I Flew to LA to Be an FDE: 72 Hours Inside a US Client

Series — Burning ₩100M on AX (table of contents)

• Why We Started a Dev Agency in Bangladesh
• An English-Phobic Founder's First Global Hire
• Looking Back on Year One
• My First Layoff, and a New Team
• 18 Hours in Dhaka
• Earning Our First Dollars in America
• Why Am I So Bad at This?
• The Struggle to Earn More Dollars
• From 1 to 20, From Zero to US Revenue
• A ₩30M Team Retreat in Bangladesh
• What the Best Global Founders Do
• Our First Hell Gate
• Looking for Potential Abroad
• Networking in Vietnam From Zero
• The Painful AX Lessons That Cost ₩100M (Part 1)
• Firing Half the Team (Part 2)
• Running FDE Myself (this post)

Continued from Part 2: Firing Half the Team.

So I got on the plane to LA. My body was wrecked the whole flight — the fever kept spiking, and my bold plan to read the PRD in the air fell apart. Whenever I was lucid I read what I could, and resolved to finish the rest at the hotel.

(A quick aside.) Why fly from Seoul to California on my own dime to sit inside a client's office? To test one hypothesis. There's a development model getting hot in the US right now (honestly, hot for a few months already) called FDE — a Forward Deployed Engineer. Loosely it rhymes with a "dispatched developer," but the role is different. Instead of passively taking tickets, an FDE embeds inside the client as an insider, watches closely, then proposes a fix for the inefficiencies they spot — and builds the demo right there, on the spot. It needs not just engineering but observation, empathy, and business sense. (Which is why it's expensive.)

Back to the story: the California weather when I stepped out of LAX was unreal. The client picked me up and we had a great dinner. In Korea I'd been a wreck from the fever and cold — but watching that sunset, the exhaustion melted away.

Back at the hotel, every kind of fatigue hit at once. Jet lag, a fever that wouldn't break, a throat shredded by coughing — my worst condition, and the work was still ahead. This trip only happened thanks to a lot of people (my wife, my mother-in-law, the sitter, the client), so I had to deliver peak performance across the remaining 72 hours. The pressure kept me up, and in between I filmed a few clips. (Something told me they'd be a memory someday.)

Day 1 (D-48 hours)

The big day. Sleeping in a real bed helped; I woke clear-headed. I'll call the client "Matthew" (alias). Matthew picked me up at the hotel and I met the teammates I'd only known online. My first impression of a US company? Honestly, people working anywhere look about the same. For the first few hours I just walked the floor and watched how the team worked, asking and listening:

How do you work? Why that way? Where do you spend the most time but feel least productive? Who owns this?

I listened, took notes, asked again — then re-explained their workflow back in my own words. (Did I get this right?) The morning flew by. I had the information; now it was my turn to show a result.

Afternoon. There was a Zoom scheduled with a SaaS vendor the client was considering adopting. I kept firing questions:

Why do you want to use them? Mind if I join this meeting? I think I might be able to help.

Sitting in on that vendor call, I understood what the client was struggling with and why they were considering it. I watched the product closely the whole meeting, and the moment it ended I told Matthew:

Lukas: "From what I can see, you really need this. Give me 3 hours? I'll build it and wire it into your ERP."
Matthew: "Lukas, is that even possible? Would be great if so."
Lukas: "Yeah — just give me 3 hours."

I built it right there next to Matthew. After months of building, breaking, and sharpening my harness, I was confident. In 3 hours I built it on the spot and showed him — and Matthew was floored. That was the moment FDE proved itself. That alone made the whole trip worth it, and I understood far better the leverage FDE has over the traditional software-outsourcing model.

There were many more stories, but they're confidential, so I'll stop there for now.

Day 2 (D-24 hours)

My 48 hours were almost up. Day 2 looked similar: roaming the floor, finding inefficiencies, fixing them on the spot. No PRD, no outdated design/requirements meetings. Problem → Build, Problem → Build, over and over. It made me wonder: would this FDE experience work in the Korean market too? For small startups and SMBs, probably — but beyond that, I'm not sure. And above all, developers with real problem-solving instinct are genuinely rare in this world.

As I wrapped up, I got two wonderful gifts.

Trader Joe's bags

While working, I'd casually mentioned to the client that Trader Joe's bags are a craze in Korea. Somehow Matthew, J (alias), and Matthew's wife took that to heart and did an early-morning open run to buy a whole assortment for me. (I definitely took a photo — no idea where it went.)

The potential of FDE

This trip wasn't requested by the client — I prepared it voluntarily, just to test FDE. I covered the flights and costs and offered to come first. Maybe I did it all to ask one question. On our last drive home, I asked Matthew two things:

Lukas: "Matthew, how's our Bangladesh team? Don't spare my feelings — be honest."
Matthew: "In Korea I couldn't say, but in the US there are tons of agencies like yours — India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe, they all reach out. The reason we work with you is you, Lukas — not your team."

Lukas: "Then how was working with you these past few days? This is what FDE is — talking, meeting, and building together inside your office, like we just did."
Matthew: "Honestly? This is incredible. A lot of companies would want it. But… wouldn't your wife hate it? ㅎㅎ"

Heading home

Son, daughter — when you grow up and read this blog someday: I was doing my best to earn your formula money. Ha.

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Potential — the global-expansion development agency. The Korean agency that teams in Silicon Valley, London, Hong Kong, Dubai, and Tokyo call when they're going to market. → potentialai.com