Modal's forward-deployed engineers support sales and customers, but their primary strategic purpose is to reveal product gaps that can be turned into features rather than making Modal service-heavy.

“And then, of course, like, with, with sort of active deals, you know, we, we help them migrate code from other platforms, uh, things like that. Um, I think, you know, we, we, we never had the intention of becoming, like, a service-heavy business.”

“I, I think the, the goal for FDEs is, like, you know, A, is to be part of, you know, the, the sort of sales process and, like, closing deals. B is to serve customers and, and do some, like, you know, customer support.”

“But, like, I actually think that, like, the most important thing is, like, C, is, like, bridging gaps in the product that we later wanna turn into, like, real features.”

“So I, I think to a large extent, you know, anything an FDE does, you know, my question is always, like, long term, how do we turn this into product so that we don't need an FDE for this? Yeah. Do you guys hire PMs?”