush of faculty joining us, but still a small percentage of the faculty, many of them vocal, many of them for the first time had an opportunity to just communicate with themselves across the sprawling, multiple campuses at Harvard. Many are upset at the direction that Harvard and other elite universities have taken in restricting the range of expressible opinions to a pretty narrow slice of the spectrum, to criminalizing certain opinions, to ...

Next Episode

Abigail Shrier: Stop Obsessing Over Our Children's Happiness

Abigail Shrier is author of the best-selling new book Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up. She argues that the mental health of Gen Z—people born between 1997 and 2012—is a mess because an infantilizing therapeutic culture pervades every aspect of their lives.

Shrier stresses that she's not against psychological counseling and help per se, but she believes too many unqualified and misguided people are causing far more problems than they solve.

Her previous book was the controversial Irreversible Damage, which looked at the rapid rise of girls identifying as transgender. We talk about the roots of today's therapeutic culture, the extent of the problems it causes, and how parents, teachers, and young people themselves might find a better way forward.

Previous appearance:

Abigail Shrier: Trans Activists, Cancel Culture, and the Future of Free Expression, July 7, 2021

Today's sponsor:

"3 Takeaways" It's a top 2 percent global podcast, and for good reason. 3 Takeaways bring you conversations with people who are changing the world. In each episode, a newsmaker talks about lessons they've learned—whether in the halls of power, the corner office, or the research lab. Plus they share three key insights to help you understand the world in new ways. You'll hear revealing talks with people such as former Secretaries of the Treasury and Homeland Security, Nobel prize winners, former Prime Ministers, past CEOs of Google and American Express, and a former Chief of MI6 and many others. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

This interview has been condensed edited for style and clarity.

Nick Gillespie: The new book is Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren't Growing Up . Can you give us the elevator pitch for Bad Therapy ?

Abigail Shrier: So I always start a book with a question, and my question was, why are the kids who've gotten the most mental health resources, had the most therapy, the most diagnoses, the most psych meds, the most wellness tips, the most coping tips, etc. They should be the picture of mental health. Instead, they're the picture of despair. And I wanted to know why.

And I also wanted to know why they have no interest in growing up. Why weren't they looking to move out of their parents' house? A larger percentage of them are living at home more than ever before, even with our low unemployment. Why are they putting off getting a driver's license or claiming that driving is scary? Boys over 17 are saying this. So, those were my two questions, and I found that they were related.

Gillespie: A couple of the big points that you make, which I think are really good and interesting and important, is that all medical interventions or any kind of interaction with a doctor of any stripe, they have the potential for negatives. Explain how that kind of intersects with the topic here.

Shrier: So there's this concept called iatrogenesis, which is a Greek word meaning when the healer introduces harms. What I want people to know is that any intervention, no matter how good, if it is efficacious, if it has the power to help, also necessarily has the power to harm. If it can do anything at all, then of course it can harm. So Tylenol, which is wonderful, can damage your liver if you take too much of it. X-rays. But what people might not know is that therapy, which also has the power to help, can harm as well.

Gillespie: For the context of the book, you're talking about Gen Z, but also kids who are in school now and are dealing with a much more therapeutic culture generally than you or I grew up with. Kids are different from adults. How does that factor into your book?

Shrier: A number of ways. When an adult goes to therapy, an adult first of all makes the decision, I want to work on this or I need the support. I know myself and I need this. You have their buy-in, the therapist has their buy-in, and they show up ready to work. Number two, they've lived enough life that if the therapist is a little off track, or maybe the therapist got the wrong impression, an adult can say, "You know what? I really think I gave you the wrong impression of my mom." Or "Look, my parents were difficult in that regard, but I wouldn't call them toxic. And I don't think breaking off with them is the right move."

It's very hard for a teenager or...