How Palantir built the ultimate founder factory | Nabeel S. Qureshi (founder, writer, ex-Palantir)

Video Description

*Nabeel Qureshi* is an entrepreneur, writer, researcher, and visiting scholar of AI policy at the Mercatus Center (alongside Tyler Cowen). Previously, he spent nearly eight years at Palantir, working as a forward-deployed engineer. His work at Palantir ranged from accelerating the Covid-19 response to applying AI to drug discovery to optimizing aircraft manufacturing at Airbus. Nabeel was also a founding employee and VP of business development at GoCardless, a leading European fintech unicorn. *What you’ll learn:* 1. Why almost a third of all Palantir’s PMs go on to start companies 2. How the “forward-deployed engineer” model works and why it creates exceptional product leaders 3. How Palantir transformed from a “sparkling Accenture” into a $200 billion data/software platform company with more than 80% margins 4. The unconventional hiring approach that screens for independent-minded, intellectually curious, and highly competitive people 5. Why the company intentionally avoids traditional titles and career ladders—and what they do instead 6. Why they built an ontology-first data platform that LLMs love 7. How Palantir’s controversial “bat signal” recruiting strategy filtered for specific talent types 8. The moral case for working at a company like Palantir *Transcript:* https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-palantir-nabeel-qureshi *Brought to you by:* • WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs: https://workos.com/lenny • Attio—The powerful, flexible CRM for fast-growing startups: https://attio.com/lenny?utm_source=lennyrachitsky&utm_medium=sponsorship&utm_campaign=lenny-20230625 • OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster: https://oneschema.co/lenny *Where to find Nabeel S. Qureshi:* • X: https://x.com/nabeelqu • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabeelqu/ • Website: https://nabeelqu.co/ *Where to find Lenny:* • Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com • X: https://twitter.com/lennysan • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/ *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Nabeel S. Qureshi (05:10) Palantir’s unique culture and hiring (13:29) What Palantir looks for in people (16:14) Why they don't have titles (19:11) Forward-deployed engineers at Palantir (25:23) Key principles of Palantir's success (30:00) Gotham and Foundry (36:58) The ontology concept (38:02) Life as a forward-deployed engineer (41:36) Balancing custom solutions and product vision (46:36) Advice on how to implement forward-deployed engineers (50:41) The current state of forward-deployed engineers at Palantir (53:15) The power of ingesting, cleaning and analyzing data (59:25) Hiring for mission-driven startups (01:05:30) What makes Palantir PMs different (01:10:00) The moral question of Palantir (01:16:03) Advice for new startups (01:21:12) AI corner (01:24:00) Contrarian corner (01:25:42) Lightning round and final thoughts *Referenced:* • Reflections on Palantir: https://nabeelqu.co/reflections-on-palantir • Palantir: https://www.palantir.com/ • Intercom: https://www.intercom.com/ • Which companies produce the best product managers: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/which-companies-produce-the-best • Gotham: https://www.palantir.com/platforms/gotham/ • Foundry: https://www.palantir.com/platforms/foundry/ • Peter Thiel on X: https://x.com/peterthiel • Alex Karp: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Karp • Stephen Cohen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Cohen_(entrepreneur) • Joe Lonsdale on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jtlonsdale/ • Tyler Cowen’s website: https://tylercowen.com/ • This Scandinavian City Just Won the Internet With Its Hilarious New Tourism Ad: https://www.afar.com/magazine/oslos-new-tourism-ad-becomes-viral-hit • Safe Superintelligence: https://ssi.inc/ • Mira Murati on X: https://x.com/miramurati • Stripe: https://stripe.com/ • Building product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession | Jeff Weinstein (Product lead): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/building-product-at-stripe-jeff-weinstein • Airbus: https://www.airbus.com/en • NIH: https://www.nih.gov/ • Jupyter Notebooks: https://jupyter.org/ • Shyam Sankar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shyamsankar/ • Palantir Gotham for Defense Decision Making: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxKghrZU5w8 • Foundry 2022 Operating System Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF-GSj-Exms • SQL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQL • Airbus A350: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A350 • SAP: https://www.sap.com/index.html • Barry McCardel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barrymccardel/ ...References continued at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/inside-palantir-nabeel-qureshi _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected]._ Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.