McGrew: Building what customers ask for turns startups into consulting firms
Bob McGrew · The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew · Y Combinator · Sep 8, 2025 · at 23:10
Former Palantir executive Bob McGrew explains why forward deployed engineering teams often fail by accommodating specific client requests instead of solving core business problems.
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“I think one of the other failures, by the way, that's even prior to that, and more, the easier failure to become a consulting firm, it's where you build the product in the field that the customers are asking for, rather than the one that's actually valuable to them.”
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