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 — Brought to you by: • WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs • Attio—The powerful, flexible CRM for fast-growing startups • OneSchema—Import CSV data 10x faster — 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/ • 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 — 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 — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com. — Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe