AIVenture Capital

Grant Lee: Building Gamma’s AI Presentation Company to 100 Million Users

Chris Dixon
Chris Dixon•Nov 11, 2025

Original Description

Grant Lee was told Gamma was "the worst idea ever heard" by an investor who hung up mid-Zoom—yet he built it to 100 million users and $100M ARR without spending a dollar on advertising.
While competitors hired aggressively, Grant's team of seven refused to grow, dedicating 25% of their tiny team to design and personally onboarding every influencer themselves.
They reveal how ignoring AI for their first two years, then orchestrating multiple models in ways the frontier labs can't replicate, let them steal the presentation market from Microsoft and Google—going from 60,000 signups in eight months to 50,000 per day.
Timestamps:
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
Follow Grant on X: https://x.com/thisisgrantlee
Follow Sarah on X: https://x.com/sarahdingwang
Follow Olivia on X: https://x.com/omooretweets
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