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The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew

Overview

Shownote

Highlights

Transcript

Chapters

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The FDE Playbook for AI Startups with Bob McGrew

Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Sep 08
Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Y Combinator Startup Podcast

Sep 08
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

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...

Highlights

In this episode, Bob McGrew, a key architect behind some of the most transformative technologies of the last 20 years, shares insights from his journey across PayPal, Palantir, and OpenAI. He dives into an operational model that has quietly shaped modern tech deployment—especially in the AI era.
05:17
FDEs act as product discovery, turning customer-specific needs into scalable features
10:58
FDE training is effectively startup founder training.
28:53
The FDE model sells outcomes, not software installation.
39:28
Demo-driven development can work well in FDE companies by integrating new features into a single, evolving demo.
47:02
Startups act as FDEs to bridge AI capability and customer adoption gaps

Chapters

What if engineers lived with the problem they’re solving?
00:00
How do you turn customer chaos into a scalable product?
10:58
Why are AI startups betting on deep partnerships over quick sales?
23:38
Can you scale personalized results without losing efficiency?
34:17
Is the future of AI deployment more like special ops than software?
44:27

Transcript

Bob McGrew: With AI agents, there is no incumbent product. And so that, I think, is why you're seeing the FDE model taking off, because there's so much product discovery to do. You want to drive the contract size up. You're doing more and more valuable wor...