Bob McGrew helped build some of the most influential technologies of the past two decades. Bob was an early engineer at PayPal, an early executive at Palantir and was recently Chief Research Officer at OpenAI – where he led the development of ChatGPT, GPT-4 and the o1 reasoning model.
During his time at Palantir he was a pioneer of the Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) model, a strategy that is at the heart of the AI boom today. On this episode of The Lightcone, he explains how FDEs became central to today’s startups, why “doing things that don’t scale at scale” works, and where he sees the biggest opportunities for founders working in AI.
Apply to Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com/apply
Work at a startup: https://www.ycombinator.com/jobs
Chapters:
00:29 – From PayPal to Palantir to OpenAI
02:19 – The Role of a Forward Deployed Engineer
03:19 – How Palantir Invented It
07:56 – Product Discovery in the Field vs. Sales
09:51 – Echo and Delta Teams Explained
13:34 – Training Ground for Founders
14:35 – Consulting or Real Software?
17:54 – The Birth of Palantir’s Ontology
23:04 – Why AI Companies Adopt It
36:17 – What Success Metrics Look Like
41:14 – Building with Demo-Driven Development
44:56 – Joining the US Army Reserve
47:43 – Opportunities for Founders
Tech bros just rediscovered Accenture and thinks it’s mind blowing.
It’s amazing how by the end of the episode the term founder transformed into FDE engineer
whats the difference to solution engineers, sales engineers etc.? Other than branding of course.
I don't get it. Talking to customers and finding gaps between your product and customer needs is what product discovery is and what the product trio does regularly. FDE is throwing in an extra engineer?
This feels like a job I did a decade ago. They were called Consultants
Field Application Engineer
This is not a new concept. We’ve been doing this in the aerospace industry for years. Embed engineers at the aircraft manufacturers or military brand and do what FDEs do these days. Silicon Valley always rebranding old concepts as if it’s something new and groundbreaking 🙄
This sounds like a new wrapper around agile development where you get quick feedback from customers.
I like the team structure: Echo Teams handle customer engagement, while Delta Teams swiftly develop solutions, allowing for agile adaptation and maintaining a balance between immediate and strategic goals.
This video showed up in my weekly AI + Business newsletter, and it was a great addition. Thanks!
it's called solution engineering or technical sales, and has been around for decades
it's called solution engineering or technical sales, and has been around for decades