Grant Lee

CEO and Co-founder at Gamma

CEO and co-founder of Gamma, an AI-powered presentation and website design tool that hit $100M ARR in just over two years with a team of around 30 people, valued at over $2 billion, growing profitably and sustainably in a category most investors dismissed.

The Growth Architect The Growth Scientist

Dimension Profile

Strategic Vision 70%

Execution & Craft 80%

Data & Experimentation 65%

Growth & Distribution 90%

Team & Leadership 45%

User Empathy & Research 70%

Key Themes

AI product market fit through onboarding magic word of mouth as core growth engine micro-influencer marketing strategy profitable AI startup growth first 30 seconds product experience rapid user experimentation

Episode Summary

Grant Lee reveals how Gamma grew from a rejected pitch to $100M ARR in two years by obsessing over making the first 30 seconds of the product feel magical. After winning Product Hunt product of the month but still lacking organic virality, they bet the company on rebuilding onboarding with AI, which triggered explosive word-of-mouth growth from hundreds to 20,000 daily signups. He shares detailed tactics on micro-influencer marketing, rapid same-day experimentation, and building a profitable AI startup with just 30 people.

Leadership Principles

→ Your mindset should be creating a word of mouth machine — if you get that right, everything else becomes significantly easier
→ Winning Product Hunt product of the day, week, and month was not enough — without strong organic virality, it was a vanity metric not a core growth engine
→ Make the first 30 seconds of the product feel magical — if someone goes through onboarding and doesn't tell all their friends, you don't have product market fit

Notable Quotes

"The investor pauses a little bit, and then just says, 'That 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.'"
— On the founding story of Gamma and the investor rejection that motivated their growth focus

"We'd go from a few hundred signups a day to a couple thousand, then 5,000, then 10,000, then 20,000 signups a day. And we weren't doing any marketing, no advertising. It was all organic word of mouth virality."
— On what true product market fit felt like after rebuilding the onboarding with AI

"All the initial influencers, I onboarded manually myself. You're much better doing the hard thing — finding thousands of micro influencers that have an audience where your product is actually useful."
— On the micro-influencer growth strategy that fueled Gamma's expansion

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