Nabeel S. Qureshi
Nabeel Qureshi is an entrepreneur, writer, researcher, and visiting scholar of AI policy at the Mercatus Center (alongside Tyler Cowen). Previously, he spent nearly eight years at Palantir, working as a forward-deployed engineer. His work at Palantir ranged from accelerating the Covid-19 response to applying AI to drug discovery to optimizing aircraft manufacturing at Airbus. Nabeel was also a founding employee and VP of business development at GoCardless, a leading European fintech unicorn.
AI & Technology Skills
AI agents like Claude Code can now handle complex file system operations and pull requests, acting as a 'guided agent' for engineers.
"I love Claude Code for developing... it actually operates on the file system directly. So if you're like, 'Hey, create a bunch of these files,' that'll just do it and you don't need to go and muck aro..."
Career Skills
The best PMs are often those who have 'proven their mettle' in customer-facing, high-stakes delivery roles first.
"They were extremely careful about only making people PMs who had first proven themselves out as forward deployed engineers. You basically could not become a PM any other way... the reason for that's p..."
Growth Skills
High-ticket price testing is the ultimate validation of whether you are solving a 'burning' problem.
"When you take something to a customer, ask them to pay you a lot of money and if they don't, then find a new problem. Don't wait three weeks, which is what every founding team typically does because y..."
Hiring & Teams Skills
Founder-led 'vibe checks' that test the limits of a candidate's reasoning and intellectual depth are more effective than standard prep-able questions.
"For the longest time, they had... a founder had to interview you in order for you to receive an offer... With Stephen, it would be, you'd be chatting about philosophy for an hour and a half and it wou..."
Screen for independent thinking, intellectual curiosity, and a high drive for winning rather than just standard technical skills.
"I feel like they screened really hard for a few traits in particular. One is like very independent-minded people who weren't afraid to push back. Two is people with broader intellectual interests... A..."
Use behavioral questions to identify 'animals'—people with the grit and motivation to go the extra 20% to achieve an outcome.
"You ask questions like, what's the hardest you've ever worked to get something done and why? And that does differentiate a lot of people, a lot of people don't actually have a great answer to that."
A strong culture is defined by 'bad signals' that intentionally repel people who aren't a fit while magnetically attracting those who are.
"Thiel thinks that a lot of the best recruiters in the world or the companies that attract talent, they put out this distinctive bad signal and it has to turn some people off. That's the key of a good,..."
Eliminating formal titles can reduce internal politics and ensure that leadership is earned through current performance rather than static designations.
"Titles are not going to be this memetic totem that everybody competes for. Instead, everyone is just going to have the same slightly meaningless title... I think they wanted to avoid this intel compet..."
Leadership Skills
Use 'murder boards' to stress-test new project plans by inviting objective critics to find every possible flaw.
"When you started a new project, you basically had to organize what they called a murder board for it... the idea is, basically, you write up a two-page plan for the project. You invite three or four s..."
In uncertain environments, success is a function of the volume of bets placed and the speed of the iteration cycle.
"One thing is probably just really fast iteration cycles. So placing a lot of bets and then being really rigorous about just going through that cycle very soon. I have this... principles, and one of th..."
Product Management Skills
Define problems in terms of high-level business missions (e.g., ramping up production) rather than technical requirements.
"The mandate wasn't like, 'Hey, we need to upgrade our data infrastructure...' It was much more just like, 'Please help us accomplish this mission. This is the big thing.'"
True customer empathy comes from physical immersion in the user's environment rather than occasional interviews.
"You would spend maybe Monday to Thursday and you would actually go into the building where the customer worked and you would work alongside them. You would literally get a desk there... you learn to l..."
Accelerate product development by running daily feedback and iteration loops directly with the customer.
"Monday, you go in. You do your meetings. Monday night, you build something. Tuesday, you show it to somebody. Tuesday, you get the feedback. Tuesday night, you iterate on it. Wednesday, you show it to..."