ElevenLabs CEO explains borrowing Palantir's FDE playbook to turn clients into a free R&D lab
xiaohu · x · 2026-09-21
- David Senra's 71-minute interview with ElevenLabs co-founder and CEO Mati Staniszewski covers the company's rapid rise and its hard-nosed business and product strategy.
- The standout tactic, learned from Staniszewski's time at Palantir: Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs) sit inside enterprise clients (banks, telecoms) to solve voice-support and integration problems — and they report to product, not sales.
- Crucially, these FDEs carry reusable industry knowledge and product gaps back into the general product, so the next customer doesn't start from zero — turning big clients into a free R&D lab.
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