Grant Lee: How Gamma turned a 'dumbest idea' into $100M ARR

1. 0:00 – 5:59

   Introduction to Grant Lee and Gamma

   1. GLGrant Lee0:00

      (instrumental music plays) I'm in my third pitch in. I get to the very end of the pitch feeling pretty good about myself. The investor pauses a little bit, and then just says, "That is have, has to be the worst pitch, worst idea I have ever heard. Not only are you trying to go against incumbents, you're going against incumbents that have massive distribution. You are never going to succeed."

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky0:17

      You guys are at over 100 million ARR now, worth over two billion dollars. One of the most interesting ways you guys grew early on was influencer marketing.

   3. GLGrant Lee0:25

      All the initial influencers I onboarded manually myself. I would jump on a call with each one of them so that they understood what Gamma represented, how to use the product. You want to be able to have them tell your story, but in their voice. I think a lot of people think influencer marketing and they'll think these big, trendy creators, people that have a million followers. This is the wrong approach. You basically give 'em a script to read, immediately feels like an ad. That product is not connected really to them in any way. You're much better doing the hard thing, which is hard to scale, finding the thousands of micro-influencers that have an audience where your product maybe is actually useful, people really trust what they say. That ends up becoming this wildfire that can spread really, really fast.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03

      Something you talk about, there is actually a lot of ways to think experimentally even in the early stages.

   5. GLGrant Lee1:08

      We would have an idea in the morning, come up with some sort of functional prototype, recruit a bunch of people that are legitimately good prospective users but have zero skin in the game. Ship that so people can start playing with it. In the afternoon, we're already running pretty full-scale experiment. You start actually hearing other people describe their usage of the product, or you can also watch them struggle. By the evening or by the next day, we can actually go through all of it together and say, "Okay, we're going back and we have to fix this. This is like not usable." And we've done that for everything.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:35

      Today my guest is Grant Li, CEO and co-founder of Gamma. This is a really unique and inspiring and very tactically useful conversation, because Grant is building something that is essentially the dream for most founders, a massive AI startup that's profitable and has been for a long time, that didn't raise a lot of money for a long time, and is a small team. It's just around 30 people, all who can fit in a small restaurant, serving over 50 million users globally. If you're not familiar with Gamma, they're an AI-powered presentation and website design tool. They just hit 100 million ARR in just over two years. They're valued at over two billion dollars. And unlike a lot of the fast-growing AI startups that you hear about, they're growing profitably and sustainably, and in a category that most people did not believe had a huge business opportunity. As you'll hear in the conversation, one investor told Grant this is the dumbest idea that he has ever heard. In this conversation, Grant shares the very counterintuitive lessons that he's learned finding product-market fit, how he knew they had product-market fit, the specific tactics that helped them grow, including a deep dive into influencer marketing, which blew my mind. Also, how they figured out their price, his thoughts on building a GPT wrapper company that is durable, a ton of hiring advice, and so much more. This could honestly have been another two hours of conversation. I suspect we'll do another follow-up conversation next year. If you love this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It helps tremendously. And if you become an annual subscriber of my newsletter, you get a year free of 16 incredible products, including Devon, Lovable, Replit, Bolt, n8n, Linear, Superhuman, Descript, Whisperflow, Gamma, Perplexity, Warp, Granola, Magic Patterns, Raycast, ChatPRD, and Maven. Head on over to lennysnewsletter.com and click Product Pass. With that, I bring you Grant Li after a short word from our sponsors. My podcast guests and I love talking about craft and taste and agency and product-market fit. You know what we don't love talking about? SOC 2. That's where Vanta comes in. Vanta helps companies of all sizes get complying fast, and stay that way, with industry-leading AI, automation, and continuous monitoring. Whether you're a startup tackling your first SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or an enterprise managing vendor risk, Vanta's Trust Management Platform makes it quicker, easier, and more scalable. Vanta also helps you complete security questionnaires up to five times faster so that you could win bigger deals sooner. The result? According to a recent IDC study, Vanta customers slashed over $500,000 a year and are three times more productive. Establishing trust isn't optional. Vanta makes it automatic. Get $1,000 off at vanta.com/lenny. Did you know that I have a whole team that helps me with my podcast and with my newsletter? I want everyone on that team to be super happy and thrive in their roles. Justworks knows that your employees are more than just your employees. They're your people. My team is spread out across Colorado, Australia, Nepal, West Africa, and San Francisco. My life would be so incredibly complicated to hire people internationally, to pay people on time and in their local currencies, and to answer their HR questions 24/7. But with Justworks, it's super easy. Whether you're setting up your own automated payroll, offering premium benefits, or hiring internationally, Justworks offers simple software and 24/7 human support from small business experts for you and your people. They do your human resources right so that you can do right by your people. Justworks, for your people. Grant, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

   7. GLGrant Lee5:19

      Lenny, so great to be here. Thank you for having me.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky5:21

      I see your face all the time in my LinkedIn feed. I don't know if you know this is a thing, um, on these JP Morgan Chase ads. So curious if other people see this or if it's just me. Did you know this was a thing?

   9. GLGrant Lee5:31

      I, I think it's maybe once a day now, I get a text message.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky5:34

       (laughs)

   11. GLGrant Lee5:34

       And just, just no message, it's just a screenshot or s- you know, an image of me, you know, doing something in San Francisco on one of these, uh, uh, ad- ads that we're seeing. And so yeah, kind of embarrassing, but also, you know, we're happy customers of JP Morgan Chase, so trying to represent.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky5:49

       Oh my God. I hope, I hope you love them 'cause it's like, it's always you. There's no one else (laughs) that's like, "Grant."

   13. GLGrant Lee5:54

       I know. Can I tag, you got to swap somebody out? I mean, that'd be great. I, I-

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky5:57

       (laughs)

   15. GLGrant Lee5:58

       ... I'm totally fine with that.

2. 5:59 – 9:52

   The founding story of Gamma

   1. GLGrant Lee5:59

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky5:59

      Okay, so to get serious, the reason I'm really excited to have you here is...Unlike a lot of super fast-growing AI startups, you are both growing like crazy. You are growing very profitably. We're gonna talk about this. You did not raise a ton of money when you started. You waited a long time to raise a bunch of money. You also built a business in a category that I think most people never imagined there was this big of an opportunity. And you're basically... You've achieved the dream of a lot of fo- founders these days, a lo- especially people building AI startups. So my goal with this conversation is essentially do, uh, an anthropological study of a really successful AI startup, talk about how you found product-market fit, how you grew, all the les- all the lessons you've learned along the journey. And I'm gonna break this conversation up kind of along the different milestones of the journey. Before we get into the first piece, is there anything that you think is important for people to hear kind of broadly about the story of Gamma?

   3. GLGrant Lee6:57

      Yeah. Maybe I'll just start with, uh, a- well, with a quick story, if that's okay. And, um, it's really just a founding story. So, you know, we started the company, uh, back in 2020. This is peak pandemic. And, you know, fundraising, even fundraising was just so different. So all of the fundraising was done over Zoom. You were kind of, you know, sitting in these Zoom meetings trying to pitch, many investors you never met in person. So just a different era, right? And so for us, you know, we're first-time founders. I was actually living in London at the time, and so, you know, different time zone. I had to do all of my pitches at night. And, you know, I have two little kids, so wait for them to go to bed, 8:00 PM. We had a pretty modest flat, so nothing big. I would basically find this little corner, uh, between the kitchenette and the laundry room as a kind of set-up shop, far enough from the kids so they wouldn't, you know, be woken up. In between 8:00 PM and, like, 2:00 AM, I'm just pitching, you know, trying my best. I have my... the fake Zoom background so people didn't know where I was, and just pitching. And so, you know, really the first day, kind of I'm in my third pitch in, trying to tell the story of Gamma, obviously just starting to get the hang of the pitch. And, uh, you know, I get to the very end of the pitch feeling pretty good about myself, and the investor pauses a little bit, and then just says, "That is ha- has to be the worst pitch, worst idea I have ever heard. Not only are you trying to go against incumbents, you're going against incumbents that have massive distribution. You are never going to succeed." And so, like in my head, I'm already kind of shell-shocked and thinking, you know, "What am I gonna... h- what's my rebuttal?" And before I could even ha- you know, respond, he hangs up. And so I'm there sitting, you know, there thinking about it and, you know, before I could really get down on myself because I had to prepare for the next pitch, I kinda just internalized this feeling that, you know, maybe he's right. You know, maybe something about what he's saying is actually correct. And so for me, I started thinking about if we're going to succeed in this category, we're gonna really have to think about growth from the very beginning. This category is gonna be really, really hard to break into, and so we really kind of made this sort of kind of promise to ourselves that as we continue to build, growth is gonna be critically important. And so my thing to kind of, you know, your audience is that, you know, I don't come from a growth background. So if I can learn growth, anybody can learn growth, and I think especially in this sort of market, hyper competitive, oftentimes very crowded, it's gonna be essential.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky9:19

      That is such a fun story. Oh my god. How, (laughs) how bad the, must this investor feel at this point?

   5. GLGrant Lee9:25

      (laughs)

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky9:25

      We won't name names. Uh, just to share some stats, I know this is gonna be... by the time this launches, this will be out, but you guys are at over 100 million ARR now, worth over two billion dollars, uh, a business that, again, most people did not think was, was gonna work in, in this category.

   7. GLGrant Lee9:41

      Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. We feel super proud to have accomplished that. And again, yeah, I'm e- I'm excited to share some of the, you know, the growth tactics and things that worked for us, 'cause I think, you know, hopefully it'll help others kind of on

3. 9:52 – 15:43

   Achieving product-market fit

   1. GLGrant Lee9:52

      their journey as well.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky9:52

      Okay. So let's dive into it. Let's talk about product-market fit. Tell us the story of just how you found product-market fit and how you knew you found product-market fit.

   3. GLGrant Lee10:02

      Yeah. I'll start by telling kind of the moment where we thought we maybe had product-market fit, and I think a lot of founders, you know, ask themselves, "Do we have it or do we not?" And I think there's a, there's often a sort of temptation to kind almost, almost fool yourself into thinking you have it. And so we sort of did our first public beta launch. Um, this was back in August of 2022. We launched on Product Hunt and, you know, felt really good. We had had a... you know, what we felt like was a great launch, ended up winning product of the day, product of the week, product of the month, and it was like, "Wow, we, you know... I think we have something here." And then we'd look at sign-ups and you'd get that initial spike in sign-ups, and then they sort of like flatten out. You were still getting new users every day, but it was clear we didn't have strong word-of-mouth. There wasn't strong organic virality. And so if we just kind of played things out, you know, we knew that the, the product wasn't gonna grow on its own. Like something was missing there. We didn't have that strong word-of-mouth so that the product could just continue growing. And so we really kind of asked ourselves like, "Okay, what does... what do we need to change?" And the answer is like we, we need to fundamentally change everything. It, for us, almost became this sort of bet-the-company sort of moment, 'cause at that point we were running low on runway. You know, we knew we needed to make progress, and we didn't really know, you know, what could be done. And so we got everyone together. At this point, the team was, uh, just over 12 people, and we said, "Okay, well it's gonna be all hands on deck. We are gonna do everything we possibly can to make the first 30 seconds of the product feel magical." The moment you land into the product, it has to be great, and it has to be so great that someone that goes through that onboarding is going to tell all their friends. And if we can get that right, then maybe we have a chance at actually, you know, doing something in this space. And so we spent three, four months... Actually, you know, after the product la- launch, we like felt great, but we knew we had to go back to the drawing board. We spent the next like three, four months actually revamping the entire onboarding experience. And of course, this is also where, you know, AI for us kind of played a big role. We actually rebuilt it so that AI was part of the, the, the actual onboarding, so every single new user would experience this sort of magic in the first 30 seconds. And so we re- relaunched, this is end of March 2023, w-And all of a sudden, you know, we'd go from a few 100 sign-ups a day to now first day was, like, a couple thousand. And then the next day would be, like, 5,000 sign-ups, and then 10,000 sign-ups a day, and then 20,000 sign-ups a day, and then it just kept going up. And we weren't doing any sort of marketing, no advertising. It was all sort of organic word of mouth, virality of the product, people using the product and sharing with others, where we, for the first time, really felt this pull. Like, we didn't have to do anything. Product was just growing, and, uh, it was just such a distinct difference between that feeling and, like, coming out of the ProductHub launch where we could have fooled ourselves into thinking we had product-market fit. I think the temptation would have been, "Hey, let's just spend more on ads or spend more on marketing," 'cause like, you know, we'll just fuel, you know, fuel the top of the funnel and everything else will work itself out. I think that would have been a trap. I think that would have let, led us down to, like, this path of trying to brute force our way into product-market fit, and it would just always be sort of a fleeting sort of destination. We'd never actually arrive. And so I think we made the tough call, the right call. It was a sort of bet-the-company moment, and I think on the other side, it just felt so different.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky13:11

      Grant, this is exactly what I wanted this conversation to be. I'm so- I'm so excited. I have so many questions (laughs) I have to follow up on the stuff you shared before we even get to the rest of the journey. So one is, essentially what you're describing is product-market fit to you was when organic growth started to really take off and it was just growing through word of mouth. You weren't doing much because it was so awesome people are telling their friends about it. Is there anything more there that might be helpful for people to share, just to hear about just like okay, here's what it actually looks like?

   5. GLGrant Lee13:38

      Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm... My one piece of advice is that when you're early on y- your mindset should almost be like you're trying to create a word of mouth machine, right? Like, if you can get that part right, everything else becomes significantly easier. And the m- if you have any... And, and I think this applies to both, like, prosumer B2C as well as even B2B products. Like, if you have a B2B product, even if you're not telling all of your, you know, all of your friends, you should be telling colleagues where, like, that product is relevant. You should probably be telling, you know, you know, uh, former coworkers where, hey, you've discovered something like, "Oh, I wish we had this, you know, my- my- in our prior lives," and like that should even be magical. And then you should see that in all the leads that are coming through, like, or people coming through, through your prospects and your existing customers. If you're not seeing a healthy chunk of those leads come through that way, I would go back. I'm like, "Why? Why is that not happening?" Because again, that's like the massive tailwind you need where everything, every single thing you do on top of that, all the marketing, all the sales, all the advertising, you're just gonna have... Like, it becomes way, way easier.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky14:36

      How much of this was... You describe it as a word of mouth machine. How much of this was, like, word of mouth loops and virality features versus just the product itself? One was awesome and two is kind of innately shareable because it's, you know, presentations people share with each other.

   7. GLGrant Lee14:50

      Yeah, totally. I think for us we do benefit from being in a category where, you know, by nature of it if- if you like Gamma, you're sharing it, presenting it to the others. So I think it... For us, it's a combination of both and, and ideally you have other ways where, you know, word of mouth or organic virality can, can happen in your product. So by nature of usage, like, it's being shared. You know, we basically had an internal mantra that we go back to like the first 30 seconds. We want it to be dead simple for someone to create content. We want to be dead simple for them to share it. And everything we did kind of for that first 30 seconds or, you know, call it the first few minutes, is remove friction so that they can do both of those things, create and share. And I think other people, you know, when you look at your own product, you think about, okay, what is it, you know, what is it about my product and how it gets used? Can you remove friction such that it can actually spread? And even if it's locally within an organization or like, you know, within a workspace, like, just be able to enable that as much as you possibly can.

4. 15:43 – 17:17

   Self-awareness as a founder

   1. GLGrant Lee15:43

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky15:43

      The other really profound point you're making here is the story of you won Product of the Day on Product Hunt, which alone is so hard. So many people try to win and don't. Most, most (laughs) people don't. Like, I've tried to help companies-

   3. GLGrant Lee15:56

      Right.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky15:56

      ... win and it's- it's like a really hard thing to achieve. And then you won Product of the Week and Product of the Month and still-

   5. GLGrant Lee16:02

      Right.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky16:02

      ... you're like, "No, this isn't working." Most people that achieve that are like, "No, we got this," and they would not have to bet the company. There was no feel- there wouldn't be a feeling of we have to rethink everything. What is it... Just what is it there that you're just like, "No, we need... This isn't going to work. As much as it's as exciting as this is, this isn't it"?

   7. GLGrant Lee16:20

      Yeah, I mean part of, you know, being a founder is being, you know, as self-aware as you can and be your own s- your own worst critic, right? And so, you know, oftentimes you want to have these vanity metrics that feel good to celebrate and you should celebrate, but you should know when it's a vanity metric versus is this core to our growth engine. Like, if this number goes up, does it mean the product is working? And I think that's where we looked at like, okay, you know, felt good to win those things. We got... We kind of put ourselves at least on the map, but it wasn't good enough to actually have this sort of feeling that we had a core growth engine we could just invest in and get better and better. That wasn't there yet.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky16:53

      So essentially it kind of started to just plateau and, and slow. It wasn't like this rocket ship-

   9. GLGrant Lee16:58

      Yeah.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky16:58

       ... that took off from that point.

   11. GLGrant Lee16:59

       Yeah. It was still, like... We were still getting sign-ups. Like, they were coming through, but you could just tell there wasn't, like... There- there wasn't... Wasn't this, like, building momentum, you know? And I think that's, that's where it's always hard to tell. You- you kind of have to... You know, me and my co-founders, when we sat down, we were just... We were trying to be honest with ourselves like, "Okay, is this going to be enough?" And it just really felt like it wasn't

5. 17:17 – 20:41

   The power of onboarding

   1. GLGrant Lee17:17

      going to be good.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky17:17

      The other point here is the power of onboarding, which comes up a bunch on this podcast when you talk about driving retention. So you, so you launched Product Hunt, did great, and then started kind of petering out. How much did the product change after it, things started to work versus onboarding? Just like how important was onboarding? And then just-

   3. GLGrant Lee17:38

      Yeah.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky17:38

      ... tell us why the first 30 seconds. Where'd you come up with that number?

   5. GLGrant Lee17:41

      Yeah. So for us, you know, the, the onboarding and the product experience for- for us that's intertwined, right?

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky17:46

      Mm-hmm.

   7. GLGrant Lee17:46

      The analogy I always think about is, you know, you, you know, if you go into, you know, a restaurant and, you know, maybe the food is good, but when you really think about the user experience, it's like the moment you walk into the door, you get seated, the waitress/waiter comes by, greets you, you order. You know, and of course the food has to taste good, but if that entire, like... And then you finally get the bill and you leave. Like, is that entire experience something that feels delightful? Is it good enough for you to tell your friends about? If someone just came by and dropped the food on, on your plate, you know, on the table and was like just left and never came with a bill. You're like, "Okay, maybe I'm not going to recommend this to, to somebody else." And so for us, like, we thought about, okay, the first moment someone walks through our door, like, you know, dropping into the product-... what is, what is something we can give them? Can we shorten that time to value as much as possible? A lot of this is inspired by, you know, like Scott Belsky. He talks about kind of that first mile, the first 15 minutes, and I think that's totally right. And I think one approach is, you think about new users as you almost have, like, a cynical view of them. You have to think about them being selfish, vain, and lazy. Right? Like, they're coming in, they have no desire to learn a new tool. And so, what can you give them in that first 30 seconds that earns you the next 30 seconds, and then the next 30 seconds? And so for us, we knew that if we can't... You know, people's attention span is even shorter today than maybe 10 years ago. And so what is it in that first 30 seconds? Could we actually show you something and, uh, earn the right to kind of, you know, keep kind of building that relationship with you? We really thought a- a lot about that. And, and certainly that's, that's, uh, that's all we could really afford at that time. We only had 12 people building, and so like w- we couldn't make a entirely, you know, revamp the entire product. We knew that we had to at least put all of our energy into one spot. And so we made that coming into the door, come through the door, make that feel, that moment feel magical so that we can do a little bit more over time.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky19:27

      I love your point about how, you know, you could think of it as like, okay, it's onboarding versus the product. The lens of how do we make this incredibly valuable and aha-ish for the first 30 seconds almost informs what the product should be.

   9. GLGrant Lee19:39

      Yeah. It really helps you, you know, pull forward what is the most magical thing about your product, right? Sometimes founders will think about, like, the five, 10 features. Well, maybe there's only, like, one thing that kind of differentiates you. You know, I tr- I try to learn a lot from, you know, right, you know, w- we'll, we'll get into some of the marketing pieces of this, but even just having this sort of founder-led marketing lens of like, what can I do to help a new user just understand? You know, there's this thing from, like, consumer advertising, which is you throw a consumer one egg, they can probably catch it. You throw them four or five eggs, they're probably gonna drop all of them. And like oftentimes founders want to talk about the four or five features they have, maybe 10 features, and then the consumer's totally confused, like, "Why, why do I need this thing?" We try to just give them that one egg, that one, you know, like first experience where like, okay, you know, create a slide in seconds. That's, that's the egg. I'm gonna throw you this egg. Is that compelling to you? Some people are still gonna opt out, but for the people that catch that, you're solving like a real problem for them. And then you can continue again kind of building on that over time. Like you've given them enough so that they'll sit around and like keep playing with

6. 20:41 – 22:42

   The original insight that led to Gamma

   1. GLGrant Lee20:41

      your product.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky20:41

      That is a hilarious metaphor I've never heard (laughs) for, for onboarding time to value. Just focus on one egg at a time. Just going even further back, what was the original insight that you had that led to Gamma and what Gamma is today?

   3. GLGrant Lee20:55

      After the last startup I was at was acquired, I, I went back into kind of my roots, which is consulting. I was advising early stage startups, and the sort of medium I was using w- was Google Slides. So I just remember this, you know, late night trying to prepare for next day's meeting, trying to format and fi- figure out the right layout and spending hours just trying to get the sort of look and feel right, rather than the content itself. And for me that just felt completely backwards. You know, I should be spending 90% of the time on the content, 10% maybe on the design and formatting. And so the question just was, you know, what if there's a better way? What if we could reimagine this format from the ground up? Slides have been around for almost 40 years as the default, you know, medium of choice for a lot of this. And so we thought about, okay, if we had different building blocks, different primitives, so you're not locked into the fixed 16 by 9, you know, slide, w- what could you, you know, what could we offer to new users? And so that was really the, the starting point of all this.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky21:48

      Like hearing this, I could see why investors would be like, "Nah, you know, like, I guess so." But slides has been around, PowerPoint has been around for 40 years. Like, I get it, you know?

   5. GLGrant Lee21:56

      Totally.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky21:56

      I get why people would be-

   7. GLGrant Lee21:56

      Yeah.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky21:57

      And specifically AI. Was that a part of the vision initially or did AI start to come up and then wow, great timing?

   9. GLGrant Lee22:04

      Great timing. It wasn't part of the original vision, although the spirit was there, which is we want to make it incredibly fast and effortless for people to create content. So it just so happened that AI was a magical gift that allowed us to do all those things along the same sort of ambition or vision that we had. And, um, and so we integrated it core to kind of all the building blocks we were already building well before AI was part of the picture.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky22:26

       It's such a cool other example. There's just so many examples of ideas that were not possible before are now very possible with AI.

   11. GLGrant Lee22:33

       Right.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky22:33

       And it's a great opportunity for people to come after as you s- like places, categories people think is an impossible place to build a big business, AI now allows it.

7. 22:42 – 29:20

   Founder-led marketing and growth tactics

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky22:42

   2. GLGrant Lee22:42

      Totally.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky22:42

      Awesome. Speaking of that, let's talk about the growth journey and how you actually grew from nothing to 100 million ARR in just over two years. I'm thinking we break it up. I know these milestones aren't that clear, but kind of like zero to 100 million ARR, one to 10, 10 to 100, something like that. And let's just kind of see how it goes. W- how did you get your first set of users? How'd you get your, say, 100, first 100 users? How'd you get to 100 million ARR from zero?

   4. GLGrant Lee23:10

      Uh, our first 100 looks very different, I'd say. So this was even pre the sort of AI launch we had. You know, the first 100 users for a product like ours, you're, you're trying to convince all your friends to use the product. Anybody that's ever made a slide deck you're trying to talk to. And I think early on, you know, y- your friends want to do you a favor so they're gonna try the product. They're also gonna lie to you. They're gonna tell you how great it is, and then you look at the usage and nobody's coming back. And so I think our first 100 was sort of like gradually hard earned post sort of the Product Hunt launch, people learning like, "Okay, this is kind of becoming a little bit more useful." Usage was still pretty episodic so they weren't coming back every week. And then I think, do think, you know, the, the moment post sort of the AI launch is where all of a sudden, you know, we saw that sort of organic growth happening, people coming back to the product regularly. And so that's where... It wasn't even the first 100, it was like, I mean, the first, you know, 10,000 users all came within a pretty short time period after that, that initial launch.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky24:02

      Awesome. We're gonna talk about monetization pricing later, which is obviously an important part of actual-

   6. GLGrant Lee24:07

      Yeah.

   7. LRLenny Rachitsky24:07

      ... getting to a million ARR and 10 million ARR.

   8. GLGrant Lee24:09

      Yeah.

   9. LRLenny Rachitsky24:09

      So what I'm hearing essentially is the Product Hunt launch was a big part of just the first 10,000-ish users. I know there was also a, a tweet when you first, when you relaunched that helped in a big way. Talk about that.

   10. GLGrant Lee24:24

       Yeah. So when, uh, we, you know, we did our AI launch, w- we didn't do our AI launch on Product Hunt. We just, we, we basically said, "Hey, let's just put it o- out on Twitter, see if we can get some virality." A- and honestly, we, we kind of ca- came up with kind of a clickbaity sort of, you know, tweet. It was like, you know, "The, the most valuable, uh, skill in business is about to become obsolete."And, uh, and so, you know, w- it was intentional in that we wanted to create a little bit of engagement. We knew that having, sort of, a more provo- provocative, you know, tweet would allow people to engage with it. And so, um, after a couple of days, all of a sudden it started getting a little bit more viral and, uh, a lot more engagement. And we looked, and it was basically because Paul Graham had commented and saying something like, "Surely the thing that, uh, the slide deck is describing is more valuable than the slide itself," right? And, uh, obviously, you know, it was fun just to see that comment. I think once that comment came through, like, you know, even more engagement on the post, and then that was really the whole intent of that post, was just to be able to have, you know, that level of engagement so that people, you know, would have some level of reach. And so for me, it was almost like a, the, my first sort of learning moment, going back to, you know, what does founder-led marketing even mean? It means, like, how do you actually break through the noise How do you get a chance to have people even engage with, like, a post like that? Part of that is copyrighting. Part of that is, like, storytelling. Part of that is just having, like, even, like, the right visuals to share. And so I was, uh, for me, kind of a moment just understanding, hey, so to kind of do this right, you kind of, uh, you kind of have to do things that maybe you're not super comfortable with, but, uh, it makes a difference.

   11. LRLenny Rachitsky25:52

       Such a fun story. So, you intentionally set that announcement up to be controversial, is what I'm hearing.

   12. GLGrant Lee25:58

       Totally, yeah. I'd say provocative, a little spicy.

   13. LRLenny Rachitsky26:00

       That is so cool. So essentially, you got to 10,000 users through Product Hunt, and then essentially one controversial tweet that ended up baiting Paul Graham to comment.

   14. GLGrant Lee26:10

       Totally.

   15. LRLenny Rachitsky26:11

       Amazing. And was it a com- it was just a comment. It wasn't even him retweeting it.

   16. GLGrant Lee26:16

       No, just a comment, yeah. And then others would, you know, pile on.

   17. LRLenny Rachitsky26:19

       Yeah. It's interesting how much a comment can, uh, increase the distribution of a tweet versus them retweeting it or quote-tweeting it.

   18. GLGrant Lee26:26

       Totally. And, and of course the algorithms change all the time, so part of it-

   19. LRLenny Rachitsky26:29

       Hmm. (laughs)

   20. GLGrant Lee26:29

       ... is just luck based on when it happened, how it happened-

   21. LRLenny Rachitsky26:31

       Yeah.

   22. GLGrant Lee26:31

       ... who, who posted.

   23. LRLenny Rachitsky26:32

       And, uh, you l- use this term founder-led marketing, which I love, and I'm already seeing it in action here, is, this is you thinking about... It's not like delegating to someone in marketing. It's not hiring an agency. It's like, how do I tell a story that I think will break through the noise based on you building this company, having the insight to build this product. And I guess, is there anything more there you think is important for people to hear about the importance of the founder thinking through this stuff?

   24. GLGrant Lee26:56

       Yeah, I mean, I think very, you know, most people p- today are probably familiar with founder-led sales, which is still very, very important. I think before you hire your first, you know, salesperson or sale- or AE, it- it's great to, for the founder to understand, like, what it takes and, you know, they're gonna craft the right narrative, the right story. At, at my previous role, I was the COO at a startup where I was doing a lot of... I wasn't founder, but I was early, and so I was helping the founders go through this and, and really helping going to meetings with a client or, or a prospect and saying, "Hey, this is why, you know, um, our product is interesting." And I think, you know, today there's a, there's so many AI startups that are much more either B2C or prosumer, and so you're not necessarily talking to individual prospects. But the idea that you can be, you know, really in control of the narrative on the marketing side, it is really, really important. And I think I'll, you know, I'll describe a few things where over time, I think that skillset just really, really helps you. One is, like, you know, you have a chance to kind of be a creator yourself these days. I think a lot of founders are trying to, you know, be more active on social media, and I think, you know, if you can kind of overcome the initial cringe factor of, like, seeing yourself in postings, like, "Oh, this doesn't, you know, feel authentic." If you can overcome that initial feeling, you, you start investing into, like, "Okay, how do I become a better copywriter," you know? "How do I, uh, articulate something that is, um, clear, not just clever?" You know, I think there's that saying where obviously if you can have that clarity, that's super important. And most people will try to get super, like, creative with their, with their copyrighting, but that's not usually the right way to break through and communicate something. So, how do you improve your own copyrighting? And then that allows you to actually have a higher bar when you start working with other marketers or, in this case, like for us, like, working with influencers, right? If you're working with influencers and creators and you can totally empathize with, like, how they approach that work, and you know what a good hook looks like, or you know how, like, a, to structure a good post. Like, you could only do that if you've kind of gone through it a little bit yourself and you know how hard it is. And I think too many founders will then just say, you know, they'll write something, um, that just feels so much like an ad, and, and then they'll give it to a creator to help amplify and th- and that just never works, right? And so, I do think part of founder-led marketing is, like, going through this yourself, using your own platform. In the beginning, it's probably gonna be super small, but as you get bigger, like, you have, you have a platform that, and you have a voice and people listen, and you're gonna get better and better at your own storytelling. I think these are all skills you should invest in as early as possible 'cause you know you're gonna have to get better and better. It's like practice. You gotta practice

8. 29:20 – 37:40

   Sharing online

   1. GLGrant Lee29:20

      over and over.

   2. LRLenny Rachitsky29:21

      I, I definitely wanna pull on this thread more because you tweeting the lessons you learned building Gamma is what led to this conversation. I was reading, I'm like, "Okay, he's sharing a bunch of stuff, but there's so much more I want to hear." And we're gonna talk through this and go a lot, in, in a lot more depth than what you've shared on Twitter. But, uh, I love that that's example of that working, get- having this conversation. So, let me ask a couple questions here. One is just, how do you find time as a founder/CEO of a very fast-growing, tactic crazy startup? We have so much to do. How do you just, like, allocate the time to do this? And then any, just key lessons you've learned about doing this well beyond what you've already shared for people that are now want to try to start sharing things on LinkedIn and Twitter?

   3. GLGrant Lee30:00

      My advice is definitely just to try to start small. Don't let it become so intimidating that you just don't get started. For me, it was, like, just having a notepad or a, you know, Google Doc around in the beginning, where I would just constantly jot down, okay, the- this is something I learned, or something I observed, or something that worked well, or something that was unintuitive, uh, but, but worked, and just start creating a log of that. And then once I had enough of those, then I'd spend ... Basically, every week, I'd block off a few hours to go a little bit deeper. I'd take a lot of those bullet points and try to say, "Is there enough here to turn this into maybe a post or, you know, something that can be shared broadly?" And in the beginning, I didn't have enough. It was all sort of scattered thoughts. But over time, you start accumulating some interesting themes, and then I would start stress testing that, some of that. So, I would tell, you know, my teammates, like, "Hey, this is something interesting. Do-" Like, "Did you find this interesting?" And if, if there were enough, like, "Oh, yeah, that's ... Uh, that ... I would not have expected that," or, "That's not- something I've never heard before," then I'd, then I'd actually start crafting the initial post. And then, and then you actually just put it out there. Uh, I think what I've learned is, you know, even for LinkedIn versus Twitter, the audiences want different things. And so you almost have to then have different tones of voices or, like, you know, even nuggets or sharing. For me, I invested much more in LinkedIn early on, just because it felt a little bit more natural for me, and then over time, I said, "Okay, well, I'm gonna start packaging certain content for Twitter that's actually different than what I would post on LinkedIn." Sometimes on, on Twitter you get even more tactical or even more into the weeds, and so I found that- that to be helpful. But honestly, I'm still learning. And so, like, every time you post, you go back, you know, however couple weeks, you go and say, "Okay, what things are actually being engaged with?" Like, are things actually creating ... Like, ideally you're creating enough value where people are either bookmarking it, sharing it, retweeting it, you know, these, these things that are signals for there's something valuable there, and, uh, and then you just go back, and you start col- you're collecting your own sort of, you know, these are my all-star posts. Like, these are the ones that I've actually, you know, broken through. And then you go back and try to under- understand, okay, what about that post do I think was actually useful? Was it the actual content? Was it the structure of the content? Was it some sort of contrarian advice? And you start, you know, thematically bunching that together, such that as you're brainstorming every week, you just have a good sort of bo- you know, body of work to- to work off.

   4. LRLenny Rachitsky32:10

      This is so interesting and valuable. So, let me mirror back a few of the lessons that I heard here that I think is easy for people to miss. So, one is just what to share. What I heard here, and I completely agree with this, and this is what I try to do, is pay attention to things you've learned, things that you find interesting, things that are unintuitive to you. Just, like, have a doc and just put these there, and every time you learn something, find something interesting, just add it to the doc. Uh, or, yeah, I haven't heard before is a good one too. So, essentially just, like, if you find it interesting, people on social media will also find it interesting, and-

   5. GLGrant Lee32:44

      I agree, yep.

   6. LRLenny Rachitsky32:45

      ... one, one approach is just share it as it's happening, which is what I try to do. Just like, "Oh, I just learned this thing with Cloud Co- with Cloud Code. Check it out." Or save it up for a big long post. The other interesting ... I've never heard this before, of like, post different things to LinkedIn and Twitter. I, I, I just copy and paste the same thing. Uh, I love that you do something different for the two platforms.

   7. GLGrant Lee33:05

      I, I think we all kind of have intuition that there's, there's, there are different audiences, right? And so if you know that kind of fundamentally, then the question is, you know, how do you package up the story the right way so that there is, um, you know, the audience is, is ready to receive it? And I think this is gonna differ by, you know, by the type of creator or the founder, whoever's posting it, and, and of, of course, the, the actual content itself. And so for me, I'm still tweaking, but I do find that just copy and pasting, you know, from one to the other doesn't usually work. Um, it, it, it really ... Like, you almost need to be in the right mindset of like, "Okay, what do I think will be more engaging on Twitter?" And then, "What do I think will be more engaging on, on LinkedIn?" And, and then kind of, you know, test, test a bunch, see what actually works, go back and, and re- uh, iterate it a little bit.

   8. LRLenny Rachitsky33:49

      So, if you had, like, one bullet point tip for what works on Twitter versus LinkedIn, you shared maybe more tactical on, on Twitter. Is there anything more there you can share?

   9. GLGrant Lee33:56

      Yeah. Uh, uh, that's what I've found, is, like, tactical, oftentimes more contrarian o- on Twitter, and, and also, um, I would say technical too. People really like to know, you know, again, going into, like getting, going back to, like, getting into the weeds, like, is this something I feel like I could replicate? And I'm not gonna give you cred- Like, there's no credibility if you just give, like, a blanket statement or something that feels generic. Like, I, I really need to know. If you can show me the metrics, even better, uh, I feel like that. Versus, like LinkedIn, it's, it's more, oftentimes more even just, you know, uh, either more aspirational or... Aspirational or, like, uh, uh, like, a, a topic or a theme that just feels like relevant at that point in time. And you can just kind of make it more of a, you know, broader statement. It doesn't need to be as tactical. It's more, like, inspirational. It's like, "Oh, okay, now I need to go and learn a little bit more about pricing and packaging," for instance. And that could be the sort of spark that somebody needs, and, uh, you don't need to, you know, spell it completely out. Part of it is also the ... On, on LinkedIn you can't really do threads, and so, you know, doing, like, a super long form post isn't as practical. Maybe that changes in the future, where maybe the, the tactical pieces, you know, that element might, might actually change.

   10. LRLenny Rachitsky35:01

       And last piece is you said you just block off time. Is there, like, a specific time of the week you do this? How do you actually ... 'Cause everyone's like, "Oh, sure, I'll block off time," and then, "Oh, no, okay, but I actually gotta do all this other stuff, so I'm not gonna use it this time. I'll maybe next week."

   11. GLGrant Lee35:12

       For me, it's usually two times of the day. Uh, very first thing in the morning, and, uh, last thing at night. And partly is because of kids. It's almost like I need time where there's just zero distraction, (laughs) uh, and, uh, there's no noise in the house, and so I can actually think, and, uh, and then, you know, I think in the mornings, it's about where are you finding inspiration. Like, w- where, where are you ener- Like, what are, what are topics you're energized by? And then I think at night it's about reflection. Like, what are the things you actually went through that day? You can almost pull up your calendar and be like, "Okay, I talked to X, Y, and Z people, and was there anything from those conversations that might be relevant?" That's where I, you know, write some of those things as more of a, a recap of, of actually what happened.

   12. LRLenny Rachitsky35:50

       And what I ... What helps me to not feel like this is some cringey, self-promo-y, egotistical stuff is just it's useful stuff that I've learned that ends up being helpful to people, and people in the comments are just like, "Oh, that is really cool and useful. Thank you." It's not like self-promotion-

   13. GLGrant Lee36:05

       Totally, yeah.

   14. LRLenny Rachitsky36:05

       It's not just like, "Look how amazing I am. Look at ... Check out my amazing products." Like, "Here's a thing I learned. You might find it useful."

   15. GLGrant Lee36:11

       Uh, that's exactly right. I, I think, you know, one way of thinking about it... You know, with, like, founder-led sales, it- it's, it's always about, like, exchange of value, right? You want to be able to give, you know, them, the customer, this feeling that they're getting an amazing product. In exchange, they're gonna pay you money for it. I think with, like, founder-led marketing, it's almost this mindset of you wanna give people a ton of content. Maybe it's, like, you know, a value in the content, so you're sharing something. Maybe some, you know, some secret tactic or, you know, you're giving them something where they, you know, there, inherently, there's value in it. In exchange, you sort of get goodwill back. You're, you're not necessarily getting money back, you get goodwill. They're gonna follow you. They're gonna engage with your posts. They're gonna tell others about it. And then over time, you can exchange maybe some of that goodwill for, like, "Actually talking about my product and, like, announcing it," and, and they're gonna help amplify the news. And I think that's magic, where you kind of, kind of bank the goodwill for a long period of time by providing just a ton of value with no expectation of anything immediately in return.

   16. LRLenny Rachitsky37:06

       The book I always point people to when they're want- when they're struggling with this sort of thing and, like, "Okay, I did this, and no one liked, no one cared, it didn't do any good," is there's a book by, uh, Scott Pressfield, I think is his name, uh, called Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit.

   17. GLGrant Lee37:19

       Yeah.

   18. LRLenny Rachitsky37:20

       Which is exactly what is right. Nobody wants to read it. The bar for people to care is very high. There's so much stuff to read and process.

   19. GLGrant Lee37:29

       Totally.

   20. LRLenny Rachitsky37:29

       And so this book gives you a really good lens of just, like, okay, the bar is very high and nobody wants to read your shit, so you have to-

   21. GLGrant Lee37:35

       Yup.

   22. LRLenny Rachitsky37:35

       ... try really hard to make it really good.

   23. GLGrant Lee37:38

       Great reminder. Yup.

   24. LRLenny Rachitsky37:39

       (laughs) We'll link to

9. 37:40 – 41:19

   Getting to $100M ARR

   1. LRLenny Rachitsky37:40

      that in the show notes. Okay, let's get into... Let's come back to the growth of Gamma. So we've talked about how you got your first tens of thousands of users, essentially Product Hunt, rethinking onboarding, making it really magical, and then this very controversial tweet that Paul Graham commented, created some buzz. Let's talk about the next phase and maybe, I don't know, tell us kind of the ARR at that point through 100 million. Just, like, broadly, what should we know?

   2. GLGrant Lee38:07

      So when we got to about 10 million in ARR, I think there's this feeling for me, which was we, we knew we needed ways to help just continue to amplify, you know, uh, and spread the word about Gamma. I think it was already working in terms of the organic viral- virality was there, and so we do f- we did feel like it was time to start amplifying some of this. And I think the main blocker in my mind that I started feeling was that our initial brand was sort of holding us back. And I think a lot of people discount, you know, whether or not a rebrand is valuable, and I think sometimes it is, sometime i- sometimes it isn't. For us, you know, there's a few different things we looked at. So one, our initial brand was, was almost more of a placeholder brand because we created it the moment we sort of incorporated the company, which is again, like, uh, late 2020, beginning of 2021, where we needed something so that as we built, we could at least share it with people. We could put up a landing page and just feel like, "Okay, you know, there's something here." But we didn't invest a whole lot into it, and so it was pretty limited in sort of what I call kind of the DNA of the brand. There wasn't that many... Like, the art direction was very limited in scope. There wasn't much when it came to, like, voice and tone. And so, you know, it, it was, um, it was something that we, we knew was good enough to start, but it wasn't scalable. And when I think about something that could be scalable, it's almost like you can take the ingredients of a brand and replicate it a ton. Like, you're kind of, you know, this, this DNA is something where you can, you can imagine creating tons of content around it and it all feeling pretty cohesive. And I don't... I think that needs to be done by design, like, you're really thin- being thoughtful about every single element, like what is the art direction you want to go with, what is the voice and tone, such that as you're creating, you know, thousands of pieces of copy, it all feels pretty cohesive. And so we kind of went back to the drawing board and we spent many months kind of rethinking what would be the, you know, the brand. What is, what is this, this vision that we have longer term? Our creative director internally partnered with Smith& Dixon, an amazing agency that has helped, you know, l- you know, folks like Perplexity also do their rebrand or their b- initial brand. And we worked... We were so- many months just, like, really trying to craft kind of what we think is, like, the core DNA of the brand, and doing so in a way that we could replicate it as much as possible. Replication piece of it comes into play because as you start scaling, you're gonna have to create a ton of content, your own content on social media, ads on, you know, for performance marketing, assets for influencers to be able to use and showcase in their content. And so you're going from, like, you know, tiny pieces of content to all of a sudden every week we're testing thousands of pieces of, of creative. And you cannot do that if you don't feel confident that as you're replicating, like, you, you have that sort of cohesive feel. So for us, that... We realized it was gonna be necessary and it's why we invested so much and ended up being, I mean, way more expensive, way more time-consuming than I would have imagined. But I think coming, uh, you know, on the other side of it being the right investment, feeling that that was the right time to do it.

   3. LRLenny Rachitsky40:55

      I love how many things you did that feel like this wouldn't... This would... Will not work out. Uh, building a startup within the presentation space, doing a whole rebrand (laughs) in the middle-

   4. GLGrant Lee41:06

      Yeah.

   5. LRLenny Rachitsky41:06

      ... of scaling. Uh, also just reworking the entire product after you launched and just, like, rethinking the whole thing. Like, all these things that everyone's always like, "No, this is not how we win," and interestingly worked out for you guys.

10. 41:19 – 54:08

    Influencer marketing as a growth strategy

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky41:19

       I wanna come back to the brand stuff, but one of the most interesting ways you guys grew early on was influencer marketing, which a lot of people hear about and talk about. I don't... I haven't heard of much of, like, how to actually do this and what actually works. Talk about that as a broad growth, uh, lever for you guys, and then I want to get into just, like, what tools did you use, who actually was really helpful there, s- things like that. So yeah, just give us the big picture.

    2. GLGrant Lee41:44

       Yeah. I think a lot of founders assume that, uh, with influencer marketing, it's, it's almost like turnkey. You set aside a budget, you find some creators, you figure out the right campaign or the right moment of time to do it, and it's all, it's all done. You're, you're ready to go. And I think the reality is, like, going back to, like, this founder-led marketing mindset is, like, well, you're gonna set yourself up for success if you actually are super involved in that entire process. So for us, what this meant was, like, all the initial influencers, I onboarded manually myself.Um, I would find- I would spend time, I would jump on a call with each one of them so that they understood what Gamma represented, how to use the product. You want to be able to have them tell your story, but in their voice, right? And they can't do that if you're not willing to put in that investment. And so we would spend a lot of time, like, going through ... It wasn't my job to tell them how to pitch Gamma, but it was my job to make sure that they understood what Gamma was as a product. And so we'd spend a lot of time, like me just walking through the product, them asking questions, us, like, just kind of brainstorming what could the hooks be, and me just giving them some initial feedback and like saying, "Oh yeah, this one, I- I love that. I figure it's gonna work great for your audience." But not trying to be super prescriptive. And working with a ton of micro-influencers, people that don't have massive followings but are committed to giving, going back to giving value to your audience, like, they're committed to giving value to their audiences. They want to be able to showcase tools that actually they would use or they are using, and how do you do that in an authentic way? Like, you can't really fake that. You really need to spend the time doing that. And just like you would onboard a customer, you onboard an influencer the same way. You want them to be an extension of your team, and I think they can feel whether or not you're willing to put in the work, and if, if you're not, then they're just gonna treat it like a, you know, any other project, ship it and be done with it. If you invest in that relationship, you know, guess what? They'll, they'll be back to actually post about you again, and like you're all of a sudden having this sort of, uh, you know, this relationship that actually you can build over time, and I think that's really where the- where the magic is. Like, too many people discount that initial piece.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky43:46

       This is awesome. To be clear, influencer marketing, essentially, uh, a person with a following on, say, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever, gets paid in some way to promote your product. That's how you describe th- that's the simple way to understand influencer marketing, yeah?

    4. GLGrant Lee44:00

       Yes. That's definitely the simple way, and I- I'd say, you know, there's definitely different, um, you know, levels. Y- I think a lot of people think influencer marketing and they'll think, you know, these, these big trendy creators, people that have like a million followers, for instance. And, uh, their, their idea is that, okay, we're gonna carve out a really big budget, we're gonna, you know, choose like f- five or six that we feel, like, are really like the tastemakers in the space, and put all of our money into, like, just help- you know, having them talk about our product. And I- I think usually this is, this is kind of the wrong approach, because many of them, you know, they do have massive audiences, and for you, you're basically, like, th- you basically give them a script to read and it immediately feels like an ad, right? Like, they don't feel... Like- like, that product is not connected really to them in any way. It's just something that they're, you know, for this week, they happen to be working with you, and then they move on with their life, and it never feels organic or authentic, and you wasted a ton of money doing so. I think you're much better doing the hard thing, which is hard to scale, but it's like finding the thousands of micro-influencers that have an audience where your product maybe is actually useful, and for instance, you know, for us, like early on it'd be, you know, educators, people that, for them, part of their job is creating slides every day because they need to engage their students. And so like, for them, you know, having a tool that actually saved them a ton of time was something they loved talking about. And if you can find some of these pockets, w- we call them echo chambers, where if you find a pocket like educators, teachers love telling other teachers about products they love using, you know. During summer break they all come together and talk about, "Okay, what are the things that are gonna actually improve, you know, my job next- next school season?" And, you know, obviously during this AI wave, a lot of those have been, "Okay, what are the AI tools that just save me a ton of time?" And so if you can start actually tapping into these pockets of like echo chambers, that's even better, like that ... It doesn't have to be this flashy, you know, well-known influencer. It's actually just this person that has an audience that- where people, like, really trust what they say, and, uh, and that's amazing. That- that ends up becoming this sort of, you know, uh, wildfire that can spread real- really, really fast.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky46:03

       And what's like the dollar amount these folks get? It's like a few hundred bucks, few thousand bucks, something like that?

    6. GLGrant Lee46:07

       Yeah. Few hundred to low thousands.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky46:09

       Cool.

    8. GLGrant Lee46:09

       Low single digit thousands.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky46:11

       What are ... How do you find these folks? Is there tools they use? Is it just like a bunch of manual searching and- and looking?

    10. GLGrant Lee46:17

        Yeah. In the very beginning, it was all manual. Uh-

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky46:20

        Mm.

    12. GLGrant Lee46:20

        ... a lot of cold outreach, and then we ended up finding, uh, a couple different things. One is a platform, a YC company called First Collab. Um, that has been amazing. They basically do all of the automated outbound for you, plus you can help them, you know, actually create profiles or personas of- of different creators, so like for instance, educators being one, and then they'll go out and actually, you know, based on that profile, find all the right creators for you. So they've been amazing. Really great to work with. Um, and then we've also found, um, small agencies to also help kind of augment that. Like I look for, you know, agencies that are super young and hungry. These are people that, you know, are- are, uh, social, they're native to social media and so, you know, they really understand it, and they can really be able to bring in, uh, creators that, you know, are great to work with, and I think part of it is like if you find creators that are g- great to work with, every- everything else becomes easy. So we've had a few. One is AKG Media out in A- actually out in the UK, and they've been fantastic to work with as well, so you kind of find a few different things, either agencies or platforms that can help you actually scale this thing up.

    13. LRLenny Rachitsky47:22

        And these- when they post, they- they're generally transparent about this is a paid promotion, right? They're not just-

    14. GLGrant Lee47:27

        Yes.

    15. LRLenny Rachitsky47:27

        ... pretending, "I found this tool and I love it." Cool.

    16. GLGrant Lee47:31

        Yeah. Exactly right.

    17. LRLenny Rachitsky47:32

        Okay, and so how about how much impact did this lever of influencer marketing have on your growth say from 10 to 100? Like is this the biggest lever of growth other than just word of mouth, people continuing to share it?

    18. GLGrant Lee47:43

        Yeah. So, uh, word of mouth has definitely been the biggest, so when we look at kind of all kind of new subscriber growth, over 50% of this is- is word of mouth. It's either people searching, you know, direct, coming direct, uh, entering Gamma.app or going through search and- and typing in Gamma, like a branded keyword search, um, where they're looking for Gamma, they've heard about Gamma, but I think for us, social media and influencers specifically has always been an amplifier, so every time we invest in influencer marketing, we actually see word of mouth increase even more.And it's always like, you can just, you can just see it, like basically any time you spend, you know, a little bit of money, you start seeing people come through influencer. The word of mouth factor is actually 1., it will get another 1.5 additional users on top of that, which has been really interesting to see, and I think part of this is just recognizing that, and I think we kind of, uh, understand it, but with influencer marketing because it, why it's so effective, you know, we, we all know, you know, Dunbar's number which is, you know, you have this number like 150 people, you know, that you call kind of your network, and your network you trust more than the average stranger down the street. Like, if they tell you something, you know, they recommend something, there, there is a sort of halo effect, right? You learn to trust them. There, there are a lot of these influencers, the reason why they share so much about their lives is because they want to be in your network. They want you to feel super close, and once you feel super close, you trust them to actually, you know, share things that are gonna be useful, and so when they recommend a tool, there is a sort of halo effect where it doesn't, uh, feel like it's coming from a stranger. It feels like it's coming from a friend. And that's where every time we've spent money there, you actually see this amplification. It's like, okay, that's kind of interesting. You wouldn't necessarily expect that, but, um, for us it's been this sort of amplifier from, from, yeah, the b- very beginning.

    19. LRLenny Rachitsky49:24

        This is so fun to hear about. I have not heard this level of detail on how influencer marketing works and how to make it work. A few more questions here. How, so you said there's maybe a few thousand people you ended up working with roughly, influencers?

    20. GLGrant Lee49:35

        O- over the course of, yeah, like a year. It wasn't all in the same time. It was like, you know, you find basically in the beginning you do, in the very, very beginning we had a small budget. It was like, you know, 20 creators a month, and then, uh, you start increasing that to, like, 50 then 100 and then, you know, we're, we're still not, I don't, I, we're not definitely not fully scaled at this point, but I could easily see a point where, you know, you're working with many, many creators every single month, and that gives you a chance to actually test a variety of, you know, again, content, hooks, ways to talk about the product, value props.

    21. LRLenny Rachitsky50:03

        Amazing. And you said the key here is you spend time with, uh, every one of these creators, influencers early on to help make sure they understand what you're doing and get excited about it. It isn't just like a thing you outsource?

    22. GLGrant Lee50:16

        Uh, I think there's a lot of value there. It's hard to, again, hard to quantify. And, and most creators feel like they're prob- or most founders probably feel like they're too busy to allocate that time, but I think it was a good investment. 'Cause going back to you want them to feel like an extension of your team. They're not gonna feel like an extension of your team if, if one, they've never met you, and two, you've never even told them really how the product works. They just, they're forced to kind of go to your website to figure it all out. Those are gonna be, you know, uh, not a whole lot of, uh, love that they're feeling from, from, from the outset.

    23. LRLenny Rachitsky50:46

        So, what I'm hearing is, uh, quality over quantity, especially when you're getting started. And then there's this other piece of niche which I think is very counterintuitive. Instead of going to large, large influencers with a huge audience, it's go to folks that are small. What's, like, a audience size roughly that you think is ideal for this sort of, what niche this means?

    24. GLGrant Lee51:05

        Uh, honestly I don't think there's a minimum because even with, you know, platforms like TikTok, they oftentimes are giving you credit for a brand new account. They want to help amplify that new account because, you know, obviously, you know, if they're thinking from a creator perspective, you know, if that new creator feels like, "Oh, coming to TikTok is, like, a massive win for me," they're gonna be more invested in it, and so there, there really isn't a minimum. A lot of these platforms are trying to shift to, to kind of the same thing where they really, um, reward new creators on the platform. And so you could have a small audience. It doesn't really matter. You could have 10,000 followers. That's also good. I think as long as the content feels, you know, again, engaging, authentic to that, to the, to the people you're talking to, I think it has a really good chance of actually taking off.

    25. LRLenny Rachitsky51:46

        That's such a good point with TikTok where it's not follower related. It's, it's if it's useful and people find it, uh, clickable or whatever, likable, uh, viewable, uh-

    26. GLGrant Lee51:55

        Yeah.

    27. LRLenny Rachitsky51:55

        ... it'll, it'll, the algorithm will spread it to a lot of people. Such a good point.

    28. GLGrant Lee51:59

        Totally.

    29. LRLenny Rachitsky52:00

        Okay. There's a couple more points you made in the tweet that I want to make sure we highlight. So, one is you made this point that 90% of your reach in influencer marketing comes from less than 10% of people. Is there anything there that you think is important for people to hear?

    30. GLGrant Lee52:11

        Yeah, I mean, this just goes back to it's, it's, you, it's hard to know where that 10% is gonna come from, so you kind of just have to cast a super wide net, right? You can sort of, uh, I think, uh, try to again trick yourself into thinking you're, you're great at picking creators or you're great at telling them how to, like, post about your stuff, but the reality is, like, even for me, I, I could never guess. Like, I kind of had some idea, but I just had to make sure that I was meeting enough creators broadly such that when you meet enough, they're all posting, there's some pocket that end up just taking off, and I, I was not a good predictor of that. I was not smart enough to actually know which ones would take off. I just knew that we had to play this sort of numbers game to make it work.
11. 54:08 – 58:30

    Virality is not an accident

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky54:08

       You had this line in your tweet about how virality is not an accident.And that this approach is how you figure out what actually works, and then once you do that, then you start leaning into that messaging. Talk about that.

    2. GLGrant Lee54:20

       Th- this goes back to, obviously if you're, you're testing a bunch, y- you'll finally find that sort of, you know, post or set of posts that actually go viral. Going back to, yeah, just the- the fundamentals, like make it easy for your influencers to be able to tell your story in their voice. One thing we did, you know, we open-sourced our, basically our entire brand. We have brand.gamma.app, which is everything about our brand, our voice and tone, our art direction, what we use in Midjourney to create the sort of art direction that we have, so that a creator can- can do the same, right? And they can actually just copy all of that so that they don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they're trying to post about Gamma. They- they have all of that. And I think that, going back to, like, this notion of, like, just make it dead simple for them. Remove friction. They already have enough to, like, on their plate to have to figure out. Don't make it any harder than it is. And if you remove friction, then it's like, okay, you get into this rhythm of adding creators is easy. Having them post is cra- u- easy. Reviewing what's working, what's not is easy. And if you're able to do that relentlessly over many, many months, then all of a sudden, like, hitting the sort of viral posts is- is easy, 'cause you're gonna have enough at-bats there where some are gonna, you know, some are actually gonna pop off. But you kinda only can get there after you've, like, done all the hard work before that to make, you know, th- uh, kind of remove friction from the process, and, uh, feeling like it's almost like a, you know, well-oiled machine at that point.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky55:38

       Is there a platform you find most helpful for the stuff you guys are doing? Is it, like, TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, something else?

    4. GLGrant Lee55:45

       Yeah, I mean this is one where, you know, for us, we- we cast a pretty wide net too, but it's very clear, you know, LinkedIn, the conversion rates are just sub- substantially higher. They're- they're 4X, maybe 5X higher than other platforms. And I- I- I think a lot of people are probably still sleeping on LinkedIn, frankly. And so it's one where, you know, the, some of the- some of the influencers there or creators there can be a little bit more costly, but if you can be highly- hig- you know, eventually be more targeted knowing that, hey, this type of creator is- is pretty impactful for- for, you know, our product, then working with them is just like, oh, that's- that's great. Like, the conversion rates are just so strong, and it really feels like we're- we're, like, just getting started there. So, you know, if you're, in the beginning, you're not sure, it's always helpful to cast a pretty wide net, and then, you know, similar to sort of just the influencer strategy, like test and iterate, you'll figure out many of these things will fo- follow the pow- a power loss. those, like, you know, one or two channels are gonna be the most important for you. Uh, for instance, Twitter for us hasn't been that impactful, and I think for tools like Notion, they've been really, really impactful. You're not gonna really know, and so just test and then double down on the ones that really move the needle for your product.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky56:48

       I think that many people listening now are like, "Wait, LinkedIn posts are sponsored sometimes? I didn't know that." Uh, what's like-

    6. GLGrant Lee56:53

       Yeah.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky56:53

       How do you know if it's a sponsored post? Is there like a hashtag sponsored or something like that? How do they communicate this?

    8. GLGrant Lee56:57

       Usually they'll say, you know, they're a partner or, yeah, basically that it is sponsored in some form or, you know, they'll have the hashtag, you know, ad or, you know, something along those lines. So, um, that's probably the- the way you'll- you'll see it the most.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky57:12

       Cool. By the way, I don't do this sort of stuff. If you ever see me on LinkedIn, I'm not doing any paid stuff.

    10. GLGrant Lee57:16

        (laughs)

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky57:16

        Just so people know, and I don't plan to do that. This episode is brought to you by Miro. Every day, new headlines are scaring us about all the ways that AI is coming for our jobs, creating a lot of anxiety and fear. But a recent survey from Miro tells a different story. 76% of people believe that AI can benefit their role. But over 50% of people struggle to know when to use it. Enter Miro's Innovation Workspace, an intelligent platform that brings people and AI together in a shared space to get great work done. Miro has been empowering teams to transform bold ideas into the next big thing for over a decade. Today, they're at the forefront of bringing products to market even faster by unleashing the combined power of AI and human potential. Guests of this podcast often share Miro templates. I use it all the time to brainstorm ideas with my team. Teams especially can work with Miro AI to turn unstructured data like sticky notes or screenshots into usable diagrams, product briefs, data tables and prototypes in minutes. You don't have to be an AI master or to toggle yet another tool. The work you're already doing in Miro's canvas is the prompt. Help your teams get great work done with Miro. Check it out at miro.com/lenny. That's M-I-R-o.com/lenny.

12. 58:30 – 1:02:04

    Investing in brand before paid ads

    1. LRLenny Rachitsky58:30

       Let's come back to this brand point. So one of your big lessons is invest in brand before you go heavy into paid ads and performance marketing. I imagine you do some ads at this point on Facebook and Google and things like that.

    2. GLGrant Lee58:42

       Yeah, we run ads, uh, you know, performance marketing. You know, I think there's this- this, like, the stigma that, you know, brand marketing and performance marketing are sort of at odds with each other. Uh, I very much follow kind of the- the sort of, the thought that brand marketing is performance marketing. Like, everything is some form of performance marketing. It just not, might have, not be as attributable, so like the ability to actually map back to every single dollar spent is a little bit harder, but it doesn't mean that it's not impactful. And I think, um, as a company scales, you have to invest in both. And ideally they work really, really well together. Like, the more you invest in brand marketing, it strengthens your performance marketing. This goes back to, like, having enough creative to even test. If you're too limited in scope and you don't have a brand you feel like you can actually amplify, y- you're handicapping your ability to actually have a good performance marketing program.

    3. LRLenny Rachitsky59:32

       I love that heuristic of how do you know if you are underinvested in brand is if you're l- limited in the number of ideas you can try in performance marketing, like is ... Or you're-

    4. GLGrant Lee59:44

       Totally.

    5. LRLenny Rachitsky59:44

       Is your di- design system just ... Like, is everyone having to redesign things from scratch and come up with all these frameworks, uh, every time they run an ad?

    6. GLGrant Lee59:52

       Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, it's like bas- basically you kind of have a feeling for, you know, if I were to scale this up to 1,000 pieces of creative, would it still feel cohesive or is it kind of all over the place? And if it feels like it's all over the place, then you kind of have to go back to the drawing board.

    7. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:04

       You said when you talked about the rebrand that it took a lot longer than you expected, that it was more expensive than you expected. That's, like, the fear I think everyone has when they hear this. Like, "Oh, I don't have time for a rebrand." Wo- uh ...

    8. GLGrant Lee1:00:14

       Yeah.

    9. LRLenny Rachitsky1:00:15

       I also imagine because your product is so visual that it makes more sense to invest there and to spend the time and money. For the typical founder, do you have any just, I don't know, thoughts of just like, "Here's when it makes sense. Here's a sign you really need to invest here heavily," versus like, "Eh, it'll probably be all right"?

    10. GLGrant Lee1:00:32

        Yeah. I mean, I, I do think it's probably more geared toward anything that's a little bit more, uh, prosumer or consumer, 'cause so much of your product, you're trying to create, you know, the, this feeling for a user, like what are they experiencing? And the experience i- happens way before they even drop into your product. It might be they see an ad, or they see a billboard, or they see something. It's like, "Okay, that piqued my interest a little bit." And then you need some sort of, like, symmetric messaging in that they see th- there's s- some symmetry in that they see the ad. They mo- Then they drop into the product or they land on your website. They... It feels cohesive, and it feels like, "Okay, this is, this is interesting. I'm gonna go all the way through to sign up and then maybe actually start using the product." That's a little bit different when it's, like, a B2B product, or, you know, where there's a, there, there isn't as much reliance on, you know, that, that initial moment. They, they might just hear about it through, you know, a colleague and, and then sign up for it, and then go through a h- huge procurement process. And then it's like, "Okay, may- maybe it matters," but probably not so much as, as, like, for a, a product where the brand can have so many different touch points.

    11. LRLenny Rachitsky1:01:33

        I wanna talk about some, uh, kind of broader things that have worked to help you grow. But before we do that, I just wanna visualize the pie chart of how Gamma grows. Say post 10 million ARR. If I have it correctly in my head, it's over 50% just word of mouth, organic, people sharing it, doing presentations for each other. "Oh, what's Gamma?" Just go check it out. Sign up." Then it feels like the second biggest bucket is influencer marketing, kind of social stuff, and then is the third performance/paid marketing?

    12. GLGrant Lee1:02:02

        Yep. That's right. Yeah.

13. 1:02:04 – 1:04:49

    Tips for getting started with performance marketing

    1. GLGrant Lee1:02:04

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:02:04

       Cool. So on that last piece, is there anything else there for people that are starting to explore performance marketing? Essentially Facebook ads, Google Ads, all these other platforms. Is there anything else that you think might be helpful for people to hear or learn just to get started down this road?

    3. GLGrant Lee1:02:19

       I w- I would just have two recommendations, like, uh, one going back to my initial piece of advice, which is don't invest until you have word of mouth. Don't fool yourself into thinking that you'll solve other problems by just starting to ramp up a performance marketing program. Like, just get the word of mouthpiece first so that you have... You're coming into this program with some tailwinds, and then start ramping it up. The second piece is, like, set some constraints. You don't want your product to h- to be at a point where more than 50% of your, your acquisitions are coming through paid acquisition. I think if that is happening, your core growth engine is broken, and, uh, uh, you know, feeds right back to point number one, which is that if you, if your core growth engine is broken, you just have this leaky bucket. You're trying to spend so much money building top of the funnel. People are not making it all the way through. Something else should be fixed before you really try to dial it up, and it doesn't mean, like, you don't spend a little bit of money, but just don't dial it up until you feel like your cor- core growth engine is actually working.

    4. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:17

       When you said the first point about, uh, wait until you have word of mouth before investing in performance marketing, is that essentially, like, a large chunk of your growth should be coming from word of mouth, direct, organic?

    5. GLGrant Lee1:03:29

       Yep. Yeah. And then for us, even at scale, again, going back to more than 50% of, you know, new signups still come through word of mouth. Like, we... That, that for us is a sign, like, okay, you know, something is still working. People are using the product telling other people, and you want that feeling before you really start dialing anything else up.

    6. LRLenny Rachitsky1:03:45

       Is there, like, a percentage that you think is helpful for people to think about just like... Is it, like, 25% or more? Something like that of just word of mouth bef- for you to feel like, okay, we actually have organic growth as a major growth engine?

    7. GLGrant Lee1:03:55

       Yeah. I mean, I think this comes back to maybe just how maybe aggressive you want to be. You know, I think just rough, you know, heuristic is l- the more the better. If it's over 50%, I think that's great. If it's, like, approaching that, good. And just going back to, like, don't fool yourself into thinking just ads is gonna be the way you grow, 'cause you can do that, but everything else becomes harder and harder. If you re- rely on paid acquisition to be the main growth engine, you should be prepared for things like CAC, like customer acquisition costs, to keep going up. And the, the, the more you're trying to reach, like, a new audience, it gets more and more expensive. So don't assume it's gonna be flat, and then all of a sudden you're running on this treadmill that's actually running faster and faster. And so that's where it's, it's, like, easy to get hooked on that early on when you're just investing a small amount of money, and then it's almost impossible to get off that treadmill when you're too far into it. So, anticipate that and give yourself a better chance at actually being able to sustain that

14. 1:04:49 – 1:16:12

    Prototyping and user feedback

    1. GLGrant Lee1:04:49

       growth long term.

    2. LRLenny Rachitsky1:04:49

       Mm-hmm. Important advice. Okay. There's a couple more elements you've shared that were key to Gamma's growth. One is sharing prototypes with users before you ship. What does that look like? What does that mean? Why is that so powerful?

Episode duration: 1:53:53