WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana – Serial entrepreneur, start-up investor and philanthropist Joe Lonsdale will be the next guest of the Presidential Lecture Series and will join Purdue University President Mitch Daniels at the discussion on November 16 at 6:00 p.m. in attend Stewart Center’s Fowler Hall.
The event, titled “A Conversation on Innovation With Entrepreneur, Investor and Philanthropist Joe Lonsdale,” is free and open to the public. The event, sponsored by the Purdue President’s Council, will also be streamed live.
Lonsdale, 40, is a leading technology entrepreneur and investor who was named the youngest member of Forbes Midas’ list of the top 100 venture capitalists in the world in 2016 and 2017. Lonsdale is a managing partner at 8VC, a US-based venture capital firm that manages billions of dollars of committed capital.
In 2021 he became the founding trustee of the University of Austin, a new university in Texas.
Before focusing on institutional investing, Lonsdale co-founded Palantir, a global software company recognized for its work in defense and other industries and for providing the platform to manage COVID-19 pandemic status and response to support key decision makers known over 35 countries.
“There is no one Purdue admires more than innovators, inventors and those who challenge conventional wisdom,” Daniels said. “We’ll get all that and more when Joe Lonsdale comes to visit.”
After founding Palantir, Lonsdale founded and remains Chairman of both Addepar, which manages over $4 trillion on its wealth management technology platform, and OpenGov, which provides software to over 2,000 local and state governments.
More recently, he co-founded Affinity, Epirus, Resilience and other mission-driven technology companies, which he continues to build with his team from the 8VC Build program.
He was also an early institutional investor in a long list of notable technology startups, including Oculus, Guardant Health, Oscar, Illumio, Anduril, Wish, JoyTunes, Blend, Flexport, Joby Aviation, Cityblock, Orca Bio, Qualia, Synthego, and RelateIQ other .
Lonsdale serves on the board of directors of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute and is also an advisor to a number of other not-for-profit corporations.
He began his career as an early executive at Clarium Capital, which he grew into a large, global macro hedge fund. Lonsdale also worked at PayPal while attending Stanford University.
Lonsdale and his wife Tayler are active in a variety of philanthropic and institutional activities, including support for liberty in public policy, classical art and innovation in healthcare. In 2018, they founded the nonpartisan Cicero Institute, which develops and drives policies to promote transparent and accountable governance in over a dozen countries.
Very early in Daniel’s tenure at Purdue, the university opened up the rules for its intellectual property policy. This means that students and faculty inventors now own their innovations and nurture and nurture a culture of entrepreneurship that stretches from the newest freshman to the oldest faculty member.
And the innovations on campus followed. The Purdue Research Foundation received 169 patents in 2021, ranking sixth internationally and first in the state of Indiana and the Big Ten. This reflects Purdue’s 6th place in 2020 when PRF received 175 utility patents. Additionally, the mission of the Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship in Purdue’s Discovery Park District is to support innovative programs, activities and business plan competitions and provide the resources to bring student and faculty ideas to market.
About Purdue University
Purdue University is a leading public research organization developing practical solutions to today’s toughest challenges. For each of the last five years, Purdue has been ranked by US News & World Report as one of the 10 Most Innovative Universities in the United States, delivering world-changing research and extraordinary discoveries. Purdue is committed to real-world, hands-on and online learning, providing transformative education for all. Committed to affordability and accessibility, Purdue has frozen tuition and most fees at 2012-13 levels, allowing more students than ever to graduate debt-free. Watch how Purdue never stops making the next big leap at https://purdue.edu/.
Author and media contact: Phillip Fiorini, [email protected], 765-430-6189
