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Startups & Venture·August 13, 2026·1 min read

Garry Tan says turning down Peter Thiel's early offer to join Palantir was a $2-4 billion 'mistake'

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Tan framing a career decision as a $2–4B miss is a reminder that early startup equity is a power-law lottery, not a deterministic plan. Founders and early operators should optimize for learning and network in high-variance environments rather than trying to backward-engineer the perfect “Palantir moment.”

Startups & Venture

Lev, the PSL spinout building an ‘AI co-founder’ for startups, names tech vet Jay Bartot as CTO

An experienced startup operator like Jay Bartot joining Lev to build an “AI co-founder” is a bet that early-stage company-building itself is becoming a product surface for AI. Founders should assume LPs and accelerators will push these tools into the stack — decide now which decisions you’re comfortable offloading to an agent and which stay firmly human.