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Palantir\u2019s CEO Alex Karp is famously unorthodox\u2014and that applies to everything from his fitness regime<\/a> to his hiring strategy. <\/p>\n Karp, estimated by Forbes<\/a> to be worth $3.4 billion, built his fortune in the mysterious world of big data analytics, supplying services to defense and intelligence agencies<\/a>. <\/p>\n In addition to shaping the\u00a0shadowy world of intelligence,<\/a>\u00a0the founder-CEO keeps himself incredibly busy during his spare time.<\/span><\/p>\n Last year Karp revealed he skis five hours a day, runs \u201clike a deer\u201d and also practices tai chi. Yet these pressures haven\u2019t stopped him personally intervening in the hiring process for his $72 billion organization.<\/a><\/p>\n The CEO enjoys meeting prospective employees himself and reportedly prides himself on hiring or discarding a candidate within two minutes of meeting them.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of my populist-left politics actually bleed into my hiring stuff,\u201d Karp told The New York Times<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you ask the question that the Stanford, Harvard, Yale person has answered a thousand times, all you\u2019re learning is that the Stanford, Harvard, Yale person has learned to play the game,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n Instead, Karp looks for something less obvious. Even if he gets a theoretically \u2018good\u2019 response from a privileged candidate and a \u2018bad\u2019 answer from \u201cthe child of a mechanic,\u201d he will sometimes choose the latter.<\/p>\n The 56-year-old entrepreneur says he instead searches for the \u201cfeeling like I\u2019m in the presence of talent.\u201d<\/p>\n Karp, who founded the company with\u00a0investment titan Peter Thiel<\/a>\u00a0in 2003 and has around 4,000 employees, also takes<\/span> an unorthodox approach to company culture.<\/p>\n While other Big Tech giants have struggled<\/a> to navigate a corporate approach to social and political issues, Karp has unapologetically shared his views and faced the impact<\/a>. <\/p>\n Karp, a Jewish entrepreneur, has supported Israel during the nation\u2019s conflict with Gaza. In March, he told CNBC that his position as CEO would be worthless if he didn\u2019t stand by his morals.<\/p>\n That being said, he knew there would be consequences to his stand.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve lost employees, I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll lose employees,\u201d Karp maintained. \u201cIf you have a position that does not cost you to ever lose an employee, it\u2019s not a position. It\u2019s some kind of self-pleasuring where the joke is on the other person or the joke is on you.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He added: \u201cWhen you join Palantir and you dedicate your life to Palantir, I am standing in front of the company, the people that run Palantir are standing in front of the company, not promising you to tell you something you want to hear. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re going to get as close to telling you how we see the world as we\u2019re legally and ethically allowed to.\u201d<\/p>\n However, as well as losing staff, Karp said his pro-Israel stance has also won him talent.<\/p>\n Palantir has offered 180 jobs to students who didn\u2019t want to stay on university campuses because of a rise in anti-semitism, which Karp believes will ultimately prove a better career choice anyway. <\/p>\n \u201cPalantir is a much better diploma,\u201d Karp told the Times<\/em>. \u201cHonestly, it\u2019s helping us, because there are very talented people at the Ivy League, and they\u2019re like, \u2018Get me out of here!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Karp adds he is a \u201cprogressive\u201d\u2014a sentiment at odds with some left-wing politicians who would argue Palantir is involved in the business of conflict.<\/p>\n But, like JPMorgan Chase<\/a> CEO Jamie Dimon<\/a>, Karp argues democracy requires economic foundations. <\/p>\n \u201cI want less war. You only stop war by having the best technology and by scaring the bejabers\u2014I\u2019m trying to be nice here\u2014out of our adversaries,\u201d Karp said. \u201cIf they are not scared, they don\u2019t wake up scared, they don\u2019t go to bed scared, they don\u2019t fear that the wrath of America will come down on them, they will attack us. They will attack us everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nWorking at Palantir<\/h2>\n
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