Enterprises Are Demanding FDEs | Srikrishnan Ganesan, CEO of Rocketlane

Enterprises signing multi-million dollar AI deals are now asking their vendors to send forward deployed engineers, whether or not they know what an FDE does. Srikrishnan Ganesan, co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane, has been watching the implementation side of software for years and made his bet on it long before FDE became a buzzword. We talk about why enterprise AI turned implementation into the centre of gravity, what separates FDE teams that get customers to outcomes, how to hire for a role that mixes engineering, product and sales, why contracts worth five to ten times more suddenly justify the whole motion, and why Sri believes this is the one role AI won't automate away. Sri previously co-founded Konotor, acquired by Freshworks, where he went on to build Freshchat. Read the full Q&A article: https://www.fdehub.org/p/the-outcome-... FDE Hub is a newsletter on the craft of forward deployed engineering. Essays every Tuesday, interviews every Thursday: https://www.fdehub.org Chapters 00:00 Introduction 00:42 Why everyone is hiring FDEs 03:34 The outcome era 04:06 What separates the best FDE teams 06:20 How to hire FDEs 10:16 The hardest skill to train 11:54 Rocketlane's early bet on implementation 13:41 Is the FDE role here to stay? 15:53 How FDE organisations scale 19:17 Can the role be automated away? 22:08 Advice for people considering the role