Former Palantir executive Bob McGrew explains how the Forward Deployed Engineer model adapts classic startup advice for enterprise software.
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McGrew: LLMs have entered a pure scaling regime toward AGI
“And now that that has been cracked at this point, I think we actually have a very clear path to just focus on scaling. You know, we were, you know, talking about that you know, the zero to one part, that's not about scaling. I think there's a really strong cas…”
Insight
McGrew: FDE-led product discovery beats traditional sales-led discovery
“Sales-led product discovery, you're talking to people from the outside. And again, this is important very early on, but it's not as effective as the FDE-led product discovery, where you're solving these problems from the inside.”
Insight
McGrew: Building what customers ask for turns startups into consulting firms
“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…”
Insight
McGrew: Startups should avoid FDE strategy unless no alternative works
“My first, second, and third pieces of advice to people who are thinking about trying an FDU strategy is like, don't,
Don't do this at home.
If you can avoid it, like it's probably bad for you.
Probably you're going to end up doing services.
And then only if yo…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
McGrew: In five years, AI agents won't be a single category
“Probably in five years, we'll look back, we'll be like, well, AI agents, there wasn't even a thing at all, right?
We were actually doing all these different things.”
Insight
McGrew: FDE strategy succeeds by growing contract sizes rather than cutting customization
“In the product market fit strategy, you want to be doing less work for every customer, you want to be driving down costs, you want to keep the contract size the same. In the FTE strategy, you want to drive the contract size up. So you're doing more and more va…”