Productivity, Innovation, and the New American Golden Age with Joe Lonsdale

Jon Hartley and Joe Lonsdale discuss Joe’s career, co-founding Palantir, Addepar, and OpenGov, venture capital investing, defense tech, DOGE, Elon Musk, regulation, and the prospects for generative artificial intelligence.
Recorded on December 12, 2024.
For more details on this episode, visit: www.hoover.org...
ABOUT THE GUEST SPEAKER:
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 (NYSE:PLTR), a global software company known for its work supporting US and its allies’ defense and intelligence. Since then, he has founded more than a dozen prominent companies, including Addepar, a wealth management platform with about $5 trillion, and OpenGov, the leading cloud software provider for local governments. He continues to create and scale companies through the 8VC Build program.
As an investor, Joe was an early backer of companies like Anduril Industries, Oculus (acq.FB), Guardant Health (NASDAQ:GH), Oscar (NYSE:OSCR), Illumio, Wish (NASDAQ:WISH), JoyTunes, Blend (NYSE:BLND), Flexport, Joby Aviation (NYSE:JOBY), Orca Bio, Qualia, Synthego, RelateIQ (acq. CRM), Yugabyte, and others.
Joe and his wife Tayler are active in a variety of philanthropic and institutional pursuits. In 2018, they founded the non-partisan Cicero Institute, which crafts and advances policies to promote effective and accountable governance, and is now successfully battling special interests with teams in over a dozen states. In 2021, Joe became the founding chairman of the board of the University of Austin(UATX), a new university dedicated to restoring the pursuit of truth in higher education. He also sits on the board of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute. ​
Joe, Tayler, and their four daughters live in Austin, TX.
ABOUT THE SERIES:
Each episode of Capitalism and Freedom in the 21st Century, a video podcast series and the official podcast of the Hoover Economic Policy Working Group, focuses on getting into the weeds of economics, finance, and public policy on important current topics through one-on-one interviews. Host Jon Hartley asks guests about their main ideas and contributions to academic research and policy. The podcast is titled after Milton Friedman‘s famous 1962 bestselling book Capitalism and Freedom, which after 60 years, remains prescient from its focus on various topics which are now at the forefront of economic debates, such as monetary policy and inflation, fiscal policy, occupational licensing, education vouchers, income share agreements, the distribution of income, and negative income taxes, among many other topics.
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[@itn-nq5tn]

DOGE is such a brilliant idea, efficiency, excellence, integrity, safety, Prosperity and provisions is what needed in a developed system

[@JJJmancoolboy11]

I love Joe Lonsdale< i got sooorich from taking his advise. He is Genius.

[@itn-nq5tn]

Taxation Mechanisms, Fight Corruption, get rid of Crony Capitalism, Stop Mass Migration, Fight Crime, Bureaucracy, Marxism Socialism Communism.

[@adamoliver4094]

The discussion about people in tech now working in areas that are highly impacted and captured by government regulations causing a political adjustment is something i hadn't thought about. It rings true however. I've worked in heavily regulated industries and I've seen it change the pre held beliefs of myself and coworkers.

[@VincentFulco]

These guys are geniuses but would not be a lot of fun to hang around and relax with. Turbo mode thinking all the time? I bet ya these guys never turn off.

[@JJJmancoolboy11]

But Marc Adreesen. He's God and Elon Musk; the return of the Messiah and I love Hitchens go figure