Nabil Qureshi

Success chances rise by placing many bold bets and cycling through them quickly, so test ideas early and move on fast.

Before any new project you write a two-page plan and invite three-four uninvolved peers to aggressively tear it apart to sharpen vision, goals and tactics.

When showing a product, immediately ask customers for a large payment; if they refuse, abandon the idea instead of iterating for weeks.

Nabil likens great product work to Tolstoy’s skill of entering every character’s mind, stressing deep user empathy over founders’ own views.

Create a tight internal culture of trust so everyone assumes teammates are great, using high-bar past workplaces as benchmarks.

Aggressively filter first hires for deep mission fit by asking questions like “What’s the hardest you’ve worked to get something done and why?”.

Nabil explains some staff resist democratising data because their value and job security depend on being the sole gatekeepers of critical sales queries.

Nabil notes only 5-10% is analysis and 90+% is gaining, cleaning, joining and normalising data, so tackling those steps is where product effort should focus.

Nabil explains Palantir sends engineers onsite four days a week to sit with customers, blending technical build work with real-time problem-solving and social navigation.

Future winners will be hybrid ‘cyborgs’ who deeply fuse their workflows with AI tools rather than working separately.

Early-stage startups must select people willing to give an extra 20 % beyond checkbox tasks, making big-company mindsets risky hires.

Project principles must be contentious enough that many would disagree—bland maxims like “move fast” are rejected to force explicit trade-offs.

People often err by clinging to their product vision instead of pivoting to a customer's massive burning problem; keep a matrix of options and choose deliberately.