Avandar named one of the 9 startups to watch founded by Palantir alumni

This week Fast Company named Avandar as one of the 9 startups to watch that were founded by Palantir alumni. It’s an honor to be listed among such talented individuals and impressive companies. This list is a testament to the quality of technology solutions that are in the market solving problems that have been considered unsolvable for far too long. I am also incredibly proud that Avandar made it onto the list as only one of two bootstrapped companies, and certainly the smallest one by employee count. It’s not often that a small bootstrapped company focusing on small and medium-sized nonprofits gets this type of spotlight. I am very grateful to the author, David Lidsky, for selecting Avandar and believing that our mission to change how the social sector manages its data is worth sharing.

Of course, however, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the elephant in the room: Palantir. A notoriously controversial company. I’ve never hidden the fact that Palantir was the first company I worked for. Considering that my entire career has focused on building software for the social sector and marginalized communities, it can seem at odds with having once worked at a company that is reported to partner with ICE. Considering even moreso that Avandar is a data company serving the social sector, I would not blame anyone in my network for raising an eyebrow at this. The social sector has often been taken advantage of by unethical vendors, so to look into Avandar’s founder’s employment history is a healthy line of inquiry.

So I want to set the record straight here: the work that Palantir, to my knowledge, does in immigration, policing, and military conflicts does not, in any way, reflect my values. To put it bluntly: I find it incredibly disappointing and it fills me with dread.

I worked at Palantir from 2013 to 2017. It was my first job out of college, back when there was no media buzz or public information yet about Palantir. I was drawn to their promises of mission-focus and “solving the world’s hardest problems.” In a meeting with their now CTO, Shyam Sankar, I told him I was uninterested in government or commercial work and wanted to only work on social impact. He pointed me to their newly formed philanthropy team where I interviewed and became their first forward-deployed engineer hire in 2013.

My experience on their philanthropy team fostered a love and commitment to the social sector by giving me the chance to work with dozens of nonprofits around the world. That’s how I found my calling in international development and public health. Then in 2016, information started to surface about Palantir’s work with ICE. That was the first time many employees, including myself, learned about this contract. As an immigrant myself, I had a tough time grappling with my emotions and reconciling the Palantir I knew at the time with the one I was learning about. In 2017, I made the decision to leave the company. Palantir had instilled in me the practice of always questioning leadership and our own decisions to make sure we’re always doing the right thing and fixing things when you see they are broken. In many ways, Palantir grew me into the kind of person who would no longer want to work at Palantir.

Even though I worked exclusively on their philanthropy team for nearly 4 years, I do not consider that fact as any absolution. It is not lost on me that for nearly all those years, the team’s work was used for recruiting, PR, and media buzz, in ways that some would consider to be charity-washing or impact-washing. It makes me sad to know how my work indirectly supported projects that run in complete opposition to my values.

So to be named on Fast Company’s list is honestly a bittersweet feeling. The technological caliber of Palantir is undeniable, and that’s where I learned from some of the smartest software engineers in my career. I am grateful for the growth I experienced at Palantir, both personally and technically. I built software under what most people would have considered impossible conditions in times of crisis, and found ways to make it work for our partners. I learned how to remain level-headed in humanitarian emergencies and how to put together software with minimal resources to support the missions I believe in.

But being on this list is also a reminder of what obtaining those skills and growth indirectly cost the communities I care about. My growth and lessons learned were not morally neutral. So being named on this list is also a reminder to use the skills I developed at Palantir for something greater than myself, to support a sector that is not given the attention it deserves. Avandar is my way of putting every thing I’ve learned in my life towards giving back to a sector that has given me so much.