Grant Lee: How Gamma Built a 100 Million User AI Presentation Company Despite being one of the most successful AI tools, @GammaApp was not founded as an AI company. Compared with other presentation tool companies, Gamma was building something deeper from day one: building blocks for visual storytelling. CEO Grant Lee joined a16z's Sarah Wang and Olivia Moore to share how he built Gamma using taste, design-first principles, and an obsession with the first 30 seconds of user experience. He also explains the decisions that shaped Gamma’s growth playbook: betting on word-of-mouth, crossing the chasm from prosumer to B2B, and hiring “painfully slowly.” The result: one of the world’s most successful AI applications that wasn’t founded as an AI company at all. 00:00 Introduction 00:51 "This has got to be the worst idea I've ever heard" 07:13 "Better to be different than better" 10:54 Beyond the 16x9 prison 24:54 Word of mouth is the only metric that matters 26:10 From 60,000 signups in 8 months to 50,000 per day 30:09 From 12 months runway to profitable in 3 months 31:50 Sequencing matters: Prosumer first, then B2B 36:58 "Hire painfully slowly" 41:10 Taste is the entire restaurant experience 44:17 Onboarding every influencer personally @thisisgrantlee @sarahdingwang @omooretweets(a16z)