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$2.1B AI CEO: The Beginner's Playbook to a Profitable AI Startup in 2026 | Grant Lee, CEO Gamma

🎁 Free Workplace Automation Kit — the system my team uses daily to automate the busywork and stay focused on what actually matters. Download here → https://clickhubspot.com/fbd897 Grant Lee built a $2.1 billion AI company in 4 years. He started during a pandemic, with a newborn daughter, no salary, and an investor who told him it was the worst idea he'd ever heard. In this conversation he shares what actually got Gamma to 100 million users with a team of 50 — including how to run a fundraise in two weeks, how to pick an idea worth a year of your life, and the two things that tell you you have product-market fit before the revenue shows up. *Timestamps:* 00:00 — Intro 04:43 — What his wife said when he quit his job 05:38 — Live demo: building a pitch deck with Gamma in real time 10:04 — The biggest mistake AI founders make when fundraising 14:33 — Grant rates the AI-generated deck as an investor 21:42 — How Gamma got its first 1,000 users 26:20 — Why every founder needs an audience now 28:27 — How to price an AI product 32:01 — Can you triple revenue without growing the team? 39:00 — The honest truth about delegating to AI agents right now 41:11 — First 30 days plan for anyone starting a startup today *Links:* 📩 Follow my Future-Proof Newsletter: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=Grant-Lee 🔗 My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ 📌 My Companies & Products: https://partnerships.marinamogilko.co

Grant LeeguestMarina Mogilkohost
Jun 12, 202645mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 4:43

    Intro

    1. GL

      So the investor told me this is the worst idea he had ever heard. There was no way-

    2. MM

      Yeah

    3. GL

      ... we would ever succeed.

    4. MM

      This is Grant Lee, co-founder and CEO of Gamma, the AI tool that turns one prompt into a finished presentation. He started at the end of 2020 before the AI boom. Today, Gamma has 100 million users and a $2.1 billion valuation. A lot of people are trying to build an AI-

    5. GL

      Yeah

    6. MM

      ... startup these days. What is the one thing they should copy from your playbook?

    7. GL

      You can build anything, whether you're vibe coding or just agentic coding. All the capabilities feel like they're there. You can build anything. The question is, should you? [laughs]

    8. MM

      So how do you know?

    9. GL

      One thing you'll learn is friends will lie to you. [laughs] They don't wanna hurt your feelings. They'll tell you the product is amazing. If your product is valuable, they'll put their credit card down to pay for the product. Then you'll know you have product-market fit.

    10. MM

      In this episode, Grant breaks down the three things that decide it: how to make people fall in love with your product, how to know if an idea is worth a year of your life, and how to pitch it so investors say yes. Can you give me their first 30-days plan step by step?

    11. GL

      First 30-days plan is-

    12. MM

      Thanks to HubSpot for sponsoring this video. A lot of people are trying to build an AI-

    13. GL

      Yeah

    14. MM

      ... startup these days. What is the one thing they should copy from your playbook, uh, when building in 2026?

    15. GL

      Honestly, the number one thing is to figure out who you're gonna build with. Um, you know, there's obviously a lot of speculation around the single-person billion-dollar startup. I still think, you know, even if that were possible, why do it alone? It's so much more fun building with a team. And if you're gonna build a team, make sure you choose the right team. So a team needs to look like a set of individuals that maybe share the same ambition, share the same values and principles, but should be very complementary in skill sets. So for us, I chose two co-founders that, again, we worked together, uh, at a company called Optimizely, became friends, but we're also so different. We bring a lot of different skills to the table. And so if you're starting to tinker today, find people that are very complementary. You don't all need to be, you know, developers. You don't all need to be, you know, product people. Come up with something where each of you brings something, and then start tinkering on a bunch of different ideas. Find a problem space that feels, uh, uniquely sort of positioned where you as a team have the best chance of actually going out there and create something that's compelling for the market.

    16. MM

      Yeah. Now that you're saying it, it makes total sense, but back then-

    17. GL

      Yeah

    18. MM

      ... you had to go through so many difficulties. I read the story where an investor hung up on you-

    19. GL

      Ugh

    20. MM

      ... saying it's the dumbest idea. Then you were fundraising in your small apartment.

    21. GL

      Right.

    22. MM

      Your wife just had a second baby.

    23. GL

      Right.

    24. MM

      Talk to me about that time. How did you know you should keep pushing? And by the way, was that investor right about anything at all?

    25. GL

      So the investor, yeah, basically, you know, um, this is early on in pitching, b- uh, told me this is the worst idea he had ever heard. Um, said that, you know, not only were we going up against massive incumbents, but they had ultimate distribution, so there was no way-

    26. MM

      Yeah

    27. GL

      ... we would ever succeed. Um, and I think, you know, he was absolutely right. You know, in this market, especially what we're trying to build, there is going to be, you know, incumbents. They do have distribution. So as a product, you really have to think about growth from day one. You have to think about ways that your product itself can distribute itself just by use of the product. So leaning heavily into things like product-led growth, and how do you build organic virality? These are things you can't afford to wait until many years later. Like, as you're building the foundation of the product, you're trying to integrate that into the philosophy of building the product. So he was right, and I think for better or worse, we, we took that sort of painful feedback early on and sort of internalized it and used that as motivation to keep building. Um, for, for me, you know, I think i- trying to start the company when peak pandemic, you know, uh, my daughter was just born. There was all the reasons not to start the company.

    28. MM

      Sounds like the worst time to [laughs]

    29. GL

      It sounds like the worst time, but then in many ways it was the best time because you also start feeling the sense of what if we didn't do something? Like, the, the regret you'd have, you know? The, the sort of life is short mentality of, hey, you know, like, why not just try something? In the hardest of times, you know, if, if we come out through the other end, we're gonna feel all the more sort of, uh, like we ha- you know, sense of accomplishment. And so, uh, I sort of avoided the sort of, you know, the trap of saying, "Hey, too much going on. I'm just gonna wait till later, wait for perfect timing." I think the reality is anybody that's starting a business realizes there's no such thing as perfect timing. There's you with an idea that you just cannot help but, like, think about night and day. And hopefully, if you have a team that's also equally excited and, and energized by idea, sort of like you're just hungry to, to go after it. We were ready at the end of 2020 to, to commit to this full time, and so for us it was a no-brainer. We were gonna go after it

  2. 4:43 – 5:38

    What his wife said when he quit his job

    1. GL

      no matter what.

    2. MM

      What about your wife? How did she take that decision? 'Cause you quit your job, right?

    3. GL

      Uh, so I, I was in between jobs. Uh, the last startup I was at was acquired, so I was, you know, exploring what was next. Um, I think this is another part about anybody that's building companies. Like, obviously you have your partners internally at the startup, your founders, your founding team, and then you have your life partner, and you have to be equally transparent with both. And so we had a conversation around, hey, if I'm gonna do this, obviously I need, you know, the full support of, of you and, and being able to actually, you know, take a big swing at this. And it means, like, you know, probably not taking a meaningful paycheck for a period of time. It means many late nights. It means, you know, sacrificing some weekends to get work done. And so we all, we, you know, we sat down and we felt like, yes, this was right. It felt like the right thing to do. And, and obviously, you know, the, the benefit of building something special as a founder means, like, you share that with your family. If you build a meaningful business-

    4. MM

      Yeah

    5. GL

      ... you bring that to your family as well.

  3. 5:38 – 10:04

    Live demo: building a pitch deck with Gamma in real time

    1. MM

      Okay, let's actually test your product.

    2. GL

      Oh, yeah.

    3. MM

      You know, a lot of people who are building today are gonna be fundraising.

    4. GL

      Yeah.

    5. MM

      So I want you to help me create a perfect deck with Gamma-

    6. GL

      Yeah

    7. MM

      ... for a C-stage company. And you've been investing. You've launched this, uh, $10 million for 10, 10 ideas.

    8. GL

      Oh, yeah. We went through four, yes.

    9. MM

      Yeah. So you know what a good deck is, right? [laughs]

    10. GL

      Yeah.

    11. MM

      Let's imagine, 'cause I have a business where we help people, um- ... learn languages, uh, specifically English-

    12. GL

      Yeah

    13. MM

      ... for universities. Let's make a deck for a, an app-

    14. GL

      Yeah

    15. MM

      ... that helps people master their English. I wanna hear your prompt. [laughs]

    16. GL

      All right. And this would be for a services business or-

    17. MM

      Uh, it's an app that I'm trying to raise for. It's-

    18. GL

      Okay. Um, so I'm actually gonna use this new, um, uh, agent feature down here that we have. So let's just say, um-

    19. MM

      You can also use Wizard of Oz

    20. GL

      ... build a presentation, a pitch- You wanna do a pitch presentation, right?

    21. MM

      Yeah.

    22. GL

      Well, let's just start there. And so it's gonna do some thinking in terms of, okay, what are the things, uh, that would be important if you were actually pitching this sort of app? And, um, this'll, uh... I'll start with a, a question here, which is, what's your app's name and maybe key differentiator? Um, would you like to describe it?

    23. MM

      Yeah. Let's say it's a... This is like a [laughs] general, general English language learning app. Uh, content is generated on the go for you based on student's current level and interests.

    24. GL

      All right. Very specific. Uh, what, what would you like to cover? Problem mar- market? So there's some options here. Um-

    25. MM

      Well, I, I guess for fundraising you need-

    26. GL

      You want, yeah

    27. MM

      ... everything. Al-

    28. GL

      Let's, let's do all-

    29. MM

      Almost everything

    30. GL

      ... all of the above.

  4. 10:04 – 14:33

    The biggest mistake AI founders make when fundraising

    1. GL

      the end of it.

    2. MM

      Is there a mistake that you're seeing a lot of AI founders are making when fundraising?

    3. GL

      I, I'd say part of it is just they, you know... You need to get into the mindset of this is, this is a game. There's a two-week period or, like, again, going back to time boxing. Time boxing matters a ton. You don't want to get in a position where fundraising drags on indefinitely. Many times people will say, "Oh, I'll just give myself, you know, a couple months to figure it out." Then there's no urgency for investors, and there's no sort of process that, that, that you're running. You're just letting it drift. So one, define the timeline. Two, out of the founders, you should have one person running point. Uh, it's very distracting to have multiple founders all kind of being dragged into hearing all the nos, for instance. It could be demoralizing. You need to have one person that has the right mindset going into it. And then, uh, yeah, number three is, like, when you design the process in the way that can help allow you to snowball in the end, that just allows you to close... you know, stick to your timeline, be able to actually, uh, you know, wrap things up in a really an efficient manner and go into a f- You should always go into a fundraise with as much momentum as possible. So if you're early, that means, like, maybe having a, a prototype you've really thought through and it, like, really feels complete. If you're later stage, obviously it means, like, you're building towards, hey, we're going into this fundraise with a ton of revenue momentum or ton of signup momentum. Go into it with momentum. Set that sort of time boundary for yourself, two or three weeks. Get it done in that process. Have real urgency. Uh, and I think that's where, you know, the best founders treat this as, like, a short-term sprint. Get it done with, move on to what's important, which is building the business, and not be overly distracting to the rest of the team.

    4. MM

      What happens if in two weeks you haven't raised what you wanted? Do you just stop and go back to it in six months?

    5. GL

      It depends on what the, what you're hearing from the market, right? Like, if, if it's, like, a definitive no across the board, everybody you've talked to, then, um, it probably means your product's not ready or there's something about the market that is out of your con- your control.

    6. MM

      Or your team-

    7. GL

      Or it could be your team

    8. MM

      ... 'cause if it's early stage-

    9. GL

      Yeah

    10. MM

      ... you know.

    11. GL

      So it's like you need to almost then be s- the most... You, you have to be your own s- worst critic in that sense. You have to self-diagnose, like, okay What is the root cause?

    12. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    13. GL

      And for every company, it's gonna be probably slightly different. You know, it could be that the team's not, you know, the right team to go after this market. Could be the market has too many of these s- they've heard too many of these pitches, so there's not appetite. Or it could just be you spoke to the wrong investors. Maybe you pitched a bunch of, like, fintech investors, where in fact your business is a completely different type of business.

    14. MM

      Yeah.

    15. GL

      So each sort of, you know, uh, uh, area is, like, one area to, like, to potentially diagnose. And if you can find the root cause, then go back to the drawing board and probably reset the clock and say, "Okay, I'm gonna give myself another month to prep for this new process," and then again go into that two-week sprint. I would say more often than not, it's because you're going into the process without enough momentum. If you're going into it with momentum, in most cases you should be able to find a clear path to, to be able to raise.

    16. MM

      The hard part for most founders isn't knowing that. It's actually doing it when you're buried in operational work. Rewriting the same pitch deck for different investors. Researching leads one by one. Starting every LinkedIn post from scratch. So much of it is repetitive work AI can already handle. I learned this running two companies and a content business with 18 million followers and a team of 35. For a long time, the honest answer to how to keep up was barely. So my team and I started asking one question on every task. What should stay human, and what should AI own? We turned that whole system into a free bundle we made together with HubSpot for Startups, and we called it the Workplace Automation Kit. Inside are five Claude skills we actually use internally. One helps write investor updates and LinkedIn posts in my voice. Another turns messy brain dumps into structured reports. Plus, two creator skills my content team runs on every script, including the voice filter that catches AI-sounding copy before it goes live. And my favorite is the Automate or Hire Roadmap. It's a one-page framework for what to delegate to AI, what still needs a human in the loop, and what should never leave you as a founder. The whole point is not replacing people. You will be running the same system my team uses every day. You don't need a huge team to use any of this. You can be a single founder, or you can be a knowledge worker automating their workplace. Drop the skills into Claude. Takes two minutes. It's free. The link is in the description. Thanks to HubSpot for Startups for partnering with me on this. And we're back to the interview with Grant. Let's look at the deck.

    17. GL

      Yeah.

    18. MM

      Let's see what Gamma built. Can you... As an investor, can you rank-

  5. 14:33 – 21:42

    Grant rates the AI-generated deck as an investor

    1. MM

      rate it?

    2. GL

      Yeah. So this is talking about the language app that learns you.

    3. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    4. GL

      Um, it's talking about a billion, uh, English learners, zero personalization. So it's saying that, you know, a lot of people go into, uh, um, actually trying to learn, but i- in no way has, has this opportunity been personalized. And so, I mean, you know, obviously this is generic, so the question is, are you building a product that actually addresses this?

    5. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    6. GL

      Is there true personalization in, in the way you're, you're dealing with this? Of course, these are... This is intended to be a placeholder, so, you know, you'd have to go back and say, "Is this," you know, "are any of these things relevant to how I'm thinking about building, uh, you know, um, my, my app?" And, uh, and be able to flesh that out quite a bit more. So, um, I think what we found is that, you know, oftentimes when you're starting off with something that is a little bit more generic in this case, you're using it as more of, like, a thought partner.

    7. MM

      Yeah.

    8. GL

      You're saying, "Okay, these are the potential questions or things that could come up." And then you, as the builder, should say, "Is any of this actually relevant? Do I believe in any of this? And if not, then I'm gonna go ahead and replace it." And of course, this is where you start iterating.

    9. MM

      Yeah, that makes total sense.

    10. GL

      Yeah.

    11. MM

      'Cause I remember when I was building an, a deck, it was just me and, like, looking at some, like, Airbnb decks.

    12. GL

      Yeah. [laughs]

    13. MM

      Like, what's good?

    14. GL

      And, um, you know, I think one big thing... So traction of a- obviously is important, and to plug in your real num- uh, real thing here. I think one big thing that's actually missing here and, and where I would have probably, um, changed the order is to talk about your team way earlier on.

    15. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    16. GL

      Um, especially if you're an early-stage company. I always think about as, like, when you're just pitching, you know, your, your product and you're, you're just getting going, an investor is really just looking at the team and the dream.

    17. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    18. GL

      It's really just those two things. And you're answering, you're trying to answer for them why you and, and why now, right? There's probably been many different startups that have attempted building, you know, in this category. So what makes your team unique and special? What, what sort of insights do you come that actually offer something that feels differentiated? And then why now? Is there something else that has happened such that there is an opening in this market for, for your team to go after? These would be things I would actually... You know, looking at this deck, I would actually push all the way to the front, is, like, start off with that.

    19. MM

      Yeah.

    20. GL

      Before you start talking about, like, TAM or, like, the market opportunity, just talk a little bit about, like, what is it about you, your, your team that feels truly differentiated.

    21. MM

      Yeah. I feel like... 'Cause so many people have so many ideas. Ideas change so much.

    22. GL

      Ideas change, yeah.

    23. MM

      You can ship a new product every week. Like, an MVP.

    24. GL

      Yeah.

    25. MM

      New MVP every week.

    26. GL

      Totally.

    27. MM

      It all comes down to, to the team. You were picking ideas based on energy. Is that right?

    28. GL

      Yeah. Early on, I think for us, the, the, the true sort of, uh, north star was, was energy. Was this an idea where, again, you wake up in the middle of night sometimes thinking about, "Oh my G- like, tomorrow, I'm gonna work on these things 'cause it's gonna be so impactful"? And I think that energy gets you to the point where you can create the early versions of the roadmap, you can start talking to early users, but you really need that energy to be the fuel. And we actually had... When we first kind of raised money, we actually... The ambition was to sort of help people change the way they communicate. So we actually had two different ideas. One was, well, you know, presentations are one form of communication. People spend so much time formatting, trying to design it, rather than the idea themselves. That could be one category of an idea. The other was... This was, again, peak pandemic, and so, so much work was shifting to, like, more hybrid and virtual work. We thought, what if we created a virtual office environment where, you know, instead of, uh, all being in the same room, like, we can collaborate in a, on a canvas and, like, really share the work that's going on and be able to communicate in a way that almost emulates being in an office? We sort of parallel pathed, like, building both for about six months.

    29. MM

      Oh, wow.

    30. GL

      Yeah, and-

  6. 21:42 – 26:20

    How Gamma got its first 1,000 users

    1. GL

      Yeah. So when we first launched, um, you know, may- maybe like many founders, we, we tried to recruit all of our friends to, to, you know, use the product, anybody that created a presentation. And, you know, we, we were able to get, you know, several thousand people just to sign up through our network, extended network. And of course, you ask your friends, like, "How do you like the product?" And what one thing you'll learn is, like, friends will lie to you. [laughs]

    2. MM

      Mm.

    3. GL

      They don't wanna hurt your feelings. They'll tell you the product is amazing. The real truth is then going back and looking at the usage, right? Like, are people actually using the product? And so then we'd go in and, you know, many of the friends that said they love the product weren't even coming back to the product, not using it. So then you start honing in, okay, where is the real usage of the product? What kind of use cases are people actually, you know, leaning into? And we saw early on a lot of, you know, freelancers, solopreneurs, small business owners that had to create a lot of content using Gamma as the way that they were presenting and sharing with their clients and customers. So that's where we understood, okay, there's a pocket of users here. We should be spending much more time with them, talking to them. And then of course, over time, then you can find out ways to, like message to them specifically, whether it's on social media or, you know, if you're working with creators and influencers, like really tap into the personas where your product's the most useful and start getting that flywheel going of they're finding the product, they're finding real value, they're sharing the product with their network, with their friends, and that's where you can really start building kind of the, the initial core of your, your, your kind of core users in the beginning.

    4. MM

      But you haven't done a lot of paid marketing at the beginning.

    5. GL

      Yeah.

    6. MM

      So was it just word of mouth?

    7. GL

      It's just word of mouth. Yeah, word of mouth. Even today, word of mouth is by far, you know, the number one sort of, uh, acquisition channel for us. It's like people telling other people to use Gamma.

    8. MM

      That's fascinating. And y- but you also do influencers, right?

    9. GL

      Yeah.

    10. MM

      And you do a lot of micro-influencers-

    11. GL

      Yeah

    12. MM

      ... so going after big ones. What did you learn in that process? Was there an, like an influencer campaign that didn't work?

    13. GL

      So the very beginning, it was actually, um, all organic, uh, influencers, people basically learning about, you know, Gamma and just, just sharing w- you know, with their audience.

    14. MM

      That, that was me.

    15. GL

      Yeah.

    16. MM

      'Cause when I first learned, I did like a video about... Yeah.

    17. GL

      Well, really appreciate that.

    18. MM

      'Cause it, it's amazing.

    19. GL

      Yeah.

    20. MM

      It's an amazing tool.

    21. GL

      Yeah. And so, like, you know, that's where we started seeing just in the very beginning, like some organic spikes of, you know, people coming and, and learning about Gamma and like starting to use Gamma. And so we realized, okay, well, if this is already had- happening organically, what could we do to reach an even broader, uh, you know, set of creators and influencers out there? And we started just testing a bunch. So, um, I also in this process started to try to figure out, how could I be a creator myself? Because I felt like to really empathize with other creators, I, I kinda needed to go through the jour- on the journey myself and, like just understand how hard it is, right, to even build an audience, come up with content ... share information in a way that feels, like, authentic and, and really genuine and, like, you, you, you need to, like, build that muscle, right? And so for me it was like, "Okay, I'm gonna start by learning how to do this, and then when we do work with influencers and creators, I'm gonna onboard all them myself, and I'm gonna turn-

    22. MM

      Because now you know how to do that, right? How to-

    23. GL

      I know how to do it, but I'm also still learning, right?

    24. MM

      Yeah.

    25. GL

      Like, it's helpful for me to, like, go down and say, okay, rather than just saying, "Hey, go, you know, go and showcase Gamma," it's like, okay, let's actually sit down and think about your audience specifically. And what I actually learned was that many of these creators struggled with presentations 'cause they w- never learned it in school. They never l- you know, learned it on the job. And so I got to actually unveil kinda the magic for them, and then specifically for their use case, like, you know, if they were targeting, you know, real estate professionals, we would think through, okay, how do we actually package this up in, in a way where the use cases we're showing are relevant, make sense, the way we talk about the product, like, resonate with your audience, and we can brainstorm a ton. And that for me was also a learning opportunity because then I could really say, okay, what do the best creators do? How did they, like, write a good hook? How did they come up with, like, a structured story in a short amount of time? How do they capture people's attention? And, uh, you know, it was, it was also s- sort of like now I could teach them about the product. They learn how to use Gamma. They could talk about Gamma in a very authentic way, and then in the process I can become a better creator myself and translate that into... You know, many founders today have the chance to be their company's sort of megaphone or amplifier, right? Like, any time they wanna share information, if you have your own audience, you should be able to package up that narrative in, in the right way too. And I did so by just learning from, you know, the best creators out there. Like, how can I actually build this muscle myself? You know, it, it definitely felt like there was some good synergy there.

    26. MM

      And you're active on X and LinkedIn, right? Trade be-

    27. GL

      Try to be on, uh-

    28. MM

      Two, two platforms

    29. GL

      ... active on X and LinkedIn, yeah. And, uh, and I think this is where, yeah, many, you know, customers will reach out, many partnership opportunities come to fruition because of those, you know, because of the audiences that I've built there. And again, barely scratching the surface, but more I wanna do, and, um, I think it just feels very rewarding to build, to start building

  7. 26:20 – 28:27

    Why every founder needs an audience now

    1. GL

      an audience.

    2. MM

      Yeah, just wanted to highlight it for everyone. Like, 10 years ago when I was talking to, uh, entrepreneurs-

    3. GL

      Yeah

    4. MM

      ... the sentiment was you're not taken too seriously if you're actively posting on social media. Now I think it's such an inevitable part of being a founder because this is how you hire, this is how you learn the marketing channel, and this is how you just meet the peers.

    5. GL

      Totally. And I think there, there is a negative stigma, uh, because, you know, sometimes, you know, this is more like five, 10 years ago, where people... It, it almost felt like they were tooting their own horn. They wanna like, "Oh, hey, look at me, look at me." I think you need to reframe it. Like, if you have an audience, and hopefully your audience overlaps with your core user base, you're trying to provide as much value to them as possible. Like, you're not talking about your product all the time. In fact, you should be talking about your product very little. You should be talking about things that your audience cares about, has questions about. Obviously, in this day and age, everyone's curious about how to apply AI to their work lives. How do, you know, how do they sift through all the noise? How do they maintain a sense of, like, productivity without just becoming insane because there's just too much to, like, try to do in any one, uh, given day? So I think as a founder you have a chance to figure out what are the... You know, with your experience and your background and what you're building, what can you, uh, w- instill on your audience to, like, inform them and keep them educated? That value in itself should be where, like, all the, you know, the ability to build an audience comes from. It's not about tooting your own horn or, like, really just talking about your product all day.

    6. MM

      Have you looked at users who are coming from LLMs when ChatGPT recommends Gamma?

    7. GL

      Yeah, yeah.

    8. MM

      'Cause we're, we're seeing... W- we're tracking on our newsletter, we're just seeing crazy open rates-

    9. GL

      Yeah

    10. MM

      ... when people find us through LLMs.

    11. GL

      Totally, yeah. That's actually, uh, been one that's also trending very positively, both in terms of people, you know, landing on, uh, you know, Gamma's website, but also converting long term. So I think we're early days. It's still a relatively smaller portion of overall traffic-

    12. MM

      Yeah

    13. GL

      ... but it's definitely growing, and it's exciting to think about what this could look like obviously in a couple years. And, you know, every business wants obviously to diversify, like, how customers hear about this, uh, you know, so that, you know, obviously you want to be able to activate multiple different channels at once, and it does feel like LLMs, you know, chats, uh, like ChatGPT, Claude, are, are gonna be, you know, meaningful channels for

  8. 28:27 – 32:01

    How to price an AI product

    1. GL

      us in the future.

    2. MM

      Talk to me about pricing in general. So you're, um, you start with free, then it's $8, and then it goes up to $90, right?

    3. GL

      Yeah, for now. Mm-hmm.

    4. MM

      How do you come up with pricing for an AI product? And also, it's dependent on how the models price themselves, right?

    5. GL

      Totally. So yeah, there's a lot of different moving parts. I think every startup today needs to be thinking about pricing as something that they're probably constantly experimenting with. It used to be, you know, you know, five, 10 years ago you kind of set it and forget it. You come up with pricing once and maybe revisit it every several years. I don't think companies today have the luxury of doing that. Um, you constantly need to be thinking about, okay, the tension between, like, seat-based versus usage-based, how your product evolves, the different segments of users. So we have users that are individuals versus, you know, B2B customers that may want to buy in a completely different way. So I mean, the honest answer for us is this is something we're still constantly experimenting with. Um, you also wanna do so in a way where pricing, you know, pricing, you're trying to align the value you provide to your user, and then the other side of the equation is you need to be able to build a durable business.

    6. MM

      Yeah.

    7. GL

      So, like, are you, uh, actually, you know, build, uh, building a business that's able to operate profitably or efficiently? The worst thing you could be doing is to be es- essentially selling dollars at a discount, right? Like, if you're selling dollars at a discount, feels good, you're making money, but you're doing it so very unprofitably. So these are all things we're constantly moving target. I think the best you can do is being willing to adapt, and then user, user base to kind of figure out what's the right way to balance both the value they're seeing and the cost you incur as a business.

    8. MM

      Do you have any strategies on converting customers from free into paying? 'Cause you had this, um, competitor, was it Toma, that shut down?

    9. GL

      Tome, yeah.

    10. MM

      And they had, Tome, 25 million users, 3.5 million ARR. You had 40 million users at 20 million ARR.

    11. GL

      Yeah.

    12. MM

      So you're doing something there converting customers. Can you give advice to AI founders on how to do that? [laughs]

    13. GL

      I think it will sound generic, but it just comes back to, like, what is the quality of the product, right? Um, e- every single category, if it's a meaningful category, there's gonna be multiple competitors. Um, and so your ability to kind of ignore the com- competition and focus on your users is all that really matters. Are you delivering something to them that competitors aren't, uh, you know, either delivering on or aren't focused on, right? Like, even within our own category, you know, there's many people that f- uh, focus on kind of the design portion of, like, creating a presentation. We wanna focus on the, the communication, the storytelling, so, like, how do we abstract design, the need for design completely away? And so you're gonna approach it differently depending on your sort of, uh, vision for this category, and then your specifically, like your customers you're serving, what are their needs? Many different types of customers might have different needs for a presentation tool. Like, you need to figure out where in that space do you actually wanna play.

    14. MM

      And your, your strategy has been product first from what I'm hearing-

    15. GL

      Yeah

    16. MM

      ... from what I'm experiencing, and you only have 50 people. Is this still the same?

    17. GL

      We're a little bit bigger than that, but, like, when we were crossing 100 million in ARR we were 50 people, yeah. So it was a relatively small team.

    18. MM

      Grant just said he crossed 100 million in revenue with only 50 people. This is exactly the kind of thing I love to explore in my Future-Proof Newsletter with a community of 18,000 builders and creators. Twice a week, I share the best practices from my conversations with CEOs and founders, the AI tools I'm actually using, and the skills worth learning right now. It's free. The link is in the description. Question that's very, uh, I think is on point for 2026. Do you think you can triple your revenue with the same amount of people? I- is there technology there?

    19. GL

      Yeah.

  9. 32:01 – 39:00

    Can you triple revenue without growing the team?

    1. GL

      I think the answer is yes, and then there are... the, the nuance is how do you triple it, right? Because we're trying to build a global business, and so this means, you know, we have a lot of users in Europe, a lot of users in Asia. We still feel like we need to build a physical presence there. And so ignoring that for too long, just assuming, hey, we'll just grow from San Francisco and not, you know, grow headcount, I think would be the lo- wrong long-term decision. And so we are trying to grow now our footprint in these different offices, which means growing the team much bigger than it was, you know, obviously a year ago. So I think, you know, every business should think about what is their ambition as a business. If it is to be a company that has global presence, if it is to serve many different segments of users, so like we have the prosumer end and the B2B, you know, set of users that are much different in profile, and then also serving developers through our platform, our API MCP part of our business. Those all require different teams and, like, different, uh, uh, places of, like, emphasis in terms of building out the, the complete product and platform. Those require headcount. And so if we were just focused purely on prosumer, growing that as fast as possible, I think we could stay pretty lean. But if our ambition is to build a global business that can operate across segments, I think we're gonna need a much bigger team.

    2. MM

      And also the question is, is there a longevity in just growing the consumer business-

    3. GL

      Totally, yeah

    4. MM

      ... like trying to do everything by yourself?

    5. GL

      Trying to do everything. Yeah, that, that is another, you know, tension I think every startup is feeling today, especially today, because when it feels like you can build a- anything, you know, whether you're vibe coding or just agentic coding, all the capabilities feel like they're there. When it feels like you can build anything, the question is, should you? [laughs]

    6. MM

      Yeah.

    7. GL

      And if not build everything, where are you gonna focus, you know? And so, um, this is, uh, this is both like the, the challenge and I think the opportunity of building today. Like, you have the feeling of being limitless in terms of going out there, but you also need to pro- provide your team the right level of focus and, and to be kind of committed to some path of, this is what we really care about and these are the things we don't, and being committed to that for as long, you know, long of a, a time horizon as possible.

    8. MM

      Your principle is hire painfully slow. Is there a role that you wanted to have in your company but you're not hiring because you think it's, you know, you- you're still, like, debating whether you need it or not?

    9. GL

      I think it goes back to, like, every, you know, s- stage of company, you need to ask yourself sort of where you're at and, and what are the limiting factors for you to continue to grow. Oftentimes, the moment, um, a startup raises a little bit of money, they think, like, "Okay, I need to immediately open the floodgates on, you know, sales and marketing, and just, like, hiring as many people there to, to build top of the funnel, build demand." But going back to, like, is that the best way to grow an early product? Probably not. You know, it actually means going back to focusing on the core, like making sure the core product is so good, going back to organic virality, is, like, so good people tell all their friends about. We wanted to focus there. So rather than, like, open the aperture in terms of hiring across the board, when we were super early, it was all about reinvesting in the core, hiring the right, obviously, engineers, product designers. We, we actually probably over-invested relative to what people would say, like, in product design. We had... It was almost a third of the company was product designers early on, and most people were like, "Why would you invest so much into product design?" We're like, "Well, that matters a ton to us." So even though we were small in, you know, like, the relative overall headcount, we were probably over-index on product designers because we felt like that was super important. And to get true organic virality, we needed to be exceptional in that one area of, you know, that one function. And so, uh, every stage you're gonna have to look at. Now that we're much bigger, we can't afford not to hire sales and marketing because we have a massive audience to go after, and we have a B2B business that still requires a ton more relationship building, a much more consultative approach to, to, like, actually, you know, expanding within these larger companies. And so we can't just... You know, hiring painfully slow at this stage doesn't mean we, we never hire sales and marketing. It means now that we're at the stage, we, we feel like we've earned the right, and we can gradually open up the aperture a bit more. If we had done that two or three years ago, I think that would've been premature.

    10. MM

      How many of your employees are generalists versus specialists?

    11. GL

      I feel like nearly all employees are what I would still define as generalists today, even though they spike in different areas. So, you know, for instance, our head of design, exceptionally talented designer, very visual, but he also knows how to code, and he was coding even before, like, you know, vibe coding was, was more accessible to, to most, uh, designers. But the fact that he can now ship something, like end to end, test it, like get early versions into hands of users, that's a superpower, right? And so he can cross domains where, you know, traditionally it'd be a designer or a UX researcher that does a little bit, some of this, like, early, you know, uh, sort of investigation or, like, early research. He can do that himself, develop the early prototype, ship the early prototype, get something i- into the hands of users to actually give feedback on, and oftentimes then ship something into production, like almost, like, completely end to end. That just wasn't really possible before. But for us, like we try to look for that, the spirit of like a generalist across every function, whether it's fu- you know, sales, marketing, uh, engineering, product design, and I think that allows you to have a relatively lean team that can, again, like play across multiple domains at any given point in time. And I think in general, that just means a team that can be pretty collaborative too because you have deeper empathy for what each function can bring to the table. And, and, like, when you're bringing something to, to an engineer, for instance, you've already done so much work to think through, like, "Okay, how do I make this right so the handoff is as seamless as possible?" These things I think are hard to quantify, but when you have a team of generalists, there is some magic in, like, working together.

    12. MM

      But does this model ever break or start breaking with scale? Do you feel like there's a po- there will be a point in time when you will need to start hiring more specialists?

    13. GL

      I definitely think so, and... But, uh, but there's also the sort of competing sort of race of, like, as you get bigger, you want more specialization. LLMs and AI is also getting better at being specialized-

    14. MM

      Yeah

    15. GL

      ... in certain domains. And so there's almost like this race now of like at what point, uh, does AI also kind of fill in the remaining gap and the generals can go deep when they need to? TBD. I think certain functions, like I think we're, we're noticing, you know, like within like finance and legal, still pretty hard. Like, you still want specialization and specific types of questions that come up. Like, you don't wanna just trust like an LLM, obviously-

    16. MM

      Yeah

    17. GL

      ... to give you the right answer. But for a lot of, like, sales and marketing, where, you know, your goal isn't to replace the human, it's to augment or, like, to really automate as much so that the human can focus on what they're good at, which is the relationship building, again, the consultative approach. You're trying to carve out, you know, if they only have a certain number of hours in a day, you don't want them to be wasting any time, like, fiddling with, you know, business systems or any of that. They should be spending time with customers. And so our goal is, like, those generalists can help automate as much of the work that is not customer-facing as possible, and the rest of the time their s- their speci- you know, their specialty is to, to, to work with customers. We're, we're trying to carve out as much time as possible for, for them

  10. 39:00 – 41:11

    The honest truth about delegating to AI agents right now

    1. GL

      to do that.

    2. MM

      Yeah. That makes total sense. With all the companies deploying agents, what was the last process that you completely delegated to an agent?

    3. GL

      I, yeah, I think one thing we've learned is that e- even with agents, you're not completely delegating things away. Like, a human still needs to supervise.

    4. MM

      Still needs shade? Yeah.

    5. GL

      Yeah. And, you know, agents can still be fragile. They can, they could go off course. And so, um, I think the best cases are still where the human and agent are working hand-in-hand. And of, of course, maybe over time you have multiple agents all, you know, working with the same human, and they can then be subdivided into different tasks. But we're still so early, you know. We're not at the stage where, yet where I think any of our teammates feels like, "Okay, 100% agent work now. Now I can go do something else." It's more like, okay, agent can actually help me provide a ton more leverage, can obviously reduce a, the time to complete a task, and then can help me do the things that I just would never have gotten to because m- my time in the day is too precious. And so these, there are certain aspects of that. You fast-forward several years from now, then I think we're talking about maybe agents doing way more, uh, being much more self-directed and, and truly being like a, a partner where, um, they... you can leverage the, the agent sort of workforce in a way that today still seems like we're s- we're still a little bit out of reach.

    6. MM

      What's your favorite agent?

    7. GL

      I mean, we build a lot of things internally to, to help with, um, you know, things like customer research or even just understanding, you know, what, what, what should we be building next. Like, what are pockets of-

    8. MM

      Mm

    9. GL

      ... of things that are gonna be useful? So, like, you know, taking all the, uh, input we get, you know, we, we look at obviously things like churn analysis, like what are people saying? We look at when new users sign up, you know, what are they using? How are they leveraging the product? These are all inputs, and so we wanna be able to take those inputs and say, okay, now stress test like some of the other things we're, we're thinking about building. Like, how useful is this to, to an end user? Um, where might we kind of, uh, add value i, in ways that we aren't even, you know, considering today? Like, you know, really being a sparring partner there. I think those are things where, um, you can now with much more... Like, every company now has so much more data they can actually work with. Um, taking advantage of that is, is, is really, I think, where the, the magic really happens.

  11. 41:11 – 45:40

    First 30 days plan for anyone starting a startup today

    1. MM

      So y- your analyst is basically data analyst meets product-

    2. GL

      Yes

    3. MM

      ... and they make decisions together.

    4. GL

      Totally. Yep.

    5. MM

      Somebody who watches video has a startup idea, built a deck with, uh, with Gamma. Uh, can you give me their first 30 days plan step by step?

    6. GL

      First 30 days plan is, uh, spend all 30 days talking to your customers. [laughs] Really it's, uh, I think it feels like, you know, i- if you, if you're assembling the team, you need to be, uh, laser-focused, customer-obsessed from the very beginning, and nothing else really matters in the long run. Um, I would-

    7. MM

      So not... You wouldn't start with a co-founder?

    8. GL

      Well, I mean, uh, I, I'm assuming if you've raised money, you have your co-founders.

    9. MM

      Oh, no. I mean, like, you just had an idea and you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna start." Is it the co-founder or you start talking to clients first to figure out who you need as a co-founder?

    10. GL

      I personally think you shouldn't, uh, jump into the idea before the team because the team should help inform what the idea actually is. You might have like, hey, I'm... Again, going back to our specific, you know, thing, which is we think, like, you know, visual communication could be improved. But we weren't gonna be prescriptive into how we actually solve that. Let's as a team start tinkering, like what can our team deliver in the space that feels differentiated? And once we had that, that's when we said, okay, we feel like there is something here. We don't know exactly what the product might look like in three or four years, but there's something here. Let's go raise money so we have a chance to actually build this for, you know, over the next several quarters. Once you have that, then it's about you, you have the, the early team, you flip all of your energy into spending time with customers and early users and, like, testing, like, does my thing even deliver on, you know, uh, anything that's valuable to you? And if not, let's, let's course correct. Let's make sure we're not heading down a path of, like, delivering something that has zero value to you as a customer. Let's make sure we're, uh, listening to your problems, fine-tuning our own sort of understanding of the problem space, and then building the right thing over the, you know, the long haul.

    11. MM

      So for someone who, um, came up with the idea, found the team, which is kinda hard if you are not in the ecosystem-

    12. GL

      Yeah

    13. MM

      ... like finding, raising... But would you say this deck will help, uh, that company raise money?

    14. GL

      I would say yes, but it, it's, it will help you, uh, the, it'll help you sort of have the right conversations.

    15. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    16. GL

      But ultimately, the investor is gonna judge you based on your level of conviction and their level of conviction in, in your team-

    17. MM

      Yeah

    18. GL

      ... to go after this market. So-

    19. MM

      Yes. It's all about the team

    20. GL

      ... use this as a tool.

    21. MM

      Yeah.

    22. GL

      And every great tool can help you, you know, open the right doors and obviously have some of the right conversations.

    23. MM

      Can we wrap up with one final question?

    24. GL

      Yes.

    25. MM

      So if you could send one message to the founder version of yourself in 2023 when your growth was stagnating-

    26. GL

      Yeah

    27. MM

      ... 6K users, you're stuck there, what would you say?

    28. GL

      It'd be some version of, uh, just hang on. You know, like, every founder will go through many ups and downs. Um, if you're surrounded by a team that, um, again, shares, like, the same level of ambition and, and values and principles, then you gotta just lean, uh, you know, lean on them as much as you can and then still have belief that you can make it through. The earliest days are the hardest because it, it very much is, they describe it as like the idea maze. You're, like, bumping into wall after wall and not knowing if you've made any sort of meaningful traction. And so, you know, for us it was like, hang on for as long as possible. Make sure we don't lose belief in the longer term, you know, mission of trying to help people communicate their ideas. Like, we feel like that should be something we could commit to for a very, very long time. And so hanging on to that belief that we can make a difference, like, that's what, you know, for us actually did change the, the overall trajectory of the business.

    29. MM

      And it comes from the energy, I guess, that the product is giving you, right?

    30. GL

      Comes back to, yeah.

Episode duration: 45:41

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