What I got from listening quite regularly (up to like last year or so) to All-In is that Thiel and Sacks were really the first to understand 2 crucial developments:
1) Making startups to explicitly target areas of government spending and thus disrupt government contractors and/or agencies is a very good play. Your target customer has infinite cash, likes long-term contracts and can be upsold.
2) That to facilitate 1) guys from VC had to take government roles and get behind a candidate explicitly.
Sacks as AI Czar, commissioning Palantir guys as officers, Rabois' husband as Undersecretary, A16Z literally writing primers on how to talk to government procurement, etc. The libertarian era is fully over, but Sacks(and the whole Thiel gang) should get the credit for being first movers in this shift.
What I got from listening quite regularly (up to like last year or so) to All-In is that Thiel and Sacks were really the first to understand 2 crucial developments:
1) Making startups to explicitly target areas of government spending and thus disrupt government contractors and/or agencies is a very good play. Your target customer has infinite cash, likes long-term contracts and can be upsold.
2) That to facilitate 1) guys from VC had to take government roles and get behind a candidate explicitly.
Sacks as AI Czar, commissioning Palantir guys as officers, Rabois' husband as Undersecretary, A16Z literally writing primers on how to talk to government procurement, etc. The libertarian era is fully over, but Sacks(and the whole Thiel gang) should get the credit for being first movers in this shift.
https://archive.ph/2026.05.05-022441/https://www.theatlantic...