Yeah, this is the first time I've seen anything about mortgages on HN. It's surprising considering the enormous amount of technical opportunity in the mortgage world right now.
At Blend (https://blendlabs.com/), we're working on a modern mortgage lending platform. For anyone who is interested in this, I'd love to chat!
The last 10 years saw a massive boom in the US real estate market fueled by troubled loans buyers couldn’t afford. An even larger bust followed, with losses of $2.8 trillion along with the homes of more than 14 million Americans. While the economy has since improved, many processes within the mortgage industry have not. Gains have been made primarily in paperwork and manpower, not technology. Operations remain manual and slow and consumers are not happy.
At Blend, we're fixing these problems by replacing the archaic software currently in use at lending institutions with a modern system. We're applying today's data analysis tools and consumer-grade UI/UX to streamline home lending for both borrowers and banks and make the entire process more transparent.
Our team of 20 includes engineers formerly at Palantir, Google, Stanford, MIT, CMU, and Caltech, and we're backed by Peter Thiel, Formation 8, Andreessen Horowitz, Max Levchin, and Lightspeed Ventures. Our stack includes NodeJS, Spark, AngularJS, Python, and ElasticSearch.
The last 10 years saw a massive boom in the US real estate market fueled by troubled loans buyers couldn’t afford. An even larger, chaotic bust followed, with losses of $2.8 trillion, along with the homes of more than 14 million Americans. While the economy has since improved, many processes within the mortgage industry have not. Gains have been made primarily in paperwork and manpower, not technology. Operations remain manual and slow and consumers are not happy.
At Blend, we're fixing these problems by replacing the archaic software and manual processes currently used for home lending. We're applying modern data analysis tools and consumer-grade UI/UX to streamline home lending for both borrowers and banks and make the entire process more transparent.
Our team of 20 includes engineers formerly at Palantir, Google, Stanford, CMU, and Caltech. We're backed by Peter Thiel, Formation 8, Andreessen Horowitz, Max Levchin, Lightspeed Ventures, and other prominent investors. Our stack includes NodeJS, Spark, AngularJS, ElasticSearch, and Golang.
I graduated from CMU about two years ago. Here are some of the things my peers from CMU have worked on (playing significant roles) based on what they learned in classes like OS, compilers, and algorithms.
- Facebook's PHP compiler.
- VMWare's ESX network kernel.
- iPhone hardware and firmware.
- Qualcomm's Linux distribution.
- Citadel's trading algorithms and execution platforms.
I constantly draw on my coursework in compilers, programming languages, and OS in my work on the Palantir Finance platform.
CMU's CS program prepares you work on problems that are truly technically challenging -- problems that require deep technical knowledge and that often take a large investment to implement. Small startups rarely have the staff and time horizon to invest in creating systems that require technical skills beyond the ability to use an API. So if you work at a small startup that doesn't have the capacity to invest in custom low-level solutions, don't be surprised if your CS skills are not utilized.
They said the same thing at my CMU orientation in 2005. To be fair, they don't mention how many students with perfect SAT scores and GPAs they accept (I met many as an undergrad, and I'm sure many of those accepted chose other schools). The percentage rejected is more interesting.
This is like telling someone 3-4 years ago to work at Google instead of Facebook. The people who joined Facebook then, before the brand carried any weight, came out way ahead.
Well, yeah, but it's also like telling someone 3-4 years ago to work at Google instead of Digg. The people who worked at Digg, now that the brand doesn't carry much weight, ain't doing so hot.
The problem with betting on an unknown is that you're betting. The returns can be high, but so are the risks. If you're comfortable with those risks, it can be very lucrative. But it can just as easily go south.
So you're saying that working at Palantir is a bet on either world governments or the finance industry not collapsing. Given the bailouts and the fact that Palantir is targeting governments all over the world, I'd say that's a pretty good bet.
To clarify, Palantir isn't a data-mining company. Palantir makes tools that streamline the process of analyzing large datasets for professional, often non-technical analysts in government and finance institutions.
Working with founders from acquired companies is not a great way to meet co-founders. First, many will have already "made it" and won't have the same drive that they once had. Second, if they do, they'll prefer to work (and socialize with) with other people who are like them -- other successful founders. Maybe they'll let you be an employee at their new startup.
Palantir is full of people who are itching to start a company, and we'll see dozens of startups by Palantir alums after Palantir exits (it's already happening; see posterous.com). The founders of these companies will have unique experience and connections in government and finance, giving them the option to target enterprise problems instead of entering the over-crowded consumer startup scene.
As far as reputation among Silicon Valley investors, having worked at Palantir will look at least as good as having worked at Facebook or Google over the next few years, especially now that Facebook and Google are already big and successful. Joining Facebook or Google today is relatively lazy; it's not as impressive to join a company that's already hugely successful as it is to join a company and contribute to making it successful. Assuming a choice between Palantir and Facebook, an entrepreneurial person with confidence in his/her ability to make a company successful will join Palantir.
Palantir is a data-mining company. They make tools to analyze datasets, but in reality, you need to understand data in order to present it well. The skills involved here are all specialized to data-mining. Since you work there, I'm sure there's obviously going to be some bias in your arguments :-). At least I'm seeing both companies from an objective viewpoint here.
Working with founders from acquired companies is actually a great way to meet co-founders. Most founders post-acquisition usually start new companies after their vest-in-rest.
Doing an enterprise startup relies heavily on sales. Having worked at an enterprise startup does not necessarily give you the skills needed for your next enterprise startup unless you're the guy doing sales.
As far as reputation goes, the reason facebook & google are stronger with investors have little to do with the mindset of employees at google, and more to do with the types of people google/facebook might hire.
You might be the smartest guy at USC, but investors would still choose the harvard grad over you. We all wish that logic & intelligence would triumph over the good ol' boys network from ivy league schools, but investors rarely go with logic. The only way you would seem more favorable than a team with all ivy league alums is if your project has good traction, or if you have a past track record. Palantir may have smarter people than Facebook, but investors don't care.
Typically employees from large companies like Google/Facebook typically know enough alumni there to help their next company be re-acquired by the company they left.
The original question was which company is better to work for if you want to work for a startup later and I believe some of your arguments are more general reasons why you'd want to work for company X over company Y.
At Blend (https://blendlabs.com/), we're working on a modern mortgage lending platform. For anyone who is interested in this, I'd love to chat!