While millions struggle with PowerPoint for hours, two former colleagues discovered something remarkable: AI could compress that first hour of creative magic into just one minute.
Grant Lee and Jon Noronha, co-founders of Gamma, have built what they call "new building blocks" for presenting ideas—and the results speak volumes. Their platform has exploded to millions of users worldwide, with Korea and Japan leading the charge as some of their fastest-growing markets.
In this interview, they reveal the counterintuitive approach that led to their breakthrough: how starting with a problem (not the technology) and forcing themselves to use their "broken" MVP daily for over a year ultimately unlocked explosive growth when AI entered the picture. From 400 credits per user to 50,000 daily signups—including on the Fourth of July—their journey offers a masterclass in product-market fit in the AI era.
Watch the full interview now on EO's YouTube channel! Below is the complete transcription of the interview. Minor edits have been made for clarity and readability.
Key Highlights:
"Before you rush into trying to apply new technology, start with a problem. Find a problem or a space you're personally passionate about because AI aside, if you're going to be starting a business to solve a problem, you're going to be invested in it for many, many years."
"We have millions of users worldwide. Korea, Japan are among some of our fastest growing countries."
"The hard problem before AI was that we could work really, really hard on trying to create a better alternative to slides, but it was very hard for someone to actually see that and grasp what it was. AI lets you see that first hour of magic in the space of one minute instead."
"We crossed over 50,000 people signing up in one day and actually that day was the Fourth of July, which here in the US is one of our biggest holidays, and so nobody was even at work, but it showed us actually the international growth."
"We have millions of users worldwide. Korea, Japan are among some of our fastest growing countries."
"The hard problem before AI was that we could work really, really hard on trying to create a better alternative to slides, but it was very hard for someone to actually see that and grasp what it was. AI lets you see that first hour of magic in the space of one minute instead."
"We crossed over 50,000 people signing up in one day and actually that day was the Fourth of July, which here in the US is one of our biggest holidays, and so nobody was even at work, but it showed us actually the international growth."
When PowerPoint Becomes Your Prison
What led you to start Gamma, and how did your backgrounds at Optimizely shape your approach to building a presentation tool?
Grant: I've always known that I wanted to start my own business. One of my uncles started a chain of bakeries, and my parents even ran their own restaurant. So very early on I saw the energy they put into building their own business. I've always had that spirit in me.
I eventually went into consulting and investment banking where I got to see what it takes to really build a business and grow a business at scale. What separates a successful business versus one that stalls or is not able to build something long term. I eventually wanted to take what I learned and apply that to a much earlier stage venture, so I ended up joining a startup as a first finance hire. The company was Optimizely.
I think the biggest lesson learned from Optimizely is that every business can embrace a spirit of experimentation very early on. When you're very small, experimentation is really about trying to learn from your users—a lot of qualitative feedback, talking to them, understanding what their pain points are, showing them initial concepts or prototypes, and then being willing to go back and iterate.
Jon: My job at Optimizely involved either giving presentations or receiving presentations for 6 to 8 hours every day nonstop in meetings. So that was where the company all started—it was our experience of sitting through that and thinking there has to be a better way to communicate ideas at work. That's how the company was born.
I eventually went into consulting and investment banking where I got to see what it takes to really build a business and grow a business at scale. What separates a successful business versus one that stalls or is not able to build something long term. I eventually wanted to take what I learned and apply that to a much earlier stage venture, so I ended up joining a startup as a first finance hire. The company was Optimizely.
I think the biggest lesson learned from Optimizely is that every business can embrace a spirit of experimentation very early on. When you're very small, experimentation is really about trying to learn from your users—a lot of qualitative feedback, talking to them, understanding what their pain points are, showing them initial concepts or prototypes, and then being willing to go back and iterate.
Jon: My job at Optimizely involved either giving presentations or receiving presentations for 6 to 8 hours every day nonstop in meetings. So that was where the company all started—it was our experience of sitting through that and thinking there has to be a better way to communicate ideas at work. That's how the company was born.
How did you approach the problem of presentations differently from existing tools like PowerPoint?
Grant: When we first started telling people about what we're working on, the problem itself is pretty universal. There's very few people that say 'I love making slides.' So I think people understood the problem.
What we did was spend a lot of time in the beginning just observing people create PowerPoint presentations, and we saw them doing the same things over and over and spending so much time formatting and designing. Then oftentimes moving back into a document and then back into PowerPoint—it was a very disjointed process.
We believe that ultimately we can come up with a new way of creating, and a new way of creating requires different building blocks. If it didn't require so much effort to format and design, maybe the overall experience could be dramatically simpler, much faster, and hopefully more delightful for the end user.
What we did was spend a lot of time in the beginning just observing people create PowerPoint presentations, and we saw them doing the same things over and over and spending so much time formatting and designing. Then oftentimes moving back into a document and then back into PowerPoint—it was a very disjointed process.
We believe that ultimately we can come up with a new way of creating, and a new way of creating requires different building blocks. If it didn't require so much effort to format and design, maybe the overall experience could be dramatically simpler, much faster, and hopefully more delightful for the end user.
Living Inside a Broken MVP
What did those early versions look like, and how did you get through the period when the product wasn't ready for real users?
Jon: The first versions of the product are definitely very rudimentary. We built a very basic text editor without a lot of features that was just broken up into sections. In each section you could type words, add pictures, and then there was a present button where you could step through each section one by one.
Most people using our products wouldn't really retain with it—they would try it out and give us some feedback, but it was not a replacement for anybody's workflow.
When your first users are your friends and former colleagues, you almost can't listen to the type of feedback they tell you because they don't want to hurt your feelings. So what you really do is trust the numbers—are they coming back to your product without you nudging them?
Actually, the way we got through that early period without a lot of validation was we relied heavily on using our own product. Even though our product wasn't good enough for anybody outside to use, we forced ourselves to use it from very, very early on for everything we did inside our company—all of our notes, all of our meetings. We even made up reasons to give presentations.
That process of living inside of our MVP and seeing all the things that were wrong led to constant improvements. Every single week our product got 10% better, and that added up over at least a year, probably even a year and a half before we had something that I would say was actually good.
Most people using our products wouldn't really retain with it—they would try it out and give us some feedback, but it was not a replacement for anybody's workflow.
When your first users are your friends and former colleagues, you almost can't listen to the type of feedback they tell you because they don't want to hurt your feelings. So what you really do is trust the numbers—are they coming back to your product without you nudging them?
Actually, the way we got through that early period without a lot of validation was we relied heavily on using our own product. Even though our product wasn't good enough for anybody outside to use, we forced ourselves to use it from very, very early on for everything we did inside our company—all of our notes, all of our meetings. We even made up reasons to give presentations.
That process of living inside of our MVP and seeing all the things that were wrong led to constant improvements. Every single week our product got 10% better, and that added up over at least a year, probably even a year and a half before we had something that I would say was actually good.
The Product Hunt Breakthrough
How did you transition from private beta to your first real launch, and what was the impact of launching on Product Hunt?
Grant: Our very first version was a private beta—all we had was a landing page that said a little bit about what our product was and had a sign up button. Through that we got our first maybe 1000 or 2000 signups for our private beta.
Our first 1000 users was really a gradual snowball over time. We started with friends or former colleagues that spent a lot of time building presentations, and many of them would share it with their coworkers.
We didn't actually publicly launch our product until last August when we launched on Product Hunt. We put a lot of work into that launch—we had already tested our product in private beta for several months at that point, so we knew which parts worked well. We relied on a lot of video to show off those things, redid our landing page, and really tried to nail our messaging and onboarding.
That Product Hunt launch went a lot better than I expected. We ended up being the number one product on Product Hunt and saw a clear spike in signups—thousands of signups just over the course of a day.
Although we had that first upswing, it still plateaued and leveled off at a lower rate where we were getting maybe hundreds of signups a day. It wasn't enough for us to feel really confident that we had actually nailed the value proposition.
Jon: So we spent probably 6 months after that just iterating. I emailed every single person who signed up and asked, 'How did you hear about us and do you have any feedback?' I emailed the ones who used the product and also the ones who took one look and didn't use it. We went through all that feedback and looked at the most common problems people brought up.
Our first 1000 users was really a gradual snowball over time. We started with friends or former colleagues that spent a lot of time building presentations, and many of them would share it with their coworkers.
We didn't actually publicly launch our product until last August when we launched on Product Hunt. We put a lot of work into that launch—we had already tested our product in private beta for several months at that point, so we knew which parts worked well. We relied on a lot of video to show off those things, redid our landing page, and really tried to nail our messaging and onboarding.
That Product Hunt launch went a lot better than I expected. We ended up being the number one product on Product Hunt and saw a clear spike in signups—thousands of signups just over the course of a day.
Although we had that first upswing, it still plateaued and leveled off at a lower rate where we were getting maybe hundreds of signups a day. It wasn't enough for us to feel really confident that we had actually nailed the value proposition.
Jon: So we spent probably 6 months after that just iterating. I emailed every single person who signed up and asked, 'How did you hear about us and do you have any feedback?' I emailed the ones who used the product and also the ones who took one look and didn't use it. We went through all that feedback and looked at the most common problems people brought up.
The AI Game Changer
How did AI transform your product and solve the fundamental activation problem you were facing?
Grant: At the time of our public beta, we didn't have any of our current AI capabilities. We spent a lot of time after our initial launch really redesigning the entire creation flow with AI at the core.
When we released this to some of our early users, the feedback was tremendously positive. People that already understood the value of Gamma, once they got AI, it made them work even faster and unlocked a different level of creativity than they had before.
The hard problem before AI was that we could work really, really hard on trying to create a better alternative to slides, but it was very hard for someone to actually see that and grasp what it was. There was this huge blank page problem where we could tell you five benefits of Gamma, but you had to invest an hour of your time to make something cool before you could really see those benefits. So most people just never got over that threshold—the activation energy was too high.
AI has completely changed that. AI lets you see that first hour of magic in the space of one minute instead. That totally transformed our onboarding and activation.
When we released this to some of our early users, the feedback was tremendously positive. People that already understood the value of Gamma, once they got AI, it made them work even faster and unlocked a different level of creativity than they had before.
The hard problem before AI was that we could work really, really hard on trying to create a better alternative to slides, but it was very hard for someone to actually see that and grasp what it was. There was this huge blank page problem where we could tell you five benefits of Gamma, but you had to invest an hour of your time to make something cool before you could really see those benefits. So most people just never got over that threshold—the activation energy was too high.
AI has completely changed that. AI lets you see that first hour of magic in the space of one minute instead. That totally transformed our onboarding and activation.
From Credits to Customers
How did you handle the monetization challenge that came with AI's high marginal costs?
Jon: The big difference with AI compared to traditional software products is that AI has a high marginal cost—you have to pay to run these models. We realized we couldn't afford to give everybody unlimited usage of our AI for free.
Very last minute before our launch, maybe a week before, we quickly built out a system of credits just to limit how much AI you could use at the start. We launched with 400 credits per user when you signed up.
They used it a ton and very quickly would go from 400 credits to 0 credits, and they would say, 'How do I get more? I want to keep using your product. Why won't you take my money?' That became a really strong sign of willingness to pay.
Very quickly monetization went from a low priority to the top priority, not even because we wanted the money for ourselves, but because we needed a way to unblock these users to use us more.
We built a very hacky prototype version of monetization to begin with—we didn't even have a buy button inside our product. It was purely a link we would send over support. We'd manually go into Stripe, create a payment link, and send it to somebody. Within an hour of sending our first payment link, the first person paid.
That allowed us maybe a month and a half ago to launch self-serve pricing in the product, and that's what's gotten us past our first 1000 paying customers.
Very last minute before our launch, maybe a week before, we quickly built out a system of credits just to limit how much AI you could use at the start. We launched with 400 credits per user when you signed up.
They used it a ton and very quickly would go from 400 credits to 0 credits, and they would say, 'How do I get more? I want to keep using your product. Why won't you take my money?' That became a really strong sign of willingness to pay.
Very quickly monetization went from a low priority to the top priority, not even because we wanted the money for ourselves, but because we needed a way to unblock these users to use us more.
We built a very hacky prototype version of monetization to begin with—we didn't even have a buy button inside our product. It was purely a link we would send over support. We'd manually go into Stripe, create a payment link, and send it to somebody. Within an hour of sending our first payment link, the first person paid.
That allowed us maybe a month and a half ago to launch self-serve pricing in the product, and that's what's gotten us past our first 1000 paying customers.
Explosive Growth and Global Reach
What kind of growth are you seeing now, and what surprises you most about your user base?
Grant: The one that has most amazed us has just been the sustained sign up growth that we're seeing. We're in the millions of users and just recently we crossed over 50,000 people signing up in one day. Actually that day was the Fourth of July, which here in the US is one of our biggest holidays, and so nobody was even at work, but it showed us the international growth where people outside the US were discovering our product and using it in ways we couldn't even imagine.
Korea and Japan are among some of our fastest growing countries. Users in those countries are really embracing this idea that new building blocks give them potential to create new things. They're eager to build, eager to embrace new technology, and willing to be early adopters of things that allow them to free up their creativity in ways they couldn't do in the past.
We've been really happy to see how quickly we've been able to monetize many of these new signups.
Korea and Japan are among some of our fastest growing countries. Users in those countries are really embracing this idea that new building blocks give them potential to create new things. They're eager to build, eager to embrace new technology, and willing to be early adopters of things that allow them to free up their creativity in ways they couldn't do in the past.
We've been really happy to see how quickly we've been able to monetize many of these new signups.
What's your philosophy on AI as a creative partner, and what advice do you have for other founders looking at AI opportunities?
Grant: I definitely see AI as being the ultimate partner to unlock human creativity. When you have AI and a tool like Gamma, we think of it as having basically a design partner that has unlimited creativity but also unlimited patience. They can sit with you, they never get bored of the type of questions you ask, they never get bored of the struggles you might have. AI as your partner really takes your own work to levels that you wouldn't be able to accomplish on your own.
There's clearly a lot of hype in AI and we do see teams that approach building with a mentality like 'how do I leverage AI to build a product?' I actually think that's backwards. I'm much more interested in customer obsessed teams that say, 'What's a customer problem that I've identified? And out of all of the tools that I could use to try to address that problem, is AI potentially the best one?'
Before you rush into trying to apply new technology, start with a problem. Find a problem or space you're personally passionate about because AI aside, if you're going to be starting a business to solve a problem, you're going to be invested in it for many, many years.
I personally am excited about applications where companies are leveraging AI to move humans from more of a creator role to a curator role. We believe that Gamma can be that tool that anybody can pick up, learn, embrace, and whatever ideas they want to share or communicate, they can use Gamma to create dramatically beautiful content that they're proud to share with others.
There's clearly a lot of hype in AI and we do see teams that approach building with a mentality like 'how do I leverage AI to build a product?' I actually think that's backwards. I'm much more interested in customer obsessed teams that say, 'What's a customer problem that I've identified? And out of all of the tools that I could use to try to address that problem, is AI potentially the best one?'
Before you rush into trying to apply new technology, start with a problem. Find a problem or space you're personally passionate about because AI aside, if you're going to be starting a business to solve a problem, you're going to be invested in it for many, many years.
I personally am excited about applications where companies are leveraging AI to move humans from more of a creator role to a curator role. We believe that Gamma can be that tool that anybody can pick up, learn, embrace, and whatever ideas they want to share or communicate, they can use Gamma to create dramatically beautiful content that they're proud to share with others.
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