Garry Tan calls passing on Peter Thiel's Palantir offer a multi-billion-dollar error

Garry Tan, now leading Y Combinator, recounted on “The A16z Show” that Peter Thiel invited him to become part of Palantir’s founding team while he was employed at Microsoft. Thiel offered a $70,000 check that would have matched Tan’s salary, but Tan declined, anticipating a promotion that indeed materialized later that year. Palantir, co-founded by Tan’s Stanford Phi Kappa Psi fraternity brothers Joe Lonsdale and Stephen Cohen, has grown into a $420 billion company and created the forward-deployed engineer role now common in big tech.

Tan described the missed opportunity as a “$2-4 billion mistake,” noting he chased what looked hot rather than the long-term potential of his friends’ venture. He likened the choice to an earlier decision to work on Windows Mobile instead of web development, concluding that success often follows unconventional beliefs.