20VC: Palantir CTO on The Broken Incentive Structure of How Governments Buy Defence, The Danger of Defence Spending at Historic Lows, How Elections and Wars Change Government Defence Buying & Why Budgets are Anti-Creative with Shyam Sankar

Shyam Sankar is Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Palantir Technologies in addition to the Chairman of Ginkgo Bioworks. Shyam holds a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University and a M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.

In Today’s Episode with Shyam Sankar:

1. Journey to the Top of Defence:

• How did Shyam make his way into the world of startups and get a role with Kevin Hartz at Xoom?

• How did seeing Shyam’s parents lose everything impact his mindset and drive?

• What does Shyam know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career?

2. How the World’s Governments Buy Defence:

• What is the playbook for selling defence to different governments?

• Why is the way that governments purchase and procure so broken?

• If Shyam were head of the DOD, what would he change?

• Why does the DOD “need to pick winners”?

• Which governments are the best to work with? Which are the worst?

3. A World In Conflict: What Changes:

• How does conflict change the buying process and urgency for governments?

• How do elections change the buying cadence and process for different governments?

• Looking forward to 2024, how does Shyam predict the state of different global conflicts?

4. Hiring 101: You Have To Hire Artists:

• What have been Shyam’s single biggest lessons on what it takes to hire the best of the best?

• Why does Shyam believe that hiring great people is like talent management in Hollywood?

• Why does Shyam believe talent should be “shielded from budgets”?

• What have been some of Shyam’s biggest hiring mistakes? How did he learn from them?