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

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:

• Why almost a third of all Palantir’s PMs go on to start companies

• How the “forward-deployed engineer” model works and why it creates exceptional product leaders

• How Palantir transformed from a “sparkling Accenture” into a $200 billion data/software platform company with more than 80% margins

• The unconventional hiring approach that screens for independent-minded, intellectually curious, and highly competitive people

• Why the company intentionally avoids traditional titles and career ladders—and what they do instead

• Why they built an ontology-first data platform that LLMs love

• How Palantir’s controversial “bat signal” recruiting strategy filtered for specific talent types

• The moral case for working at a company like Palantir

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Where to find Nabeel S. Qureshi:

• X: https://x.com/nabeelqu

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nabeelqu/

• Website: https://nabeelqu.co/

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/

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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

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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/

• Understanding ‘Forward Deployed Engineering’ and Why Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Do It: https://www.barry.ooo/posts/fde-culture

• David Hsu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dvdhsu/

• Retool’s Path to Product-Market Fit—Lessons for Getting to 100 Happy Customers, Faster: https://review.firstround.com/retools-path-to-product-market-fit-lessons-for-getting-to-100-happy-customers-faster/

• How to foster innovation and big thinking | Eeke de Milliano (Retool, Stripe): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-foster-innovation-and-big

• Looker: https://cloud.google.com/looker

• Sorry, that isn’t an FDE: https://tedmabrey.substack.com/p/sorry-that-isnt-an-fde

• Glean: https://www.glean.com/

• Limited Engagement: Is Tech Becoming More Diverse?: https://www.bkmag.com/2017/01/31/limited-engagement-creating-diversity-in-the-tech-industry/

• Operation Warp Speed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

• Mark Zuckerberg testifies: https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-testifies-congress-libra-cryptocurrency-2019-10

• Anduril: https://www.anduril.com/

• SpaceX: https://www.spacex.com/

• Principles: https://nabeelqu.co/principles

• Wispr Flow: https://wisprflow.ai/

• Claude code: https://docs.anthropic.com/en/docs/agents-and-tools/claude-code/overview

• Gemini Pro 2.5: https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini/pro/

• DeepMind: https://deepmind.google/

• Latent Space newsletter: https://www.latent.space/

• Swyx on x: https://x.com/swyx

• Neural networks in chess programs: https://www.chessprogramming.org/Neural_Networks

• AlphaZero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaZero

• The top chess players in the world: https://www.chess.com/players

• Decision to Leave: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12477480/

• Oldboy: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364569/

• Christopher Alexander: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Alexander

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Recommended books:

• The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West: https://www.amazon.com/Technological-Republic-Power-Belief-Future/dp/0593798694

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future: https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/0804139296

• Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: https://www.amazon.com/Impro-Improvisation-Theatre-Keith-Johnstone/dp/0878301178/

• William Shakespeare: Histories: https://www.amazon.com/Histories-Everymans-Library-William-Shakespeare/dp/0679433120/

• High Output Management: https://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew-Grove/dp/0679762884

• Anna Karenina: https://www.amazon.com/Anna-Karenina-Leo-Tolstoy/dp/0143035002

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Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.

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Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed.