Field-driven productization and viral internal tools

Barry McCardel spent years at Palantir before co-founding Hex, the AI data platform he describes as “Cursor for data.” In this conversation with Eric Newcomer, he breaks down Palantir’s business model, the truth about forward deployed engineers, how AI agents are changing data analytics and business intelligence, and why Hex is taking a different path in enterprise software.They also get into AI agents, the future of data work, the reinvention of business intelligence, whether white-collar jobs are really at risk, and the fight over Anthropic, defense tech, surveillance, and government power.