"The Dekas idea in the in-person is like energy. Like if you don't if you're not like lit on fire, like I'm just like looking at your face, studying you, like are they are they like, you know, kind of animate like like not cartoonishly, but like are they turned on, turned on by their own idea or not? Like, do you believe that? Why should I believe it?"

"I like to just kind of set it up in like what I call like waves. So like I you know, let's let's make a list of thirty VC firms or whatever and let's put them in like waves of like eight to ten, and then I'm gonna like email the first eight to ten wave... without like being overwhelmed with like 30 tickets at once... so it's like a way I would call it like a slow boil. I'm I'm not a big fan of like pressure tactics, but you can add a little bit of structure to it."

"Go have dinner with people and like, you know, if you drink wine, have a glass of wine and talk about your childhood and make them talk about their childhood. This is my secret. I'll give it away... and then the mistake is to optimize for valuation and to cut off everything I just said because now you will get the money... but now you have this person who's not like a mission or values aligned."

"I think because like in my opinion, it's like the first ten hires dictate the outcome of the company. It's like that severe... I'd be like less on the founder's equity, more on the early employee equity, and now you have partners... Like if you own like over 30% of your company, like that's a negative for me."

"Palantir got its first revenue check the fourth year in the company. So we had three years of no revenue, and the first revenue check was for a hundred thousand dollars... we're in the basement because we couldn't afford the regular level... Everyone kinda goes through it, it's a rite of passage, you'll just make you stronger."