coffee, design, software, rinse & repeat. cto @trypallet. past: @askherald (YC W19) @quantcast @nytgraphics, @newyorker, @columbia. forever: @BAPS love.
New York, NY
Joined March 2009
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Nilkanth Patel retweeted
Im in Jev heaven (Jevean?)
At Pallet we're building automations for many of the world's largest enterprise logistics companies.
On a customer classification experiment, I compared
Jev Only vs Hybrid Jev LLM vs prod LLM data
The results are INSANE
After co-inventing ChatGPT, I kept asking myself: why have superhuman chat models not led to AGI?
I’ve spent the last 2 years in stealth building a new way to train models (RLCD), and a new type of frontier AI model that we are releasing today: Jev
• 20-200x faster
• 40-400x cheaper (w/ output tokens free)
• Frontier composable intelligence optimized for decisions
AFAICT the shortest path to AI-based economic revolution
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
The "whiteboard defense:" I should be able to pull you aside at any moment and ask you to explain any customer-facing system you've shipped. You should be able to clearly explain how it works and defend the decisions you made. This is my benchmark for responsible AI usage.
I don't expect line-level familiarity with the code. I don't care if you remember the exact function name or implementation detail. You may not even know it. I don't care.
But if I ask "why did you do X instead of Y?", "what happens if this actor behaves maliciously?", "what data structure did you use here and why?", or "where does this fail?" you should be able to answer confidently.
For PoCs, demos, experiments, whatever: I don't care. Generate 100% of it and understand none of it. Speed over quality every time in those specific scenarios.
But if you're shipping customer-facing work, you can't be shipping things you don't understand at a high level.
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
Two million shipments a year at 99% accuracy is a distributed systems problem wearing an AI costume.
Under the hood: typed, functional, event-driven plumbing. Immutable versions. Every shipment is data, every side effect is a liability.
Boring on purpose. Proud of this one.
We're proud to partner with @onelineage, the world's largest temperature-controlled logistics company.
Today, @trypallet AI agents process two million of their shipments a year at 99% accuracy, helping them scale without compromising the high-touch service they're known for.
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
Startups often conflate FDE with just being close to customers in the early days.
Being forward-deployed when you're starting out makes a lot of sense because you get signal on what to build.
FDE (in the original Palantir sense) exists to bridge the last mile in a $20m contract because the customer has bespoke needs and environments.
Unless you are closing those contracts, FDE should not be a crutch to avoid doing the hard work of building a scalable product.
Our engineers have always been very customer-facing, but something that helped us is truly viewing our offering as product-driven (as opposed to services or FDE) because we think that is the correct solution for our space.
That forced us to skip some shortcuts but has paid off so far.
I've never seen startups spend so much time looking sideways.
One AI company builds forward deployed engineering and then everyone decides they need an FDE team too. One company pays a certain number for talent, and suddenly that's the market, whether or not companies can afford it. One company juices a launch with influencer tweets that read like the same intern wrote all of them, and suddenly that's the playbook.
Those choices came out of constraints you can't see from the outside. Forward deployed engineering works when your contracts are seven figures and integration takes 6+ months. It's unlikely a fit it you're selling a product at $20/seat. The comp number works when one hire moves your model quality. Otherwise, it can be a pretty fast way to run out of money.
Founder mode (the version I believe in) is about refusing to outsource your judgment. Being able to say "I've thought about it, we're not doing that," without needing a competitor's decision to drive your own.
Why spend years and your best engineers building a worse version of someone else's company?
Run yours.
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
Larry Ellison in 2001 on the power of references when selling a complex B2B product – even at Oracle’s then-$10B revenue scale, new products were a deal-by-deal slog until there were sufficient references.
(book is Softwar)
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
Massive unlock for @TryPallet with customers across the world who care about making su e their data remains their own!
We're scaling our teams across research, engineering, and deployments. If you're interested in building with the best team in the supply chain space, join us!
Today, we're introducing @trypallet Custom Models, giving every supply chain company enterprise sovereignty over its AI.
Frontier models are powerful, but production workflows require repeated model calls, driving up costs as context and volume grow while exposing your proprietary knowledge. You pay for every token processed, not outcomes achieved.
Custom Models are trained exclusively on your operation, deployed on infrastructure you control, and never shared externally. The result is AI that's more accurate, private, and cost-efficient.
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
Today, we're introducing @trypallet Custom Models, giving every supply chain company enterprise sovereignty over its AI.
Frontier models are powerful, but production workflows require repeated model calls, driving up costs as context and volume grow while exposing your proprietary knowledge. You pay for every token processed, not outcomes achieved.
Custom Models are trained exclusively on your operation, deployed on infrastructure you control, and never shared externally. The result is AI that's more accurate, private, and cost-efficient.
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
just interviewed a former Scale AI engineer about the AI coding workflow he uses at his current company @TryPallet
he told me about this simple cursor technique that completely transformed their code quality
A LOT of teams are doing cursor wrong. here's what actually works →
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
bhai, main goregaon mein rehta hoon
@Trendulkar
NORTH CAROLINA: TODAY IS THE LAST DAY TO REQUEST A BALLOT
If you plan to vote ABSENTEE IN NORTH CAROLINA you need to request your ballot TODAY.
Click the link to learn how to request your ballot NOW!
Reply #stop to opt-out.
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
Less than 10 days after the desecration of the @BAPS Mandir in New York, our Mandir in the Sacramento, CA area was desecrated last night with anti-Hindu hate: “Hindus go back!” We stand united against hate with prayers for peace.
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
“tell toranaga-sama that cursor is incredible. a game changer. in its current form it’s basically the equivalent of having a technical cofounder or a team of senior engineers. tell him i’m excited to see what i can build with cursor + claude”
“the anjin doesn’t know how to code”
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
new personal website inspired by apple notes
it’s fast, fully interactive, & can be navigated entirely via keyboard shortcuts
it was a ton of fun to build
give it a try and leave me some notes 👋🏼
alanagoyal.com
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
Wear it before the game.
Tyrese Haliburton is COLD for this 💀
He wore a hoodie with Reggie Miller on it with the choke sign at his presser following the Pacers' Game 7 win vs. the Knicks.
(via @AngelaMoryanTV)
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
This is Swaminarayan Akshardham, a colossal Hindu temple in Delhi built with marble and limestone and covered in thousands of sculptures.
But this is not an ancient temple — it is less than twenty years old.
And it might change the future of architecture...
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
For 50 years, BAPS has been an important part of the Canadian family. This afternoon, we joined members of the @BAPS_Toronto community to celebrate their 50th anniversary – and to reaffirm that, no matter how you pray or where you are from, you are always welcome in Canada.
ALT Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and His Holiness Mahant Swami Maharaj are sitting in chairs beside each other. His Holiness is speaking, and the Prime Minister is smiling.
ALT Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is standing and leaning forward. He is shaking hands with a woman who is sitting. Both of them are smiling. Other people are visible in the background.
ALT Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is standing and shaking hands with a woman. Both of them are smiling. Other people are visible beside them and in the background.
Nilkanth Patel retweeted
What an honor. To receive a blessing from his Holiness Mahant Swami Maharaj. There is a divine out of body experience I can't explain when in the presence of his Holiness. There was a true sense of unity this night. Thank you, @baps_toronto , for a moment I will never forget. – at Mississauga, Ontario
