Welcome Mark!

I am very excited to continue to welcome the top LPs and GPs to guest write on Embracing Emergence! It gives me the opportunity to let other voices share their thoughts, highlight the best Managers, and continue the conversation between EMs and LPs.

I asked Mark to share about why he chose “Forward Deployed” as the name for his fund and how it encompasses his story, strategy, position, and unique value.

I’m grateful for Mark to take the time to share and excited for you all to read!

Benedikt

Table of Contents

1. What’s In A Name: Forward Deployed

2. How (and why) forward deploying works

3. How I went from FDE to GP

4. What “Forward Deployed” says about the fund

5. FDE and FDVC for the win

What’s In A Name: Forward Deployed

Benedikt, thanks for inviting me to contribute. I’m excited to back up your recent point that an emerging manager’s fund name pitches better than a deck. You’re right: a fund’s name distills the ethos, strategy, and vision into a single phrase.

I’m the General Partner at Forward Deployed VC, an early-stage venture firm focused on mission-critical sectors and technology including defense, energy, industrials, and artificial intelligence. If the phrase “forward deployed” sounds familiar (and you’re not in the military), you might have seen the growing number of job postings for “Forward Deployed Engineers” — or you’ve read about Palantir, where the role originated.

I spent most of my career at Palantir as a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE). For a Silicon Valley native who always had an interest in both engineering and national security, it was the perfect fit.

As an FDE, I was part of a team designed to be as close as possible to the customer and their problems. For me, that meant traveling with the US Department of Defense (DoD) to Afghanistan, Djibouti, Germany, Iraq, and Japan. For my colleagues, it meant aerospace factories, financial institutions, and oil wells. No matter where we were, the approach was the same: go to the customer, earn their trust, learn about their problem — and then iterate with them to solve it.

Forward deploying became a way of life for me. It’s the ultimate problem-solving hack. Now, I’m applying this approach to my venture capital business.

How (and why) forward deploying works

The inspiration for forward deployed engineering came from — of all places — French restaurant culture. As Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar recounted recently in “The Primacy of Winning”: 

“Alex Karp asked me if I knew why French restaurants were so good. I had no idea. He told me that at a French restaurant, the wait staff is actually part of the kitchen staff. They intimately understand the food, the methodology, and the technique. They are not merely carrying the food from the kitchen to the table, but are instead part of a subtle and complex system that affects kitchen operations. He wanted me to build that, but for engineering.” 

In 2006, Shyam became Palantir’s first FDE — a role he named to pay homage to the company’s earliest customers. He hired me two years later.

At first, I was on a traditional software dev team in Palo Alto, working alongside a group of PayPal alumni to build an offering for deployed military analysts with limited connectivity. I poured my life into that product. We secured a small contract with a US Army unit headed to Afghanistan, and they needed two engineers to deploy with them. I couldn’t imagine NOT doing it, this was my product, and I was the guy for the job.

A few months later I arrived at the Brigade’s HQ in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where I set up servers and data integrations and then traveled to Forward Operating Bases (FOBs) to deliver and train users on our new edge product, Palantir Forward.

Our main goals on that trip were setting up servers, integrating data, and training users. But engaging with users in the fight taught us much more than we could have learned back in Palo Alto. I saw firsthand how hard it was for warfighters at FOBs, who didn’t have the advanced tools available at headquarters, to do their job. This exposure directly influenced the direction of our product in a way that wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t been there in person, seeing their pain and earning their trust.

And we weren’t just talking to folks from the US Army. American and British Special Operations Forces and other members of the international coalition heard about us and wanted to see demos, too. These meetings opened the doors to business opportunities that would have taken years to cultivate through old-school software sales tactics.

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How I went from FDE to GP

I was plenty busy with my role as an FDE, but in 2009, I started a new side hustle: angel investing. Just before I shipped off to Kandahar, I made my first investment by talking Palantir into letting me invest in their preferred round alongside Founders Fund and In-Q-Tel. Many of my other investments — 28 in total over 12 years as an angel investor — were in companies started by former Palantir engineers. 

That wasn’t just because of proximity. I think Palantir, thanks to the FDE model, inadvertently created the world’s best startup incubator: hire super-smart engineers and send them to the biggest institutions in the world (the Department of Defense, aircraft manufacturers, oil majors, etc.) to learn about their problems. FDEs are armed with both enterprise experience and ideas on how to fix the biggest challenges facing our most important institutions.

Angel investing was deeply rewarding. I loved working with founders who were taking what they learned at Palantir, good and bad, and applying it to something new. Working with founders, I started to miss the chaotic early days of startup life, and in 2022, I decided to take the leap and start my own fund.

What “Forward Deployed” says about the fund

Benedikt says your fund’s name “has to succinctly communicate what you stand for, why you are unique, and what value you offer.” That’s a great framework for explaining why I named my fund Forward Deployed VC. 

Forward Deployed VC backs hardcore engineers working in critical sectors and technology. Throughout my career, I’ve focused on how technology can strengthen our most important institutions. And today, the need for investment is stronger than ever. 

Massive forces are reshaping how our world works — but our critical systems aren’t keeping up. The failed launch of HealthCare.gov in 2013 was an early sign that the US government had fallen far behind Silicon Valley. Eight years later, the chaotic evacuation of Afghanistan was carried out over WhatsApp and Google Forms. Agencies from the IRS to the CDC are grappling with outdated technology that impedes their mission. 

These problems are too big and complex to solve at a distance — we need engineers on the ground. Folks like James Boyd. 9/11 occurred while he was studying CS at Stanford, and he felt called to serve. Upon graduating, James enlisted as an Army Special Forces “18 Echo” — the computer guy (and door kicker) on a Green Beret "A team.” 

After leaving the military, he joined Palantir where the two of us led the company’s special operations work. Now he’s building Adyton, a mobile suite for defense personnel, logistics, and operations to get data off clipboards and into systems that improve operations.

Most — if not all — software companies make it a priority to understand their users. They conduct research, run experiments, and gather feedback. But this approach only scratches the surface of building actual empathy and trust with your customers, which is essential to solving the kinds of problems our portfolio companies are tackling. 

As my former Palantir colleague Adam Judelson put it in Lenny’s Newsletter: 

“It’s not just getting downrange that matters. You have to be the user to unlock this concept. I don’t mean that spiritually as in ‘think like the user’; I mean literally do their same job with your product as an extended member of their team and see what you learn. You don’t embed for 20 minutes, either. A lot of the real aha moments come after you’ve been in the customer’s shoes for an extended period of time.”

Forward Deployed VC stands for this model as the best way to build products that meaningfully transform how organizations operate. We back founders who are committed to going to the problem — and staying there until it’s solved.

FDE and FDVC for the win

Investors and markets didn’t always respond favorably to this proposition. Back in 2011, tech blogger Dave Kellogg wrote a widely read post “Why Palantir Makes My Head Hurt”. He questioned whether Palantir’s unconventional approach would succeed and likened FDEs to “consultants.”

But Palantir’s success — and the growing number of companies building their own forward deployed engineering teams — are proving that this approach is ultimately more valuable than the traditional approach of “throwing software over the wall in the hopes the customer [will] divine the correct meaning from it,” to quote Shyam again.

Organizations are also increasingly open to this model. The US government has recognized the urgent need to modernize their approach to technology, and they’ve developed programs and funding streams that bring technologists together with subject matter experts to solve complex problems faster and more effectively.

Programs like 18F and the US Digital Service essentially forward-deploy technologists — engineers, designers, and product managers — into agencies to help solve specific problems, often using commercial technology in the process. The Defense Innovation Unit, here in Silicon Valley, is specifically focused on “accelerating the adoption of commercial and dual-use technology to solve operational challenges at speed and scale” within DoD.

The US government has also passed $1.2 trillion worth of funding over the past few years aimed at funding novel solutions for critical challenges. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act are all funneling money toward design, engineering, and science in areas such as supply chain, manufacturing, national security, energy, and infrastructure.

I believe our portfolio companies are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this momentum. Our founders hail from companies that serve as fantastic startup incubators — not just Palantir, but also Anduril and SpaceX, companies that have demonstrated time and again how going to the problem is the only way to solve it. These alumni are taking what they learned at these companies and wielding it in service of our most critical challenges.

We’re going through a period of massive societal and technological change. If we want to outcompete China and Russia, unravel our broken supply chains, increase domestic energy production, and move manufacturing closer to home, we need engineers who do the work to understand and empathize with end users. That’s why I started a venture fund — and why I named it after the engineering model that’s going to help us win.