The Early Days of Palantir w/ Andy Aymeloglu, Matt Long, & Mike Shafer

Andy Aymeloglu, Matt Long, and Mike Shafer on Palantir's early days, forward-deployed engineering, and how to save the West. Andy Aymeloglu was Director of Engineering at Palantir Technologies from 2005 to 2015, growing it from a fledgling company to an 1800-person company with offices across the globe; he has since served as VP of Engineering at Hexagon Bio, Alcor member, and Founding Partner at Commit Capital while advising startups in the Bay Area. Matt Long worked as General Counsel for Palantir from 2009 to 2022 before transitioning to General Counsel for Astranis Space Technologies; currently, he works as VP of Government for xAI, the company responsible for developing Grok, "the truth-seeking AI Chatbot."Mike Shafer was Palantir's first Forward Deployed Engineer and later a Threat Intelligence Engineering Lead before joining Forward Deployed Venture Capital (FDVC) as a Venture Partner in 2022. This discussion occurred on November 4, 2025 at the University of Austin. Apply Now⁠⁠ ⁠⁠uaustin.org⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠⁠Substack⁠