1. Joe Lonsdale co-founded companies including Palantir Technologies, Addepar, and OpenGov, and co-founded and serves as the managing partner at the technology investment firm 8VC.
34 Facts About Joe Lonsdale
1. 2.
Joe Lonsdale began his career as an intern at PayPal, then worked as an early executive at Clarium Capital, a hedge fund run by Joe Lonsdale's mentor, Peter Thiel.
3.
Joe Lonsdale left Palantir in 2009 and co-founded Addepar, a wealth management technology company.
4.
Joe Lonsdale co-founded the venture capital firm Formation 8 in 2011, and another called 8VC in 2015.
5.
Joe Lonsdale has been outspoken about politics, and is an active Republican donor and fundraiser.
6.
Joe Lonsdale founded the conservative Cicero Institute think tank, and co-founded the private University of Austin.
7.
Joe Lonsdale's father was Irish Catholic, and he was raised Jewish by his mother.
8.
Joe Lonsdale has described his family as "very, very competitive".
9.
Joe Lonsdale graduated from Stanford University in 2004 with a degree in computer science.
10.
Joe Lonsdale interned at the financial technology firm PayPal while at Stanford.
11.
Joe Lonsdale did not know Thiel well while at PayPal, but the internship helped Lonsdale get a job as an early executive at another of Thiel's companies, the hedge fund Clarium Capital.
12.
In 2004, Joe Lonsdale began working on a prototype for the data mining and defense technology company Palantir Technologies, which he cofounded along with Thiel, Alex Karp, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings.
13.
Joe Lonsdale aimed to apply the types of big data and data analytics techniques used for fraud detection at PayPal to national security, military, and law enforcement problems.
14.
Joe Lonsdale made much of his fortune at Palantir, which was valued at $1billion by 2010.
15.
Joe Lonsdale left Palantir in 2009, though he continued to hold an advisory role and a stake in the company.
16.
Joe Lonsdale co-founded Addepar, a wealth management and data analytics platform, in 2009 with Jason Mirra.
17.
In 2013, Joe Lonsdale became chairman and left his role as CEO.
18.
Joe Lonsdale was chairman of the board until 2024, when the company was acquired by Cox Enterprises.
19.
Joe Lonsdale co-founded and serves on the boards of Affinity, Anduin, Epirus, Esper, Hearth, LIT, Resilience Bio, and Swiftscale Bio.
20.
Joe Lonsdale went on to raise a second, $500million fund in December 2014.
21.
Joe Lonsdale had grown concerned about Koo's investments in Asia, including his failed attempt to create a Korean presence for Wish that was ultimately viewed by Wish's CEO to be a competitor.
22.
In 2015, shortly after the breakup of Formation 8, Joe Lonsdale co-founded 8VC with 15 of the 25 employees from Formation 8.
23.
Originally based in San Francisco, Joe Lonsdale relocated the firm's headquarters to Austin, Texas in 2020, shortly after moving there with his family.
24.
Joe Lonsdale was described as "lean[ing] right" and a "politically conservative contrarian" in Business Insider in 2017.
25.
Joe Lonsdale founded the Cicero Institute conservative think tank in 2016, and he runs it along with his wife, Tayler.
26.
In November 2020, Joe Lonsdale announced that he was moving his family, 8VC, and the Cicero Institute from the Bay Area to Austin, Texas.
27.
Joe Lonsdale is an active Republican political donor and fundraiser, and has been involved with the Koch network.
28.
In 2024, Joe Lonsdale joined Douglas Leone, David O Sacks, and other venture capitalists and tech executives in supporting Elon Musk's America PAC, a super PAC backing Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.
29.
Joe Lonsdale has been described as a friend and "political confidant" of Musk's.
30.
Joe Lonsdale reached a settlement with Stanford for an undisclosed amount, and Stanford banned Lonsdale from campus for ten years after reopening their previous investigation.
31.
Joe Lonsdale reportedly offered Clougherty a settlement, but she refused it after objecting to a blanket non-disclosure agreement.
32.
Joe Lonsdale denied the allegations against him, and created a website containing a denial statement and excerpts of their correspondence.
33.
In November 2015, Clougherty dropped her lawsuit, and Joe Lonsdale dropped his countersuit.
34.
Tayler, like Joe Lonsdale, edited the Stanford Review while attending Stanford, and later worked at Palantir.