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Everyone gets scared of consulting or service revenue. But maybe it’s necessary…
The forward-deployed engineer, FDE, is the popular talk for startups. As everyone is building with AI, the moat becomes distribution, go-to-market, and access to unique data. Deploying engineers, taking on service revenue, or consulting with big companies as a way to get inside big corporations and then learn their needs, build into their workflows, and ultimately become their AI sticky product is becoming a larger and larger topic with founders.
Mark Cuban had a good discussion in the link below where he talks about the small and medium business opportunity and integrating AI for all of these 33M companies.
What investment is rudimentary for billionaires but ‘revolutionary’ for 70,571+ investors entering 2026?
Imagine this. You open your phone to an alert. It says, “you spent $236,000,000 more this month than you did last month.”
If you were the top bidder at Sotheby’s fall auctions, it could be reality.
Sounds crazy, right? But when the ultra-wealthy spend staggering amounts on blue-chip art, it’s not just for decoration.
The scarcity of these treasured artworks has helped drive their prices, in exceptional cases, to thin-air heights, without moving in lockstep with other asset classes.
The contemporary and post war segments have even outpaced the S&P 500 overall since 1995.*
Now, over 70,000 people have invested $1.2 billion+ across 500 iconic artworks featuring Banksy, Basquiat, Picasso, and more.
How? You don’t need Medici money to invest in multimillion dollar artworks with Masterworks.
Thousands of members have gotten annualized net returns like 14.6%, 17.6%, and 17.8% from 26 sales to date.
*Based on Masterworks data. Past performance is not indicative of future returns. Important Reg A disclosures: masterworks.com/cd
When I hear founders talking about their prospects wanting AI consultants or thinking about hiring consultants, I have them flip the discussion and offer to be that consultant. Build what’s possible for them, learn their pain points, and ultimately enhance the product you are embedding into their organization. Then over time your AI product needs less people or consultants, or services, or FDE’s, and you end up with the ARR you are looking for or in this new world, the usage-based revenue from them hitting your API or using your AI Agents.
