Why FDEs Are Crucial for Salesforce & Zendesk Success #shorts

Name: Why FDEs Are Crucial for Salesforce & Zendesk Success #shorts
Uploaded: 2026-04-04T15:14:26+00:00
Duration: 1 min 33 s
Channel: Jason M. Lemkin
Description: In this short monologue, Jason M. Lemkin argues that forward‑deployed engineers (FDEs) are the primary limiting factor for enterprise SaaS vendors such…

4 Apr 2026 · 2 min

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1:33

In this short monologue, Jason M. Lemkin argues that forward‑deployed engineers (FDEs) are the primary limiting factor for enterprise SaaS vendors such as Zendesk and Salesforce. He explains that no vendor has enough fully trained FDEs to onboard customers quickly, forcing each company to "pick lanes"—focus on a narrow set of use‑cases where they have sufficient FDE capacity. Because onboarding, training, and iteration still require human engineers, these SaaS firms effectively operate like services businesses, inheriting the same scalability constraints. Lemkin warns that firms with few top‑tier FDEs will lose customers, while those that can scale their FDE teams will gain a decisive competitive advantage.

Chapters

Zendesk, Salesforce. One thing that people miss a little bit in terms of the winner, which you kind of asked Rory, right, is FDEs, forward deployed engineers, for the moment are a limiting factor. And let me explain what I mean. What it means is no one has enough fully trained FDEs that can get a customer up and running fast enough. No one has enough of these resources, okay? And what it means, and what it means is that almost every vendor has to pick lanes. They have to, you can't do, as much as you'd like to do it, if it was all software, you've gotta pick where you're strong, right? And if you're best at digital transformation for enterprises, maybe that's what Brett Taylor is, you gotta pick that, right? And you got, and so, not that these folks, I know at the sales team and folks think they're direct competitors, but you don't, everyone has more demand than S-tier FDs to service that. So they're all picking lanes today. And that is a frontier we haven't crossed yet. The need. And so in that sense, they're all services businesses. In a sense, this VC meme is true. They're not long-term services businesses, but if you need humans to train it, if you need humans to manage it, if you need humans to iterate it, you have the same constraints that services businesses have. And this FDE thing is a limiter. It's exciting because I think the losers, a lot of the losers out there can't even get good FDEs. But if you really dig down, how many great FDEs do you have? How many folks do you have that can spool up a customer 30 days. Well, I've got 3. Well, you're gonna lose.