FDE = "do things that don't scale—at scale." The goal isn't to reduce customization per customer; it's to keep customization while increasing outcome value and contract size.
Your second user is the FDE. Build product primitives and tooling that increase FDE leverage every quarter; if field teams don't prefer your abstractions, you built the wrong thing.
Generalize one level higher than the request. Never productize a site-specific workflow; extract the reusable concept (ontology/primitives), validated across multiple customers before shipping.
Sell outcomes, not installs. Early deals can be risk-weighted ("pay when it works"); as outcomes expand, contracts must stair-step up—complex, flexible, but value aligned.
Executive top-5 or bust. If your wedge isn't on the CEO's priority list, IT/process gravity wins. Executive air cover is a technical dependency, not a sales nicety.
Demo-driven ≠ cheap theatrics. A great demo is a forcing function: every new feature must earn its place in a believable end-to-end workflow that creates customer desire, not just agreement.
Pain is the signal. Rewrites, rough prototypes, and friction between field and product can easily be "process'd" away. If it's painless, you're probably not discovering.
Measure the right two things: (a) Outcome value delivered (even if you can't capture it all yet), and (b) Product leverage (field effort per unit value should drop across customers).
Beware "sponsor local maxima." Mid-level asks often optimize convenience, not impact. Re-anchor on enterprise outcomes; otherwise you drift into services.
Why this works for AI now: There's no incumbent product for agents and adoption lags capability—so discovery has to happen inside the customer, repeatedly, with platformization trailing behind.
Hire rebels, not natives. Echo roles need domain insiders who think the current way is insufficient; deltas are rapid iteration, not long-horizon craftsspeople.
Land → expand → abstract. Win with one compelling outcome, use proximity to find bigger adjacent problems, then fold the pattern back into the platform. Repeat.