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<div style="display: none; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">The question isn't how we become Palantir - it's what's the minimum forward deployment we need to bridge the AI adoption gap </div>
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<h1><strong> TLDR Founders <span id="date">2026-01-19</span></strong></h1>
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<strong>Is bad user onboarding costing you customers? Get Persona free for your startup (Sponsor)</strong>
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<strong>The Palantirization of everything (10 minute read)</strong>
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Job postings for forward-deployed engineers are up 800% this year as startups copy the model Palantir pioneered. However, most companies copying the aesthetic are setting themselves up to become expensive services businesses with software valuation multiples. Palantir works because there's a real platform underneath the bespoke work. If you only copy the embedded-engineer part without a strong product spine, you end up with Accenture for X with a nicer front-end. The question isn't how we become Palantir - it's what's the minimum forward deployment we need to bridge the AI adoption gap, and how quickly can we convert that into a platform business.
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<strong>OpenAI Will Start Testing Ads in ChatGPT (1 minute read)</strong>
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The business model for software will have to evolve. Enterprise systems will have to support a more consumption and usage-based model as AI agents don't cleanly fit seats on software. There will likely continue to be seats for users within software, with AI agents paying more for extended usage. A lot still needs to happen before we fully see what the future holds for enterprise software.
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If you don't have firsthand customer intuition, you will only build the right thing if you get lucky on the millions of decisions it takes to build a great product. Last year, forward-deployed engineers were all the rage. In 2026, the goal should be to forward deploy everyone. The GTM founder talks to customers, tries to explain what they learned to the technical founder, and something gets lost in translation. That cycle repeats with more formal writeups, more prototypes, more frustration. Translation errors compound until you're building something nobody wants.
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Extract colors, fonts, images, and animations in one click.
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Sled is an open-source mobile voice interface that lets users control local AI coding agents securely from their phone without code leaving their machine.
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<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><h1>Miscellaneous</h1></strong></div>
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Humans used to be the connective tissue between systems of record. You'd grab information from Systems A and B, use it to update System C, then take action. Now agents do that work. This creates a problem for legacy SaaS. Existing systems of record work great in their own domain, but have no access outside it. If you're building right now, the opportunity isn't competing with legacy SaaS, it's the layer that sits on top.
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<h1><strong>Quick Links</strong></h1>
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<strong>The Dark Side of Hot Seed Rounds in the Age of AI (3 minute read)</strong>
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Three separate VC seed deals in 2025 where the founders simply decided to keep the money for themselves and not build the product.
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<strong>The Done List (2 minute read)</strong>
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AI is transforming the traditional to-do list into a "done list" by completing tasks typically involving code, design, and other middle stages.
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Discord filed for an IPO, marking a shift in how tech firms are valued.
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<strong>Raising money fucked me up (11 minute read)</strong>
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The pressure you put on yourself can make you start to operate in a way that is counterproductive, even if you think you're doing what you think is best.
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