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: x.com

• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com

• Website: nabeelqu.co

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Where to find Lenny:

• Newsletter: www.lennysnewsletter.com

• X: twitter.com

• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com

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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: nabeelqu.co

• Palantir: www.palantir.com

• Intercom: www.intercom.com

• Which companies produce the best product managers: www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Gotham: www.palantir.com

• Foundry: www.palantir.com

• Peter Thiel on X: x.com

• Alex Karp: en.wikipedia.org

• Stephen Cohen: en.wikipedia.org(entrepreneur)

• Joe Lonsdale on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com

• Tyler Cowen’s website: tylercowen.com

• This Scandinavian City Just Won the Internet With Its Hilarious New Tourism Ad: www.afar.com

• Safe Superintelligence: ssi.inc

• Mira Murati on X: x.com

• Stripe: stripe.com

• Building product at Stripe: craft, metrics, and customer obsession | Jeff Weinstein (Product lead): www.lennysnewsletter.com

• Airbus: www.airbus.com

• NIH: www.nih.gov

• Jupyter Notebooks: jupyter.org

• Shyam Sankar on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com

• Palantir Gotham for Defense Decision Making: www.youtube.com

• Foundry 2022 Operating System Demo: www.youtube.com

• SQL: en.wikipedia.org

• Airbus A350: en.wikipedia.org

• SAP: www.sap.com

• Barry McCardel on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com

• Understanding ‘Forward Deployed Engineering’ and Why Your Company Probably Shouldn’t Do It: www.barry.ooo

• David Hsu on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com

• Retool’s Path to Product-Market Fit—Lessons for Getting to 100 Happy Customers, Faster: review.firstround.com

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

• Looker: cloud.google.com

• Sorry, that isn’t an FDE: tedmabrey.substack.com

• Glean: www.glean.com

• Limited Engagement: Is Tech Becoming More Diverse?: www.bkmag.com

• Operation Warp Speed: en.wikipedia.org

• Mark Zuckerberg testifies: www.businessinsider.com

• Anduril: www.anduril.com

• SpaceX: www.spacex.com

• Principles: nabeelqu.co

• Wispr Flow: wisprflow.ai

• Claude code: docs.anthropic.com

• Gemini Pro 2.5: deepmind.google

• DeepMind: deepmind.google

• Latent Space newsletter: www.latent.space

• Swyx on x: x.com

• Neural networks in chess programs: www.chessprogramming.org

• AlphaZero: en.wikipedia.org

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

• Decision to Leave: www.imdb.com

• Oldboy: www.imdb.com

• Christopher Alexander: en.wikipedia.org

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Recommended books:

• The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West: www.amazon.com

• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future: www.amazon.com

• Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre: www.amazon.com

• William Shakespeare: Histories: www.amazon.com

• High Output Management: www.amazon.com

• Anna Karenina: www.amazon.com

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Production and marketing by 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.